Beware: the Most Awful Mistakes of a Site Owner on WordPress

People tend to make mistakes. And the owners of sites on the WordPress platform is not a miraculous exception. However, various mistakes lead to different consequences. Site administration errors can lead to loss of potential and existing audience as well as to the loss of good reputation in the internet.

As in any other case, you can learn from your mistakes or learn from others’ missteps for your own benefit. We hope that this article will help you avoid the most terrible mistakes, that the site administrator on WordPress is able to make.

We will focus on the interaction with the audience of your site and possible mistakes in its implementation. You can also preview our previous publication about common technical mistakes that site owners on WordPress often make. So, here are the basic nuances which you should avoid:

Poor Communication with Your Readers

If you do not respond to emails or comments from your readers, you risk to lose their attention and favor very quickly. People often forget the read or viewed information, but they will always remember the emotion that remained with them after reading or viewing. Negative emotions that were caused by ignoring their comment will always prevail over any positive emotions caused by any information you provide on the site.

Keep this in mind and never let your readers feel themselves ignored. Watch out not only for your mailbox and comments in the blog, but also for social activities. It is always easier for people to leave a comment without leaving a social network, so the chance to miss a conversation with your reader is the greatest there.

Never turn off commenting on posts in your blog on WordPress. This may seem like the easiest solution to the problems with communication, but actually you immediately signs the complete lack of competence in communication with your audience. You always have to try and aim for a better result, and not to cut off the possibility of a threshold.

Large Amount of Content and Its Poor Design

Some bloggers believe the strategy of “bigger is better” is optimal for the site administration. However, the posts with a lot of content does not always bring the expected good results. The reason is quite simple – the attention of the visitor is easy enough to lose in the sea of created content. For the posts to be more interesting, you need to diversify them with other types of content – images, videos, infographics and other elements other than text.

But the text itself can be served in different ways. If you do not divide the content into paragraphs, use too small fonts or ignore the subtitles, it will be very difficult to the readers to perceive the text. Make sure that the text was not only interesting in content, but also pleasing to the visual perception. In this case, you can prevent a large number of your users` problems.

The question of design is not just about text. Header, sidebar and footer should not be overloaded with bright elements and animation. In case of violation of this rule, you run the risk of constantly spraying the attention of the reader, who never gets to the interesting text content through the thousands of dancing kittens in header and rainbow unicorns in the sidebars. You can also read good advice about creating awesome text content.

Absence of Attribution and the Use of Nicknames

Some people are embarrassed by their real names, or have a real phobia related to the disclosure of their identity to the public. Accept the fact that you have to communicate with people on the internet at the same level as in real life. Of course, this is only necessary if you really want to develop a personal project on WordPress.

Binding to authorship on Google+ today is also very important. With it, people can easily keep track of all your activities on the content creation. If you have any fans, they will be very disappointed with the lack of your authorship in Google+, where they could get more content from you.

Also, do not forget the obligatory use of an avatar with your photo. Gravatar service allows you to use one image in many services and websites. Choose the best photo with a clear picture and use it to increase awareness. Remember that people will never trust a faceless characters, even on the internet.

Ignoring Updates for WordPress

This point may seem purely technical, but in reality it is directly related to your communication with the audience of the site. First of all we are talking about the core of WordPress and plugins responsible for the security of the site. Ignoring updates in these areas can lead to two unpleasant consequences: the possibility of critical errors on the site and increase of the amount of spam in the comments. Both of these events will not add positive emotions for the visitors of your site.

In addition, long-term lack of updates and back-up can lead to a loss of all data on your site. Imagine that you lose the result of a long work at one moment. There is no reason to take risks when updates do not require any additional financial costs and do not take up much time. You can find all the useful tips to make you WordPress site secure in the corresponding article.

Lack of Content Specifications

The lack of a clearly defined subject of the site or blog will always stand against you. Firstly, it will be very difficult to optimize a site under requirements of search engines, if you have not decided on a specific theme. Secondly, you can not create a core of loyal audience, because people will not understand what is your project dedicated to. Thirdly, it will be very difficult to spray on your own effort constantly jumping from one topic to another.

Seriously think about what theme you wish to develop at your blog. If you do not see any other option, you immediately need to think about creating a whole team of professionals, each of whom will be responsible for the development of one of the plurality of directions. Embracing everything by yourself will not work – you will only disappoint your audience.

Slow Site Downloading

Modern internet is not for patient people. If you force the user to wait more than 5 seconds while loading a site, your chances of losing him or her reaches 95%. Previously we have written about the methods to speed up your WordPress site. We recommend that you familiarize yourself with these methods and apply them in practice.

Lots of Advertising

Nobody says that modern websites need to be clear from any advertising. But advertising should not distract the user from reading. A large number of banners could discourage to read your texts only because there is always something flashing around the text. It is annoying everyone, not only discerning readers.

Too large and suddenly appearing popup literally scare users. If popup can not be closed without entering some personal information, you are guaranteed to lose the reader, rather than motivate him to subscribe to your newsletter. Use only balanced and competent methods of creating forms of subscription to email newsletters. For example, set Ninja Kick: WordPress Contact Form and try to work with its functions. With this plugin you can create unobtrusive and beautiful subscription form without special knowledge in the field of web development and design.

Lack of Contacts and About Page

Contacts and About pages are the best way to improve your reputation. This way you show that you have nothing to hide from your users.

About page should briefly and clearly describe your personality. There is no need to disclose the details of your soul or personal life to each visitor of your site. There is a large amount of information that you can share with your readers: your education, profession, work experience, hobbies, age and so on.

Contacts page should provide a simple and convenient way to send feedback. Usually this is done with the help of the form of 2-3 fields where the user can introduce himself and ask his question.

Fear of External Links

Some novice bloggers are afraid to lose their small audience because of links to other resources. In fact, links to interesting and useful resources only add credibility to those who share them. Your users will thank you for the fascinating sources and surely will come back to find more interesting content.

This fear is not only in a technical understanding of the links, but also in the psychological. Some authors avoid to mention other sources even in cases when all the information is taken from them, and is rewritten by their own words. Be honest with your audience, and it will answer you the same. Always give credits to real authors of any original content.

Final Words

Most mistakes can easily be avoided if you know about them in advance. Our tips will help you avoid repeating common mistakes of the most novice bloggers. On the other hand, many successful website owners are still not aware of some of these errors or deliberately ignore them. In this case, the knowledge will give you an advantage even over those who began their path to success earlier, but refuses to learn from the mistakes of others.

Always be vigilant and critical to your actions and inaction. And we will help you to develop your website or blog on WordPress platform without repeating of known mistakes!