Bloggers, listen-up. Today I wanted to share with you the one blog change you should make today to make your blog infinitely better than it is. You'll never believe that something so simple could truly change your readership, your sponsorship, and your blog's readability. The best part? It is such an easy fix, you'll be wondering why you haven't done it before. Ready?
Resize your blog's photos to the same width.
That's it. That's all it takes to improve so many things about your blog. Think about it: you're reading a blog and as your eye scrolls through the text, photos are switching from portrait to landscape to square. When reading blogs that have resized images, readers don't even notice the switch. But for blogs that are switching back and forth, it can be a real headache to read. In fact, as a reader's eye moves through your blog, your text and images should all be about the same size. Really!
Need even more reasons to resize your images? It helps your blog load faster. I get so frustrated when I visit blogs that take forever to load. 9 times out of 10, it's because the photos haven't been web optimized. I learned at Blogshop years ago that your photos should be between 500 and 800 pixels wide. To give you an idea of what that looks like, my photos are resized to 680 pxls (to match the width of my text).
You don't have to have Photoshop to fix this problem. If you have a Mac, you can open your photos in Preview and simply change the size there. And if you're on a PC, just resize them in Pic Monkey. Your readers will thank you and your photos will be even better!
I love this tip. It simplifies things for the blogger as well as the reader. But one question: I've been reading that we should use images that are twice the width of a blog post column so that readers using high resolution tablets get a clear image. Am I worrying about nothing?
ReplyDeleteI totally agree that it simplifies reading for everyone and is generally more enjoyable. I haven't ever had a problem with my images not being crisp in my own tablets, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. If anything, just make sure your images are high resolution and optimized for the web. Hope that helps!
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