A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or anywhere in the theme.
Why Should You Improve Your WordPress Sidebar?
The sidebar of your WordPress site is a crucial part that needs optimization with care. When used properly, it can help you get double or more email subscribers, page views, sales, etc.
In the WordPress sidebar, you can certainly add whichever widget you like to achieve your purposes, for example, displaying ads to make money, showing recent posts to generate traffic, and displaying a search box to improve site search. Also, you are able to use as many widgets as you like and arrange them in the way you want.
What is a Good WordPress Sidebar?
While there are no official rules for what a WordPress sidebar should look like, there are a few design concepts you can keep in mind while designing yours:
l Keep it minimal. Long sidebars look unwieldy and weigh down the page. No one wants to scroll through a sidebar that’s the length of the page! By trimming down your sidebar to the essentials, you’ll have a much better looking and functioning page.
l Include the essentials. You want to trim down your sidebar to the essentials, but what’s essential? There are no hard and fast rules, but generally, it’s good to include a short bio, a search bar, and contact information.
l Accomplish your goals. The sidebar is prime real estate that helps you accomplish your goals. Is your aim to get the reader to join your email list? Use a signup form widget. Do you want the reader to be able to donate to you through PayPal? Throw a donation button at the top of your sidebar.
l Connect with readers. Sidebars provide an ideal way to concisely communicate your site’s mission to the reader. You can use a short bio to tell the reader what you do, and you can include your contact information (social media network profiles, email, etc.) so readers can instantly connect with you.
Learn the Most Popular Usages of WordPress Sidebar
If you are uncertain about what to display in your sidebar or planning to add some more widgets, you can learn the popular usages first, and then select the ones that suit your need. Below are some of the widgets that you probably also want to take advantage of.
#1.Email subscription
If you are careful, you should have found that many popular blogs have put a subscription form in the sidebar to enable their users to receive updates easily. Such a form helps a lot in building a healthy email list and carrying out an email marketing campaign.
#2.Search box
Enabling the search function on your site is important because it contributes much to the user experience. Through the searches, also, more page views are generated. Such a search box is usually displayed near the top of the sidebar. To add one to your WordPress site, use a search plugin or integrate Google Custom Search.
#3.Showcase your content
WordPress sites come with a built-in recent posts widget. This widget does not perform very well. The reason is simple, your recent posts may not always be the best content to describe your site to a new user. You should use a popular posts plugin to display your most popular content. You can also combine it with a related posts plugin to showcase the most relevant content to new users.
#4.Social icons
Going social builds your credibility, promotes your site, and increases the interactions between your users and the site. This is why so many bloggers choose to display several social sharing icons at a prominent position of the sidebar. If you have built up profiles on social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, you can do this, too.
#5.Ads
In the case that you are promoting or selling services, you can display ads in the sidebar to gain more revenue easily. However, when doing so, you must pay attention to the design and size of the ads to make sure they fit in the site design and do not upset your readers.
WordPress Sidebar Tips to Get Maximum Results
Tip 1. Choose Your Side Carefully
We commonly see sidebars situated on the right side of the page, but this isn’t always the best option. In fact, studies have shown that the average user tends to focus more on the left side of the screen than the right.
This is particularly true when using very large and wide monitors. Therefore, it’s easy to see that people will be more likely to check out the sidebar and interact with it when it is positioned on the left. We can’t guarantee that a switch from right to left will boost your popularity, but it’s certainly worth a try.
Tip 2. User Engagement Tools
Recent comments, polls and surveys, user rankings, points system, are just some of the ways to boost user engagement on your WordPress site. Displaying them in your sidebar helps boost user engagement on your website. This increases your pageviews and time each person spends on your site.
Tip 3. Add an Archives Widget
Admittedly, very few bloggers understand the full potential of an archives widget. Firstly (and obviously), this widget displays your posts based on time of publication, typically month and year. Thus, your readers will find it easier to navigate to posts of a particular month. And if you have nofollow links in your sidebar, it may slightly improve your blog’s PageRank as all the link juice is passed to your posts.
WordPress comes with an archive widget out of the box, but there are many brilliant plugins that extend the basic functionality. Using appropriate customizations, you can ensure that the widget doesn’t go back too far but still includes important periods of time you want to highlight.
Tip 4. Use Images
Images are much more engaging than plain text. If you want to grab user’s attention, then use images as banners and buttons. You can link those banners and call to actions to different areas of your website.
You can simply upload an image using the media uploader and add the HTML code to display the image in a text widget. If you are not familiar with HTML, then you can use an image widget to add images in your WordPress sidebar.
Tip 5. Floating Sidebar Widget
Usually the content column of your website becomes a bit lengthier than your sidebar. This means that when users scroll down, there is nothing to look at in the sidebar column.
You can add sticky floating sidebar widgets to make sure that there is always a call to action visible to your readers as they scroll down.
Remember, the main purpose of a blog on your website is to increase visibility of the website so that it is found by Internet users. Optimizing your sidebar is just one way to make it easier for users to find your blog. Your sidebar should have a specific purpose. Avoid clutter and banner ads and you should be just fine.
