Blogging For Myself

I was having an open discussion with saimatkong a few days back. And from it, I took back a valuable observation I made of myself. As vain as it sounds, now I know why my traffic isn’t that great.

The simple answers always want to make you slap yourself. And my answer to myself was, I don’t blog for people.

If I really wanted to increase my traffic, what I should blog about are:

• Tutorials
• Website examples (galleries)
• Downloads/Freebies

But I’m not doing all this. Yes, I’ve a category called website lessons or blog lessons. However, you’ll not find a tutorial on how to build a website or blog in there. I know I can write a series on it but I can’t feel the drive to do it.

What I blog about is my personal observations and opinions towards the website and online marketing ideas I’ve stumbled. I like blogging about topics which made me think and makes me want to share it with others.

While you read my articles, it’s like seeing and feeling what I felt when I was writing it.  This my blog’s true nature and the reason I’m blogging.

What is your blog’s true nature? Or, why are you blogging?

Become a Website Design Evangelist

The definition of an evangelist:

a person marked by evangelical enthusiasm for or support of any cause.

Source: Dictionary.com

The cause which I support for awhile now is none other than web standards. The ideal of creating websites in compliance to usability and accessibility.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is only a guideline of best practices. I remember a W3C member coming down to deliver a topic on accessibility at the Malaysia Web Accessibility Conference and she reminded us about this.

When web standards caught wind in Malaysia, everyone had sworn to get their websites w3c compliant, even myself. If your website didn’t bear the w3c stamp, it’s like you were still a demon living in hell. Well, this is no longer the case. Oh, how much we’ve grown.

Today, I’m still a website design evangelist. And I preach good usability in website design. I take it as my responsibility to not only come up with visual aesthetics, but to create a visual flow in the website. If there’s too much content, which should be given priority?

If there’s too little content, how can design still help a client’s website look and feel professional? Design is a tool to be used by website designers to lead the visitors in the website. Never forget that.

As an evangelist, I’ve constantly done my best to educate all my friends and clients who want to discuss about a website. They would either listen or ignore what I’ve said but it’s understandable. Some prefer to have it their way, no matter what.

Are you an evangelist too?