A perfect blog design is the one whose design appeals the vision buds and has an equally stunning impact on the brain. There are certain designs which sink or shine a blog. Choose the wrong interface and your blog will be ruined! Have you ever notices that the best blog’s are organized and have personalized designs? Here are a few tips that would help you understand the elements that must be taken into account while creating your blog.
- Clear display of categories: While writing a blog, categories are all those things that you would write about. Taking the example of the website www.nextbigwhat.com, each category is displayed neatly at the top. Perhaps you can even place them on the sidebar for the user to easily navigate across his choice of category. A tip for all the excited amateur bloggers, don’t over-do it! Don’t keep 40 categories to confuse the reader, don’t make them more than 10. The main content should be around 60% of the blog space. Remember, people’s main aim is to read your blog, so don’t distract them with other elements. The design should be such that people should focus on reading your content and the extra things should be added in the sidebar.
- Placement of social media icons: Blogging being a social sport, readers will want to follow you on multiple social networks when they like your blog. The simplest way to facilitate this and make it easy for the user is by the social media icons at the top. When hidden under layers of content and not easily noticeable, you’ll miss out to catch the attention of a large chunk of audience. It is no brain teaser that your social outlet tabs should appear on the top of the page. The ideal number of social plugins to be kept is three and scrolling social buttons are popular and easy to use.
- Uniformity: While writing a blog, consistency and uniformity of font and font size also matters. Times and Arial are the simplest to read. And talking about the size, the 8-11 is the optimum size. As the size is increased, you can grab the attention of the visitor for longer time. But in case you use complex fonts, increasing the size won’t help you in any way.
- Keep your pages clutter-free: Thinking to include a new banner or a widget? Before including this, always ask yourself that is it really needed? Would it add value to your blog or will it be useful to the audience? Rather than meddling and cluttering each page with too many things, opt for a new page wherein all them be splashed.
- Make the commenting simple: For a blogger, the best means of feedback is by comments. Moreover, there are so many commenting systems right from Disqus to Facebook. Disqus is the most interactive commenting platform. Threaded comments are the best comments as they will increase the content on your page. More the text on each page, the longer the tail of keywords and this will help you get more traffic on your website. If you have a Facebook page, rigorous commenting will not help you get search engine related traffic because that content is owned by Facebook.
- Add short bio: Putting in a short biography about yourself increases your personal connection with the audience. Whether it’s a personal blog or a professional blog, you can include a short bio in your sidebar and link it to the full bio. You can also add a short introduction about your team who works to make your venture a success. Another tip, adding your photo gives that extra personal touch. It is said, people visit your blog because they like your content and also because they like you. Giving a reliable touch will always be adored by readers.
- Email subscription format: To grow your traffic. Email subscription is the best option. Collection of emails can best be done by adding a pop up email option when the person comes to read your blog. A number of options are available from opt-ins at the top of the page to pop-ups. Asking just for the email id gets more response than asking for the full name and email id. Pop-ups receive greater response. Collecting emails is the best way to notify them about each new content that you post.
- Color scheme and design matter: Picking up the right colors matters to your audience. Light colors make it easy for the reader to read the text. For example, red or black background is not as easy to read as a simple white or cream background. Also keep your text color black and add as much white space as possible. Because people are coming to read your content and that should be your main focus.
- Add images to woo your audience: Images speak a million times more than words. Adding an image to your blog post growths the number of people who click through your blog homepage to the main blog. By putting relevant images, traffic as much as 37% can be increased to your post.
The blogosphere is too huge to ever compile a list of instruction that you can follow for creating a successful blog. However, increasing traffic to your blog is not rocket science, by simply following the above mentioned tips, you can drastically increase the number of viewers. These tips will make your blog look clean, neat and easy to navigate. Try them and see how the traffic increases humongous.