Blog Tips

"Google Browser Size" revisits the optimum blog width

In a previous post, we looked at the optimum “blog real estate”: the surface of your blog which is visible on a visitor’s browser window. I mentioned that, according to the statistics from 350,000 visitors my main blog, 91% was using a monitor width of 1,024 pixels or more. Based on that, I suggested you lay out your blog to a maximum width of  1,000 pixels (or anything between 950 and 1,000).

Google Labs just released “Google Browser Size”, a simple and coarse visualization of that recommendation: it takes a faded image of your site, and overlays it with a set of contours, showing “how many people see what of your site”. For example, the “90%” contour means that 90% of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least this size or larger. The tool confirms our claim: 90% (I said 91%) see 1,000  pixels wide.

My first reaction was: “OMG, I am missing 10% of my audience with all my sites having 1,000 px widths.” Then again, “the useful” and “the optimal” are sometimes two different things: I would not want to change my blog width to 600 px, just to reach that 1% who still uses ancient hardware or software. Nor would I change it to 800 px to reach that extra 5%.

And that is not what this tool encourages you to do neither: Mostly, Google Browser Size is a handy tool to remind you which important parts of your homepage fall outside of how many people’s browser window. If your ‘donate now’ or similar buttons on a fundraising blog fail to be hit 10% of your audience, then I’d suggest to move it.

When you buy a piece of land, you have only a limited space to build the house of your dreams. When you design a blog, you have only a limited space to convey information. We call it “the blog real estate”.

The most precious real estate is the top of your homepage, the part a visitor sees when arriving at your blog. It is crucial you think about what information you want to display in that limited space.

Why? A typical occasional visitor will make up his/her mind to stay on your blog, in less than one minute. Between 20 and 57 seconds to be exact (see this post). He/she should, at the glance of an eye understand what your blog is all about, how to navigate through it, and what its key features are. Within less than a minute, we have to convince our adhoc visitor our blog is worth spending more time on.

In addition to ’seducing the adhoc visitor’, the prime real estate area of your blog is also the main working area. It is the safe harbour from which each visitor will start the voyage through your blog. It is also the safe harbour the visitor will return to after a trip through one or more posts. For instance: few visitors will look for the “home” link or main navigation features at the bottom of the page, will they? Nope, they will go back to your prime real estate: the top of your blog.

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So far, we have covered some basic questions before you can make a solid choice which blog platform to use: selfhosting your blog or not, what functionality you demand, and what ease of use and support you can expect.

With this triple pack, you can more or less decide on a blog software. Unless…, if you are into serious blogging, and you want your blog to become a piece of pride, a representation of you, or your organisation.
After all, you can write the best content you want, but if you don’t make it attractive and usable, your blog will attract little attention, and few visitors will stick.

This is where the next selection criteria lay:

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