10 Tips For Killer Blog Design

Does your blog design make a significance on how people visits your blog and how long they stay? Either you are a newbie blogger or a problogger , you should understand that a good looking blog is among the elements of a successful blog. The sub-headings below include tips that will help you in creating a good blog design that will invite potential visitors instead of scare them away.

1. Easy Navigation

When people come to your blog, they are particularly searching for something. It might be tips to prevent a computer from virus and malware attack or how to reduce a blog bounce rate. Whatever it is they may be looking for, you need to have it. This brings you to the question, why do people visit my blog? when you know this then you know you should make it easy for them to find it.

I have been on countless number of blogs searching for one thing or another, whenever I find it difficult to navigate around, what comes to my mind is "NEXT". People don't have to waste their time hunting for things that should be easy to find. So if people come to your blog to find widgets, have a button easy to locate under your blog header that says "Widgets". People have been trained to look at the left or navigation bar under a site header.

2. Animated Widgets and Ads

You have seen those blogs that have animated ads or twitter bird dancing all over your screen trying to gain your attention? the only thing they have ever done is distract people from reading your content. Whenever I see this, I quickly reach for the exit button on my computer.

If you are aiming to build your blog to a professional level, please don't use flashing widgets. Guaranteed you are encouraging people to leave your blog. People have come to you for information and solutions not to click ads or have their brain scrambled.

3.Colour

The choice of colour depends on the blog owner but studies show that colours have an effect on human emotions. Look at blogs like Mashable and Techcrunch, their colour scheme simple and so is their layout.

My recommendation would be to go with the flow. If you run a tech blog, then not more than three combination of colours seems to follow with a light background, if you blog about fashion, you might want to apply more colours. Think about your audience and you would know the colour  scheme that best suite your audience.

4.Layout

The very first impression I get whenever I land on a blog that has it's articles to the center or right side of the page is "This is a newbie blogger". People have been trained to start from the left side when reading or writing a book. Your widgets are okay to be on the right side.

5. About Us

People usually want to know basic things about you before they do business with you, they want to if you are capable of the job, how to get hold of you, is your service guaranteed?, what is your private policy?, etc. You need to answer these questions to create trust between you and your potential customer.

6. Sitemap

If your blog has a lot of pages then you must have a sitemap. A sitemap helps people find what they are looking for without having to rummage through your blog like a lost soul. They also help search engine to know what your blog is about very quickly.

7.Fast Loading Pages

There is nothing as frustrating than slow loading pages. People hate to wait. You can learn how to make your blog load faster here. Slow loading pages equals death to a blog.

8. Original Design

People used to think that it is expensive to hire a blog designer to design a blog template so they go for free ready made template. Believe me, there is nothing wrong with this idea except I can tell the difference between a ready made template and one made from scratch. If you cannot design a template yourself, get someone that know how to do it for you. It won't cost much.

9. Narrow Down Your Labels List

Let's say you have 25 labels and the maximum number of label list that would fit below your blog header is 15, what happens to the remaining 10 lists? How will people find content under these labels when they are searching for something on your blog? These are questions you need to answer and work on.

10. Customer Service

Now, how does customer service comes into play with blog design? well, it should be written all over your blog. From tips, to how-to's, free reports, giveaways, etc. People want to know you are good in what you do. Give a little and I guarantee you'll get back in ten fold.