Your writing style and your site design will be the first two things that your readers will notice. It’s not that you got to have the style of Shakespeare to please your reader. Just write in a simple and effective manner will help. Wait a second! I almost forgot that this post is about the widgets. Didn’t I. The third thing that will give them an idea about your blog, whether it’s a professional one (or not) is your widgets. Widgets are everywhere in your blog. The sidebar, above and below posts, header and footer. Who knows, there may be one hiding right behind you. So you must be pretty careful while choosing them.
The following are the widgets that make your site either look unprofessional-ish or increase your site load time significantly.
1. Auto Slider (Showing featured content above posts in home page):
Who the heck has those things? Oh wait! We do! But there is a reason for us having it. Our slider is automatic and adaptable. It shows random posts. But if yours is a manual one, kindly change the script to an automatic one. Also it slows down your blog. Also make sure that it loads only after the page content loads. We have done that.
2. Gallery (Slideshow):
Seriously ? You have gallery in your sidebar? We think ‘now’ is the right time to remove it. (Well! Not ‘now’ now but ‘after reading this entire article and our other great articles’ now). Galleries are a waste of space and load time. Especially if it features ‘home photos’ of you. Please kindly take it off from your blog. (Exception: If you are really hot women, then you can do pretty much anything you want).
3. Floating Tweet birds:
I initially considered that even hanging social share buttons are annoying (the irony is that there is one in our blog, which I’ll remove after feedback). Then there were a few blogs we came across in which a twitter bird came flying all the way from top, sat on my mouse arrow and asked me to feed it by following the author of that blog. The one thing that we bloggers should understand is that ‘anything which annoys the readers is likely to drive them away from you’. So please, we beg that creature off your blog.
4. Toolbars:
Toolbars are shiny and may even gat you some likes and subscribers but it increases load time and is not mobile-friendly. So be very careful to choose whether to ‘toolbar’ or ‘not toolbar’. But if you do, prefer the ‘lite’ ones.
5. Random Posts:
Random posts are very useful in getting traffic to your old posts. But you ask me why I added it here. Its just to make one thing clear. Do not name it ‘Random Posts’. It’ll certainly lower your mojo. Name it as something else; like “Recommended for you” or I don’t know, you can think a title of your own or leave it title-less.
6. Flash Banners:
Flash banners with scrolling texts are truly disturbing. They are as annoying as gif banner ads. Hence we kindly request you to remove it.
7. Stat Counter:
If you are a new blogger you must be too ashamed of placing the stat counter due to too low stats and if you are a pro you would have already known that this widget is rubbish. So if you belong to those ‘in between,’ please say a big no to the stat counter. Your stats are for your reference only and are not for your visitors. They just came to read your posts.
8. Visitors feed:
You really think this is necessary? Nope. It’s not. Some noobs somewhere have installed it in their blog just to fill up their sidebar. For no reason please throw it away from your blog.
9. Glitters and Snow:
We know your Christmas spirit. But it is really not a good way to express it with raining snow. It could give eye soreness to your readers. Just add a santa to your blog’s logo. It’ll be a good makeover and also express the same fortitude.
10. Ads:
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| Which Download button should I click? |
Nope! We never said to remove ads completely. Ads are the potential way to earn money for bloggers. But isn’t it a little too much to post ads everywhere in your blog. This makes even your loyal reader to close the tab and go back to sleep in frustration. I do really believe that the download sites with huge number of ads are the main reason for using ad-blockers).
So, please limit the ads in your blog. It is proven that minimized ads will increase your income. In our opinion one or two banner ads near your content is enough. We recommend the use of asynchronous adsense, as it claims to not impact your blog load time.
So what widgets should you add?
A perfect widget should be the one which increase your post clicks, give you exposure, occupy less space and loads ultra-fast. I will write articles about it as soon as possible.
Some of the widgets which you should not include have been said. I may have just missed a few of them. There are hundreds of useless widgets which we come across every day. If you have seen one please post it in comment section. I will include it too and you proper credit (a link if possible).
