5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Blog Design

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I firmly believe blog design is important. Though there are many successful blogs with poor design I still believe they are loosing readers because of it. Some people are willing to search and search a site for the information yet others will leave with in a few seconds of frustration. This is the way people are. Some need to be guided step by step others look forward to the challenge of a search. I have now created 6 Wordpress blogs (Time To Budget, Horse Approved, Supermom Life are my top 3) that I have customized to fit my blogging needs. iwebis is the theme I put the most thought into and customized it with a blog reader in mind.

I often compare web design to a department store or shopping center. Not many people enjoy shopping in a department store that is trashy and has poor customer service. The same goes for reading a blog or visiting a web site. If your content is hard to find among the Adsense clutter or poor navigation you may be loosing “customers”. To take the department store/blog comparison a bit further image that customer service equals being available to your readers by answering emails quickly or responding to comments. Here seven simple steps you can take to improve your blog design which will in turn help attract more readers.

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1. Use a blog theme that is easy to navigate. There are many good free wordpress and blogger themes available. Search for a theme that has at least 2 columns. There are some very nice looking one column theme out there but they make navigation much more difficult. I also suggest you find a theme that has the page links below or above the header. Non-blogging readers are not always accustom to the the sidebar “categories” and “archives” navigation. Blog designers are offering more and more themes that resemble a traditional web site.

Here are some examples of good 2 and 3 column free wordpress themes with page links at above or below the header.

2. Make your blog Content Focussed. It has been said over and over again that content is key. I agree with this wholeheartedly but will be turned off to good content if I can’t find it. My hope is that the day of filling ever other paragraph with Adsense will soon come to a end. Time and time again I have been on blogs that are so filled with Adsense and other ads that I wasn’t sure was content and what was ads. Now I am sure that this is a specific optimization technique to get confused readers to accidentally click on a contextual ad but it causes people like me to get fed up and leave. As I said before some people find this challenge enjoyable but others won’t tolerate it and leave. So optimize advertisements to compliment your content. I wrote a Blog Design Is Important - 3 Do’s and Don’ts article on my Time To Budget blog.

3. Use inviting color theme making sure the colors compliment each other. Though cyberspace holds different color standards than the outside world there are still some color combinations that should be avoided. Hot pink and bright yellow may not be colors you would want to combine but that is not to say hot pink or bright yellow can’t be used. Choosing a color theme has a lot to do with what type of blog you have. Neither hot pink or bright yellow would be appropriate for a News blog but against a black background could be perfect for a musicians blog.

These are some suggestions I have when choosing a color theme. There are of course great exceptional blogs that don’t follow my suggestions but these are still some good guidelines to follow.

a. Backgrounds should be white, black, gray or another neutral color.

b. Content background should be white against black, or dark gray text. Or black against white text. Post title could be a separate more prominent color but it should be a color that doesn’t make your eyes hurt.

c. Link colors should be prominent. Visited link colors should either be the same as the regular link color or a shade or two less than the non-visited link. The reason I say this is because I have been on sites with drastically different colors for visited and non-visited links. If I am going down a list I have forgotten which color is visited and which is not it can become very annoying. By making the visited color a shade lighter than the non-visited is offers a reducing appearance. The best way I can describe what I mean is like having a full glass of red wine is red when full and then when it’s an empty glass it is then clear. The color reduced. Now we can’t go so far as to make the link clear or invisible but we can offer a reduced (or shade lighter) color.

Resource : Html Code Color Chart

4. Change your settings or choose a theme that does not have a stationary sidebar. This is probably one of the most annoying problems with blogs. The blog author posts a large picture or your browser is small and the entire sidebar ends up at the bottom. This is definitely a problem for the new to blog reading visitor. It’s hard enough for the newbie to have figure out how to navigate an unfamiliar blog design but expecting them to search the bottom of your site for the navigation bar is rather ridiculous when you think about it. If you don’t know if your blog template does this then just reduce your browser and see if the sidebar disappears to the bottom. The disappearing sidebar is not usually a problem if your template is narrow because most browsers are a not affected but if you have a wide template then it’s possible visitors are having to find the disappearing sidebar.

Wordpress support offers some help on the moving sidebar issue.

Side note: The template being used for this site does not bump the sidebar down but instead squeezes it together. Try reducing your browser and you will see what I mean.

5. Always have a link home. Remember when Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz said “There’s no place like home”? Well this is especially true for the lost blog reader. Make sure you have a visible link to home page or your header image or header text leads home.