Aug 13 2009 by John Urban |
Your blog’s design can
be the distinguishing factor that separates you from the vast sea of other
weblogs out there. First impressions count and making sure that you have all
the elements of a great blog design can ensure that readers will enjoy the content
that you present.
In
this article, you will read about the ten
essential characteristics of a solid weblog design.
1. Good readability
One
of the most important elements of a blog design is readability. Make sure that the
background and foreground colors that you choose have sufficient contrast to
make your text easy to read (look into some tools to test your design’s colors).
Provide sufficient line-spacing for paragraphs to make longer blocks of text
easier to read. Take a peek at the Viget Inspire‘s
content layout, they’ve made it so that their text content is pleasant to read.
Though readers can easily change their font size settings via
the web browser, make sure that the font size of your text – especially for
paragraph elements – is sufficiently large (between 12-14px for web-safe fonts
is a good and comfortable size).
2. A strong focus on the content
Ensuring
that readers do not get distracted by the site design and focusing on your
posts’ content can make the decision of subscribing to your blog and coming
back to read more of your content an uncomplicated choice. Some great advice to
boost your blog content can include making sure that your header section isn’t
too tall so that readers with smaller screen sizes can easily see the post
title without having to scroll down. Another way to center the blog design onto
the content is by making sure that there are no distracting items in the
background. The content is the meat of a weblog – make sure that you give its
design the attention it deserves.
3. High findability
Designing
a weblog in such a way that it’s easy to find other content/posts is a sure sign
of a solid weblog design. A lot of this has to do with a strong navigation
design that entices users to click on other sections of the site. Using
tiered/hierarchical navigation schemes can help users quickly find what they’re
looking for; for this, you can employ JavaScript-based navigation menus to help you effortlessly build a multi-level
navigation menu design.
Utilizing
the sidebar (auxiliary/secondary content) of your web pages to display recent
posts and popular posts can lead to more page views: present what you’ve got to
the reader, make related content easily accessible to them as they read your
posts. The figure below shows you an effectual way of displaying other site
content (on Webdesigner
depot‘s side bar).
Having
a search feature integrated into your blog application is always a good thing:
if you’re looking for a free search widget – explore the Google
AJAX Search API.
Remember
that the more interesting content you display to the reader, the higher the
likelihood that he or she will consider subscribing to your RSS feed.
4. A great comment section design
The
comments section is where all the action happens. It is in this section that
readers get the opportunity to give you feedback on the topic you’ve written
about and to share their own knowledge and opinions on the subject. Having
detailed debates and conversations about your posts can invite people to share
their views and in turn really get the website going. Having a good comment
section design tells your readers that you care about what they have to say and
have given them a great place to share them in.
To
supercharge your comment section and to encourage discussion, check out an
application called IntenseDebate that opens up features to help you
design an engaging comment section.
5. Tight integration with social networking/media sites
Make
it trouble-free for your readers to share your content within their networks.
Many people like sharing the content that they have been reading on places like
Twitter, Digg, and Facebook. For easy social media integration and sharing of
content, consider using an application called ShareThis!.
6. A memorable header
When
a person visits your blog, one of the first things that they will be guaranteed
to notice is the design you have at the top of the web page. This is your
chance to create a memorable first impression as well as to imprint your brand
into their memory. To get creatively inspired on your next blog header design,
check out this showcase
on beautiful header designs and
learn about thefive
types of effective headers.
7. The use of effective visuals in the content
The
failing of many blogs is that images within the posts aren’t design well.
Consider using figure captions to make images more attractive and to make them
more meaningful to readers (you can use the ImageCaption MooTools
plugin for a JavaScript-based solution).
Additionally,
when your topic is such that you require the sharing of numerical data, try to
make them more interesting by using effective data visualization techniques
such as graphs and charts; this not only renders
otherwise boring information into more attractive visuals, but it can also help
readers more readily comprehend the data you are discussing.
A
medley of distorted images, watermarked images, and images with a variety of
alignments and sizes can result in a look that give users the impression that
little care is taken into content creation.
8. A semantic HTML structure
Having
a nice design for your blog is all fine and good – but you should also make
sure that your HTML markup is designed and written properly and keeps semantics
in mind. This not only makes it easier for you to maintain your blog, but also
promotes better search engine results, which in turn can lead to more exposure
to your web property.
9. Logically and coherently organized content
If
your blog is a big operation and you post about a variety of content in a wide
range of categories, your navigation should be up to scratch so that users can
find their subjects of interest. Organization is the key to success and
investing the appropriate amount of time in planning and designing your site’s
navigation will pay dividends when users try to seek for more stuff on your
site.
10. A good headline/post title design
When
reading a weblog, it is always the headlines that draw the readers into a post.
It isn’t only how the headline is worded that is important to entice the reader
in, but also how it looks and grabs their attention that can lead them to read
the rest of the content. Use distinguished font styles that are bold and large
so that readers don’t miss your post titles.
Consider
providing meta information such as the author’s name, the date of publication,
and sharing features near your post titles to give greater context to what
they’re about to read.
Do you have more blog design tips?
What
are some more traits that you can think of that makes a weblog design great?
Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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About the Author
John Urban is a
sophmore at UCLA majoring in computer science. He is a writer for an online
magazine StyleCeo which deals with fashion. In his spare time, he enjoys
sports, being with his girl, or just doing some freelance work. If you like his
work on here and you’d like for him to work as a freelancer for you, you can contact him on Twitter.