For the last two years there has been an explosion of new blogs on the Internet, literally thousands every day. The main reason for this is that many business owners are beginning to realize that blogging can help them gain authority, build customer relationships, and introduce their products and services. Other bloggers also explore the market for additional income through affiliate links etc. Even if your blog is personal, you may want to see it bring in a small cash injection each month. Whatever your reasons for blogging, there are several factors to consider. One factor that many ignore is the design. Google now includes good coding and design in their algorithm, so having a great design can really help improve your traffic.
Why is it so important
Some may say that the design is not that important and what really matters is the content. Yes, that’s true, but focusing on just one factor is dangerous. Let’s face it, as a visitor to a website or blog, the first thing you notice is the design, ease of navigation, loading time, banner ads, and thumbnail images. The number of poorly designed websites I have visited over the years is staggering. Not only does this make me not want to read the articles, but I’m also likely to leave very quickly and not return.
An example of a poorly designed website I came across today had the following: small green text on a black background, flashy ads, pop-ups, slow load time, and the sidebar seemed to have fallen off below the post. The website actually has decent information, but it was not readable due to the size of the text and the distraction of flashy ads and pop-ups. I prefer to read a blog that has a clean and light design with easy navigation; It’s more professional, isn’t it?
But before you rush to your website to change anything, let’s start by getting a clear idea of what direction you want your blog to go in. A great design should finish off the content of the blog, attract the target audience, and help to better promote the product and services you offer.
So, let’s look at some of the top design features to make your blog more attractive to your customers and followers.
Simplifying access and navigation
As I already mentioned, great design isn’t just about great images and bold colors. The functionality of all your sites depends on their design. This is everything from action button placement to ease of navigation, reading quality, and loading speeds. Because we live in a fast moving world and your customers need to find exactly what they are looking for with ease, otherwise they will go elsewhere.
It can be quite frustrating to search a blog and not be able to find what you’re looking for or finally stumble upon it 25 minutes late. Therefore, by providing your readers with ease of navigation, users will be more satisfied and may even increase your authority.
Creating the right banner
The first thing that catches the visitor’s eye is the area above all the content called the banner. This is a good space to place your logo, blog title, or social media profile links. Some banners are too tall, so visitors have to scroll down to get to the post content. A good banner size should be between 150 and 200 pixels. There are also a number of software available to help you design the perfect banner. What I recommend to my clients is SWFT, it is around 2.5MB download and contains over 200 different effects and features to help you with a great banner design.
Choosing the right colors
As I described in the first example, using bright colors can be quite annoying. Some webmasters may think that it helps to attract attention, however it does not and should be avoided if you want to appear professional or even representative. This is a common problem faced by many newbies. They create very colorful pages, but if they could see them through the eyes of their visitors, they would know that the color scheme does not do their blog justice. Choose your colors wisely, check out other blogs in your niche, ask friends or family for ideas, do some testing, and ask some of your readers for feedback.
Avoid Sidebar Clutter
Your sidebar is useful for browsing and sharing information about your blog. Sometimes blogs have a couple of sidebars, but usually only one. The sidebar is used to help the user navigate the site, but some webmasters tend to clutter their sidebars with cluttered widgets, plugins, and ads. Take a look at your sidebar and ask yourself, will users benefit from all these widgets? Another reason not to fill your sidebar with irrelevant stuff is because it will take the focus away from the content.