The area immediately after a post is fairly prime real estate.  It’s where you can give a natural follow-up action for your visitors… and I gave them ALL of them.  The only problem was the one that I really want them to do right now was given the least emphasis.

So What Do You Want Visitors to DO?

I want people to comment on articles on the site.  And for those people who prefer not to comment, I want them to at least be able to read the additional contributions added by other readers.  That’s what rings true to the mission of Better Parenting – to crowdsource parenting advice.  You don’t need to have a PhD to contribute and improve the collective parenting skill of our readers.  So I eliminated some of the extra stuff at the bottom (popular posts, related posts), added more emphasis to the comment text, and made mention of the “Comments Count” contest that I’m running.  I’m going to do more with this too.  I should have additional changes rolled out tomorrow.

I’ve also made some other changes to the individual article pages:

• I increased the size of the main image and placed it directly above the headline.
• I increased the size of the headline and improved its styling by choosing a better font and color.
• I removed the large (and distracting) categorization box that was previously above the headline.
• I improved line spacing in the articles.

I did all of these things to increase the likelihood that someone will get to the bottom of the article — where the other changes should encourage them to comment.  It’s important to regularly remind yourself what you want people to do on your site, then do whatever you can to make it easier for them to do it.