Does Your Blog Design Matter?
“Put your best foot forward.”
“First impressions count.”
“Are you wearing clean underwear? What happens if you get hit by a bus and have to be taken to the hospital?”
Aside from the fact that your mother most likely uttered all of these to you at some point in your life, what else are these phrases telling us?
Yup, design matters.
Your blog is an extension of you. It’s your most powerful personal branding tool (short of yourself.) It says a ton about who you are, what you’re passionate about, what you believe in, etc.
You don’t want it to look crappy, do you?
In the world of blogging, content might be king, but design is at least the court jester. And we all know the court jester is really the one keeping things together.
You need to stand out.
Before I re-designed Instigator Blog I was using a nice WordPress template, but I hadn’t modified it significantly. And you could find plenty of other blogs that looked almost the same. What did that same about me? It certainly wasn’t helping me stand out. While I was thinking about re-designing the blog I spoke to a friend of mine on the subject, and he told me (paraphrasing), “Having a custom blog design is critical. You’ll be taken more seriously, and attract more readers.”
You shouldn’t fool yourself; first impressions do count.
A higher quality blog design will give a better first impression. There’s no doubt about it. And if it encourages even one person to click through and read a bit further - and get sold on the content - then it’s worthwhile.
You shouldn’t push design to the backburner.
Design often gets pushed to the side because it’s so easy to design a basic blog. With WordPress there are countless themes you can use instantly - and with almost no modifications (or design talent) you can setup a blog. That’s a great thing because it gives everyone - regardless of technological know-how - the opportunity to express themselves. At the same time, when you want to take your blog to the next level: think design.
It’s never too late.
The beauty of blogging is that you can always change things, experiment and see what works. This holds true for copywriting, social networking and your blog design. You might start by changing some basic colors in a WordPress theme or moving things around in a sidebar (which can have a big impact) and eventually get into more sophisticated changes. You may choose to hire a blog designer to help out (there are plenty out there - if you want recommendations, feel free to ping me.)
Your blog’s design should be important to you. It reflects more than you might realize on you and how you’re perceived by others. You should always want to put your best foot forward.
I agree - design does matter and modifying Wordpress (or Blogger or TypePad) themes is a great way to learn CSS/HTML/PHP.
My recommendation. My back ups of all your originals, then start playing. Make one change at a time though. It is easy to make a change, publish, review and repeat.
Having just sent a response to Ben on this topic via email, this post is very timely. For a professional blogger, who wants to be taken seriously at every level, design is a key component.
The difference between something that has been developed by a trained professional designer and something that someone who has a ‘bit of an eye’ and a ‘bit of coding knowhow’ is immense.
If you show up to an interview with scuffed shoes in a shiny suit covered in coffee stains, you better be Albert Einstein. Most of us aren’t Enistein and, much more to the point, our readers don’t have a clue who we are and what our pedigree is when they arrive on our blog. Content is always king and must always grab the reader by the throat, but a look-and-feel that grates on the eye may make a seasoned reader look elsewhere quicker than they would otherwise.
One rule-breaker who never fails to surprise is Seth Godin. Who else could get away with flouting the Law of Maximum Contrast by having yellow text reversed out of white all over his blog?
I’ll be talking to my web guy later today …
I agree, if a blog is cluttered I don’t pay attention to it. Design also affects usability. A bad design makes it hard to find and concentrate on the content. Design is also a large part of the user experience. Beautiful sites make you feel good and eager to come back for more.
I consider design to be one of my blog’s strongest assets. I had no idea how to design a site, so I hired a pro designer (Mike Cherim)
I get massive Stumbleupon traffic, with a pretty healthy returning visitor rate. Since Stumblers only spend an average of 1-2 seconds checking out a site, I have put a LOT of attention into getting my message across in within that window.
Also, and this is the reason I chose Mike, my site is fully accessible (P2 compliant, “almost” P3). I needed it to be accessible for two reasons: 1) I will have visitors who may have disabilities, and 2) as a “health” blog, accessibility is good to have if in the future I have government agencies linking to my site.
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Rowan - there are always exceptions to the rule. I don’t think design can hide bad content for example, but it certainly can help draw people in further.
Thanks for all the comments!
I totally agree. Right now with my new blog I’m using a downloaded theme, but have swapped in my own image for the header. I’ll be doing more modding as I get more time. I agree with you that design is important. If you look like the ‘last guy’ no one is even going to start reading.
Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more.
Char’s comments are right on…if you have any coding skill at all, or if you’re simply willing to tinker, make a backup of the WP theme you choose and then play, test, try. Use plugins. If you use an external editor instead of WP’s Theme Editor, you have ‘undo’ capabilities. Just play and have fun. See what happens. And if you screw something up - no worries, you have your back up.
For a business, it’s imperative that your site/blog be a true reflection of who you are and what you do. As Ben says here, first impressions mean a lot. It could mean the difference between making sales and not. I often don’t even bother looking at sites any longer that are poorly designed.
Good design doesn’t have to mean decked out to the hilt, either. Look at Ben’s site - pretty straightforward. Or Copyblogger or David Airey - great, simple designs.
What important is that you keep your focus on the message you want to send your audience. While content certianly rules over all else, how you display that content is important.
I could go on and on. Guess I should write a few posts on this topic myself.
Yes, but there’s got to be a balance between design and content:
Confessions of a wordpress installationaholic
Although your point that it’s never to late to go back and changing things is well taken.
I keep on reading posts about blog design
andyberd.eu 2.0 is just around the corner and I do have to stop putting it off.
It won’t be a major shift, but I need more space for community content.
Ultimately we don’t know what works better without testing. You have to know what you want visitors to do first off. Do you want them to sign up to your ezine or click on a sales page? You have to track it. Otherwise we’re just guessing at what works.
James Brausch has several tools that can help you automate the testing. His blog is worth checking out. The design is original looking too (not to mention fairly clean). See http://www.JamesBrausch.com.
Not true. Awesome content and a plain design will still make a great blog. Design matters very little. Content reigns.
And more still, as more and more people begin using RSS aggregators, design will matter even less.
Ask yourself this, did the blog become more successful (however you measure that) after you redesigned it?
Lou - don’t mistake a plain design for a bad design. Plain or simple designs are often HARDER to pull off well than complicated designs.
RSS readers/aggregators may diminish the importance of design somewhat, but more often than not a person still has to visit the site first and be interested enough to read and then subscribe. They may very rarely visit the site again, but they had to at least once.
I did ask myself that question - and the answer is a resounding YES - otherwise I would have never written this in the first place.
Design wasn’t the only reason my blog has become more successful - it’s been a natural progression on a number of fronts - but there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that it’s helped significantly.
[…] Read the full article here. […]
Design that works is a challenge. It’s one I love and I’d like to type a personal thanks to Dawud for his kind comment.
I’ve been tweaking my design somewhat lately, thanks to the suggestions of my readers. Asking my readers how to improve my blog proved an excellent idea.
David - I think it’s always a good idea to ask the community what they think and let them provide feedback.
In fact when I changed WordPress themes and launched this site I wrote a post of things to do when you change themes - I believe the last point was, “Tell people about it.” — you want RSS readers to come back over and take a look.
The Virtues of Patience and Thinking Long-Term: Lessons from a Few Conversations…
I’m not a patient person. I can’t stand waiting in line, being put on hold, or waiting for people to get back to me. However, over the last few days, I learned if you take a more long-term view and…
Even after plugging away feverishly on our site redesign over the past couple of months, I was beginning to wonder how much design does matter now that so many people are converting to RSS feed reading. So I was encouraged by the reminder that design still matters because a person still has to visit the site first and be interested enough to subscribe to the feed.
It can be a little tough to find the balance between spending time to cultivate your site’s design & marketability versus applying your time to creating fresh, interesting posts. Certainly, content is key, but I’ve also been focusing my efforts on trying to ensure that my content is easily navigable.
Brian - your comment was caught in spam - so didn’t see it until recently. I agree there is a balance between design and content. Better yet, think of it this way — the design is there to HIGHLIGHT the content, to put the best face it can on the content. That’s the purpose of design.
Rob - You definitely want to focus on content first - but if people can’t find content, navigate through it, etc. you do want to improve those things otherwise the content will disappear too easily.
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To Scott, one of the above commenters:
I think you’ve done a great job getting a pro to design your site, but there’s one minor issue to be resolved: the image of you on the right is a huge file that weighs in at well over 200Kb! It must be resampled and resized… for the love of your visitors who are not on broadband, etc.
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Totally agree. A good design job is like the free air, sport wheels etc with your new car.
It either is a great bonus or it tips you over the edge to buy the car or in this case read/ visit the blog/ website
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