Frontline Perspectives

From data sheets to newsletters to websites, we work on a lot of projects here at MarketSense that include sidebars. The same questions always come up: Should the sidebar go on the left or right? What should we put in the sidebar? Will anyone read it or care?

Why should you care? Well, because life itself is full of sidebars — things you want to share but aren’t important enough to talk about in full detail. Every business meeting has its share of these side comments. In your internal and external communications, a sidebar can be a highly effective piece of real estate.

Sidebars work hard for you, allowing you to:

• Put more content at the top of the page or screen than you’d otherwise be able to fit.
• Tell your reader that there are a lot of important things going on at your company.
• Convey more information to readers who scan content.
• Expand on a main news story or article in a reader-friendly format.
• Create visual interest within the layout.
• Fit in more keywords and content for SEO purposes.
• On a blog, list categories, tag clouds, links, subscription and connection options, ads, widgets and more.

Just be careful to avoid cramming too much information in your sidebar. You don’t want to overwhelm your readers or force them to read a long, skinny article wedged in that space.

And what about the question of whether the sidebar should go on the left or the right? There are good arguments for both, as it turns out. In his Pro Blog Design blog, Michael Martin does a great job of explaining the benefits of each side and concludes that, “in most cases, the strongest argument is for the sidebar to be on the right.”

It’s most important to make the placement a conscious decision. Who knows, maybe you’ll decide you don’t want one at all. Or maybe your project works best with two. It really depends on the design and what you’re doing with it.

How have you or your marketing team used sidebars lately?