Are you starting a new blog or ready to update an existing one? With the high level of volume in the blogosphere, your blog design needs to have professional appearance, user friendly features, and high quality content in order to attract visitors. Use these five tips to design a blog that people will want to read.
- Define your goals.
Are you creating your blog for customer service purposes, to increase client loyalty by building interactions, or solely for new sales? Whatever your objectives, know what they are before you start so that they can shape your blog design decisions. What a visitor to your blog first sees should reflect the goals you have. - Create visual appeal.
Your color scheme and graphics should coordinate with your business logo, so that visitors arriving at your site immediately connect your blog to your company. Use no more than 2-3 colors, but feel free to use gradients of those colors for a professionally designed look that is easy on the eyes. Same goes for fonts. Use no more than 2-3 fonts throughout your blog, and make sure that they can be easily read on any size screen. - Strategically use white space.
It is tempting to fill every bit of screen space with text, graphics, and photos, but carefully planned “white space” makes your blog more visually appealing and easier to read. Whether it is truly white or a gradient of one of your colors, leave some space that is free of page elements. - Carefully plan your sidebar.
Your sidebar provides navigation on every page of your blog, so keep it uncluttered and limited to links that will be useful to your blog readers. Any time internet users have to search too long for what they want, they are likely to give up. - Plan picture and background sizes.
Your blog will look more professional if your images are consistent in size and line up with your text. Try some different sizes and determine what works best for your blog. Then stick with it. Your background picture of texture should be tested as well. Keep it subtle or a simple gradient of your color scheme. Make sure that it is set to tile, so that your reader never ends up with a background that doesn’t fill their screen. - Test thoroughly.
Once you have a test blog set up, look at it on your phone, tablet, PC, and any other screen you have available. Do not assume that something that looks great on your laptop will be readable on your mobile device. If you can recruit others who will take a look on different platforms, such as Android and Mac, take advantage of this opportunity.