Adventures in Streamlining

I've been reading a book on blog design (“Blog Design for Dummies," fittingly enough.  I still don't understand most of what it's talking about, though, which makes me think I may need a book called “Blog Design for People Who Were Born Yesterday.”)

One of the main things it talks about is making your blog easier to navigate.  It mentions the "three clicks rule," where you don't want to make your readers click more than three times to get to the info they're looking for.  To that end, I've made a few changes to the blog format:

1: I took most of the links out of the sidebar and added them to their own page on the site. Aside from lessening the clutter, the links now have spiffy new pictures attached to them.  Well, some of the pictures are spiffy, anyway.  Others will need to be replaced with higher-res images. 

2: I added the Amazon Slideshow Widget to the blog, to make it easier for readers to get to my novel.  It was surprisingly quick to set up.  You simply choose the books you'd like to add, choose the style, colors and sizes (I went with basic black), then paste the code they give you into your blog.

3: I streamlined the Labels menu, so people can find topics that might interest them (like the game show interview I did with author Jaclyn Aurore.).  First, I changed it to the cloud format, so the labels with the most posts attached are easier to see.  Then, I went through and deleted some of the clutter labels.  For instance, I had the label "synopsis" for one of my posts, which seems a little silly, now that I actually think about it. 

4: I tweaked the "About the Author" page to make it a bit cleaner.  Now that the site is somewhat easier to navigate, I didn't feel the need to include quite as much junk there. 

I'm still learning as I go, but so far, I'm quite happy with the changes.