How to Design a Blog?


We all know the importance of good, relevant, quality content in any marketing and advertising communication. Your website and its content is key to your business.

It is important to keep your content updated regularly for search engines to index more pages and display your website at the top of search results.

blog-design-1024x480 How to Design a Blog?

A blog reflects what your company stands for, acts as the company voice, and is a great way to reach out to the target audience. It is also a channel that lets you communicate in an informal – and often humorous – tones to your audience. Blog posts have the potential to be shared on various platforms, thereby increasing reach. Blogs also enable comments from users around the world and serve as a great platform to interact with existing or potential customers.

Businesses strive to reach their target audience with superlative, keyword-rich content and blog. However, they often overlook a vital factor that is essential to attain and more importantly, to sustain the attention of visitors: Design.

In the words of Thomas J. Watson, Chairman and CEO of IBM (1914-56), “Good design is good business.”

 

How do you design a blog?

Below are factors that can help you create a well-designed blog – or improve your existing blog.

Blogging Platform:

There are several blogging platforms you can choose from – Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr and the more recent Squarespace and Ghost. If you are not sure which one to finalize, you can test out their trial offers.

If you’re well-versed with coding, you can even create your own blog from ground zero and make it an extension of your existing website.

Template:

Select a blog theme and a design layout that supports your business goal. If it resonates with your brand and your website without compromising on user experience, then you have made the right choice.

A lot of ready-made (free and paid) templates are available to choose from. You can customize the templates to suit your blog purpose and need.

Colors:

If your company has brand guidelines, don’t veer too far away from them. Explore the primary, secondary and tertiary colors that you can incorporate and use them as standalone or in aesthetic combinations.

Do not use too many colors and several bright colors in the same space.

Search Box:

If your latest post is not what a visitor to the blog is looking for, he/she can enter terms in the search box that you make available for them in a prominent space on your website (example: top right corner). You can use analytics to track what people are searching for on your blog. In turn, this data can help you build relevant content around what your audience wants.

Images:

When someone visits your blog for the first time, the visuals and layout is what will compel him/her to stay and browse further or close the tab and move on. Your choice of images or lack of, can often speak louder than your blog content.

Your company’s logo on your blog is essential to create brand recall for your visitors. A well-thought out header image for your blog can create a good first impression.

It is a good practice to compress your images before uploading them so they load quickly. Use “alt text” attributes and keep the width and height of images in check.

Images also serve as thumbnails when blog posts are shared across social channels like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Make sure every blog post carries at least one compelling image, related to the topic of the post.

Responsive Design and Browser Compatibility:

More people access the internet today from their mobile phones than from computers. A mobile-friendly design is no longer an option. Growth of internet access from hand-held devices has meant your website now needs to take different browsers and screen sizes into consideration. Make sure you design a blog that is responsive and renders well in different browsers and devices.

The common issues to look out for include:

  • blog layout (positioning of elements),
  • navigation (drop-down navigation or links may not work),
  • text alignment (text wrap and justification issues),
  • buttons (they may not send form data or link to where you set them) and
  • animations (they may not render properly).

Shareability:

Add plug-ins of popular social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Recently, some blogs have enabled the WhatsApp share plug-in to increase the possibility of visitors sharing their content.

Comments:

Several blogs of large enterprises have disabled commenting after each blog post because of spam and blatantly promotional content. A little investment in automated or human moderation can go a long way in leveraging the power comments. If you allow comments, you open a channel of interaction with your visitors.

A few tenets of successful blog designs are:

  • Keep it simple.
  • Don’t be afraid to use white space.
  • Update content regularly.
  • Add photographs and a short bio of blog authors (if you have more than one author writing for your blog).
  • Choose fonts wisely. Comic Sans for a multi-national bank is not appropriate. A new font that is compatible with your latest browser may look like garble to a user with an older browser and operating system.
  • Add an image, however simple, to every post.
  • Test. Test. Test.

At Flying Cow Design, we help you make your blog meaningful and memorable by striking the right balance between content and effective design.

 

 

fb50c5bf790872a8ecad33a6bd15d358?s=100&d=mm&r=g How to Design a Blog?

CEO, Flying Cow Design
Attended University of Auckland
Lives in San Francisco Bay Area

June 21st, 2013


Need help with Web Design?

Write to us with your project details and we will get back to you shortly.


Related Articles
Self-hosted WordPress sites are versatile platforms for building a business. The secret to WordPress' flexibility
If you are a business owner looking to grow your business online, here are three
A payment gateway facilitates online credit card payment processing on your website. The software and
An iframe or inline frame is essentially a browser window set within the web page.
Content marketing creates organic traffic, but it requires sound strategy. Separating the two is like
When we look back over the last 10 years, it is amazing how corporate websites
When one mentions browsers, most instinctively think of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.
Not often are CSS and typography used in the same sentence and in many ways,
It's rare to find a website to be completely free of errors. This is usually
What are web fonts? When designing for offline media like brochures, billboards, press advertisements, etc.,