Unclutter your blog - homepage!

Hi all!! Today we'll clean our blog's homepage a bit, to keep up the "unclutterness". Yup that's right, we'll look into few ways of helping your blog look cleaner by focusing on the homepage.
Your homepage is the first thing your readers see, so it acts like your business card. You have just a few seconds to hook up your readers, or else they'll leave you like a wet puppy in the streets. So thanks to that, you must prep up your homepage fields for reader-stickiness. So here it goes:

1. The first thing you need to target your attention to is your banner/flash animation. Is it representative for what your blog theme is? Does it have your blog's name in it? Does it have a subtitle that fades away the name?
For instance, if you are a blogger that talks about homeschool ideas, then your blog can't have this combination: name - Homeschool 101 and banner/flash animation - gothic elements. They are ok in particular, but they don't go together. You have to make sure that both of them say the same thing.

Image courtesy of Lionsgate and Saw VI
2. Once you took care of the first impact step, you need to make sure that your homepage content is the spokesman of your blog. The homepage content acts like a great ad banner for the rest of your blog. So if for instance you have an Etsy business and your blog is a way of unwrapping what goes behind it, then you need to make sure your blog's homepage has features of your products and you can also include a small link to your Etsy shop. This way your homepage remains a great spokesman and a portal to the inside of your blog but also becomes an advertising platform for your outside Etsy store.

3. Next important thing on your homepage is information availability! That means you need to have your information clearly compartmentalized and placed in the most eye-focus available spot. If your blog takes on adopting a baby, fertility problems and family support, then that should be your compartmentalized information. Create an easy access path for those topics and keep them in the eye-focus spot. It will act like a portal to the rest of your blog and this way your readers will know from the beginning what you're up to. So find your unique style to remain clear and available with your information.

Image courtesy of TomoPizzeria
4. Last but not least, avoid dated content and broken links on your homepage, as they will harm your blog's credibility. If your links(that represents a path to a certain page of your blog) are broken then the reader mind works like this: "eh.. not working.. let's see what this other site has". You need to regularly review your blog, removing old content and updating information. Double check to see if every link is usable and every information you offer on your homepage stays up to date. Nothing turns off a reader than a homepage about fashion and a blog about cloth diapering. Not that they're not both fun, but because diapering and fashion they're no PB&J:)

That's kind of it for today. I hope these tips will help create more decluttered homepages and bring more readers to your blog:)
Now check back to see what comes up next in Blogger tutorial section, take a look at the SEO department for more tips to improve your blog's traffic or join us to learn new HTML tricks and tips every day!

Oh and I just forgot to announce that the winner for Swizzlestix retro-modern giveaway from last week:
Congrats Hanna @ bouffe e bambini! Oh and kuddos for getting to 3rd trimester of your pregnancy too:)