How to highlight your best content

If you’ve been blogging for a while, you’ve probably built up a considerable cache of recipes. Attempting to navigate all of those tempting options may have even become cumbersome for your readers. Make it easier for your fans to navigate your site and find exactly what they’re looking for (plus a whole lot more) using a visual recipe index.

Why a visual recipe index? Aren’t the categories in my sidebar good enough?

Readers certainly can use your categories as a reference (if you’ve been diligent about tagging your posts), and they can even use the Search field if they know exactly what they’re looking for. However, providing a visual reference simplifies searches and, frankly, makes hunting down the perfect dish more enjoyable.

It’s not uncommon for words to start to blur together after a while, frustrating readers and causing them to give up in despair. And sometimes recipe names are descriptive enough to help readers decide if that’s what they’re craving. Compare a purely text index with a visual index from Lemons for Lulu:

Black and Blue Cajun Burger

Brisket Poutine Recipe

Easy Italian Meatball Bake

Homemade Chili with Beef & Bulgur

Beef Tenderloin Recipe with Mushrooms and Fresh Herb Butter

Easy Crockpot Pot Roast

It’s not difficult to see which is going to capture the imagination (and the appetites) of readers. Seeing a little teaser of what’s in store doesn’t just make me want to choose one recipe – it makes me want to try them all!

Reading a text list requires the brain to do some high-power decoding (even among the most competent readers), but our brains can process an image in 13 milliseconds. So while I might read Brisket Poutine Recipe and think, “Hm. That could be interesting.” It takes less than a second for me to scan the picture and realize that I want that in my belly right away. And those milliseconds count when people are making decisions.

How do you choose a recipe from a blog that runneth over?