Every blogger wants a perfect blog. Among so many other elements of creating the perfect blog, one of the key ingredients is design. Many often overlook this and then try hard to find audience. Everything on their blog is perfect except design. They fail to understand that despite of high quality and relevant content, their blog has high bonce rate. Did you ever think of design as an element of concern? Well, if not that you probably need to rethink your approach towards design as an important component of your blog’s presence online. Let us review each part of the perfect blog design that you need to consider in order to become successful.
Threaded Blog Commenting
Blog commenting is often considered an element that does not need to bothered about much. There are many ways in which blog commenting can be displayed on your website. You can opt for Disqus, Facebook or any other ways of letting audience interact. So why would you need to go for threaded comments? Because there is a great chance that threaded comments promote greater interaction among the audience. The number of comments increased would mean better chances of having long term keywords used. Increased amount of text is just not good for users but also for search engines. A lot of experts also do not recommend using Facebook. All comments made would be owned by Facebook and it would not be able to attract an search engine traffic.
Color Contrast for Readability
Colors form an important part of the overall blog reading experience. Sometimes even simpler and dumber things that need to be done to improve the overall user experience fail to capture attention of the audience. This is why it is important that you look at the details as they say, “devil is in the detail”. Imagine a page that has resembling color of the font used and its background. It will make a horrible reading experience for the readers who would find it very hard to make sense of what has been written. Instead of focusing on the content, they would only be trying to fight with the reading difficulties. Make sure the font color and background color make a good contrast, promoting easy reading for the readers. Therefore, do not take anything for granted. Even simpler things make a lot of difference.
Approachable Navigation
Navigation is an important part of the blog design element. Do not just follow what everyone else has created. Try to follow the navigation that is easy for the users. The items at the menu are clear. If you have too many items to display, it is advisable not to spread them across the navigation bar. Instead, create main menu items and under them create drop down lists. The users can easily find the menu item on which they want to go. Do not try to overcrowd the navigation menu because it is displayed on every page of the website. And an overcrowded navigation menu also makes the life of the reader difficult and not easy.
Cross Platform Efficacy
A good website has to be design in such a way that it can be easily accessed on any device. Responsive of the website or blog is very important. Make sure that the readability does not get affected regardless of the device or platform on which the reader is trying to access. If you do not know a lot about it, do not worry. Modern CMS software adequately takes care of that issue. WordPress contemporary themes all come with a mobile responsive design too to ensure that there aren’t any problems for users reading the blog on any device.
Cross Browser Compatibility
One of the basics of blog design is its compatibility to all the browsers that are commonly used. Some people tend to overlook the few small number of users who are using less common browsers. Imagine a situation where the percentage is small but the total number of users is significantly large enough to ignore. For example, your blog receives on average ten thousand visitors every day. Imagine that out of these ten thousand visitors 5% of the visitors are using a browser on which your blog does not work very well. The percentage may be small but it still represents a sizeable 500 daily traffic wasted due to incompatibility with a certain browser version. This will be translated to 15000 visitors every month and 180,000 visitors every year just because your blog is not compatible with a particular browser. Make sure that your blog is designed in a way that it works on all browsers equally effectively.
Social Buttons
Social buttons are something that bloggers often ignore or do not put them in the right manner. You must understand the fact that social buttons do not necessarily have to be clunky and ugly. There are many smart social media button websites through which you can insert very cool buttons. Just placing the social media buttons is not good enough. Similarly, every blog has a different design; do not try to imitate other bloggers. Place the social media buttons at a place where they are supposed to be and do not hinder with the website visitors’ readability. WordPress provides you with many ready to use social media buttons that make life of a blogger a lot easier. Always keep in mind that social media buttons are an important element and vital to your efforts for creating content that can be easily shared by the visitors.
Font Size, Type and Color
When we talk about websites in general, font is very important. But when it comes to blog it becomes critical. Blog is a website through which users get a lot of useful information. They read blogs from start to end. When it comes to readability experience, users need to have easy on eye fonts. Use similar looking font across the blog and do not use too many fonts on your website. Always remember that the font family that you are relying upon needs to go well with the overall theme of the blog. Similarly, color of the font is very important. Try to create perfect contrast of the font with its background to further improve readability.
Author Bio
Author bios are not irrelevant and you need to know their importance for your blog. Do not ignore author bios. Always make sure that you have created a beautiful author bio. Add your picture to the author bio. Also make sure that the format of the author bio makes it stand out from each blog post entry. Include author bio at the end of every blog that you have written. Ideally, you should also consider creating a separate page for each author under which their entries can be read. This is particularly helpful when there are so many writers and the readers want to stud blog posts of a particular author.
Email Subscription Options
Email subscription or signup is another important way to gather audience to which you can send information about your blog including new content, special promotions or other interesting stuff. It is therefore recommend that you focus on designing beautiful templates which users can use to submit their email and subscribe to your blog. Do not just provide subscription form at one place but different places. Make sure that is more than a form and is aesthetically designed to invite users to submit their email. A boring form that only offers a place for submission without any attraction to it will only push the visitors away.
Widgets for Popular Content
Widgets for popular content play an important role in attracting visitors to your website. There are many widgets available which help you showcase premium content of your blog. They elegantly display the most read blog posts on your blog. This way your audience will know about the content that has already been liked. Similarly, you can also find a lot of useful WordPress plugins that display relevant content to a blog post at its end. This is useful for the readers whose desire for information has not been satiated with you already wrote and they want to know more.
Color Scheme
Colors complement the design. However, the use of color is very subjective and varies from one blogger to another. This does not mean that we can us this freedom at will and destroy the user journey online. Use colors intelligently. Make sure that the colors used go well with the blogosphere of your own industry. Do not try to use too many colors at the same time. Also, try not to be way too simple, making the online presence of our blog a lot boring.
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