Photography: Sunrise by d’n'c

Most hard questions have simple answers. The hard part is in the doing.

The question: how can I lose weight? can be answered truthfully in one sentence: eat three modest, healthy meals each day (and no more), and make exercising a habit.

But that isn’t good enough. It’s the how that gets us. It’s not enough to say what we have to do. We need to know how to do it.

As bloggers and webmasters, we want most or all of these things: more visitors, more subscribers, more comments, more money, more inbound links, and more people saying good things about us. Our wants aren’t in question. It’s the how that gets us. It’s the how that has us reading a dozen blogs a day, trying to find the answer (or at least a little piece of it).

You can stop searching, for now. The answer is in this post.

The Question

How can I get visitors, subscribers, comments, inbound links, and people saying good things about what I do?

The Answer

Evaluate every action, every possible change, and every existing feature of your blog or website, and ask: Is it gripping? Can the reader resonate with it? Does it make it easy (and rewarding) to interact? And most importantly: is it easy (or rewarding) to talk about?

That’s all you need to know. Do these things, and you’ll get everything you want.

Not satisfied?

Keep reading if you feel underwhelmed or disappointed.

Of course you do. If you don’t, you’ve probably got everything you want already.

There’s nothing wrong with the above answer. After all, it’s true. If you did all those things, you’d get what you wanted (and more). Trouble is, like the answer to all our weight-loss woes above, it deals with the What, not the How. It’s all very well to want to write something worth talking about, but how do we do it?

That’s where the idea of the Simple Web comes in.

What is the Simple Web?

It’s my name for a practical philosophy of actions and results. As the name implies, it’s simple enough for anyone to follow.

Every website or blog has elements that help you get what you want, and elements that are obstacles to doing so. Those elements which help you fall into four distinct categories, and I’ll be discussing each of them in more detail in a series of posts after this one.

#1 — Gripping

Each new visitor has a limited amount of attention to give. Are you focusing it on elements which further your message, or squandering it away on distractions?

#2 — Resonating

If your content or design can’t be understood, it has failed, and complex ideas are no excuse. The only obstacle to expressing a complex idea in simple terms is laziness. If visitors don’t understand your message, how can they interact with it, or talk about it?

#3 — Interacting

Every webmaster or blogger wants their visitors to do the following (subtracting those which don’t apply to you): subscribe to their site’s feed, comment, buy — if they’re selling — or click on ads, explore your best stuff, and come back regularly. Are you making all of these actions as easy (and rewarding) as possible?

#4 — Talking

All of us want visitors to recommend and promote our site. This might involve sharing with social media, telling friends, or blogging about it. Does your content and design make this easy by being worth talking about? Are you helping to start the conversation, both on your site and off it?

Obstacles

Every design element, every function, every blog post or article, which does not fulfill one of the actions above, is holding you down. They serve only to distract, and to suck away attention from what is important. The actions in this category don’t merely sit there, ineffective and neutral. They hurt your site.

What makes it simple?

The ‘Simple Web’ is about simplifying both our sites and ourselves (as bloggers and webmasters) down to doing and adding only things which help us get what we want.

These actions are divided into four practical spheres. This makes it easier to work out whether an action fits into the philosophy. If it doesn’t, drop it, and do something that does.

What will I end up with?

• A site layout in which every element fulfills an important function in growing your blog or website.
• A site layout which squanders zero reader attention.
• Content which is always worth talking about.
• Content which will turn casual visitors into loyal readers.

How do I get it?

In the first part of the series, I’ll outline the actions that help and the actions that hinder the essential task of creating a gripping site.

The next four posts should form a coherent philosophy that will allow you to simplify down to completing only actions that yield rewards, ultimately allowing you to see more growth with less overall effort.

Update: the series has come to a close. Here are the rest of the posts.

• Part 2: Gripping
• Part 3: Resonating
• Part 4: Interacting
• Part 5: Talking