3 Reasons To Remove The Sidebar On Your Site

These days I’m seeing more and more sites ditch the left or right sidebar that’s such a staple of website design. And indeed, how many of us include a sidebar merely by habit? Because we saw it somewhere else? When making the decision to keep or remove the sidebar, we also need to rely on hard data. Are people clicking on it? Is it helpful? Do we want advertising?

In this article, I’ll give you three good reasons to remove the sidebar from your site. And a few situations where you might want to keep it. But first, how do we do it?

How to Remove the Sidebar in WordPress

This process will vary depending on what platform you’re using. With WordPress, we have the theme customizer which most probably will include an option to choose the layout of your site. Most well-designed themes have this option.

For example, I use Genesis on my site, and here are the options to choose the site layout, including the option to disable all sidebars entirely:

You can see that we can choose to go the opposite direction – have another sidebar on the other side!

If you’re using something other than WordPress, you’ll need to consult the documentation of that particular platform.

So let’s get to the main reasons to remove the WordPress sidebar.

Cleaner Layout – Easier to Focus on Content

The biggest reason I would say to remove the sidebar, is so that users can more easily focus on the content they’re reading instead of being distracted by something on the side of the screen. They get more real estate, and it feels uncluttered. This might leave visitors with a better impression of your site and encourage them to stay longer.

The dimensions of the screen that people are using have an impact as well. Narrow screens with lesser horizontal real estate will most greatly benefit from visitors having more space to read.

Mobile Design Discards the Sidebar Anyway

By now we know that all websites need to be designed in a responsive manner. The days of having a separate mobile website or theme are long gone. In such situations, the trusty sidebar is the first UI element to get the axe. It’s usually relegated to the very bottom of the mobile screen where almost no-one goes.

So, the sidebar which often makes up a good chunk of a website’s data usage is almost never seen on mobile devices! And with the latter becoming more and more popular, that’s a massive segment of wasted downloaded data.

Faster Website Download and Rendering

Beyond the fact that the sidebar uses up data and so increases the download time, the browser rendering engine will also have an easier time displaying your website just a little bit faster if it’s missing. We don’t often consider ease of rendering when designing our site pages, but it does play a role. Google’s guidelines themselves recommend having fewer DOM elements.

It might not make a huge difference, but every little bit helps.

Considerations While Removing the Sidebar

Before you remove the sidebar, make sure you have alternatives for the following, or don’t need them in the first place.

Search Bar

A sidebar is a convenient place to have a search form. Ideally, you should be able to relocate this to the navigation menu, or ever next to the site title.

Advertising

The sidebar is the standard area to have an advertising block. Removing it will seriously hamper your ability to sell ad space.

Related Links

Either do away with them completely or find a new place for them – like beneath your post. Better still, link out to all your related posts in the article itself!

Bottom Line

Keep the above considerations in mind when removing the sidebar on your site. In most cases, you’ll be able to come up with alternatives, and will be able to axe a potentially complicated hunk of code from your site!