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Do you find that you’re getting plenty of traffic to your blog, but no one seems to stay to read the content?
It could be a sign that there’s something not quite right with your blog design. First impressions are everything online, and if your site’s design misses the mark, that can have negative consequences for your business.
People will take about 2.6 seconds to form that first impression. That means that you better have your design right. Otherwise, your traffic will go elsewhere, and they’ll be unlikely to return since they formed a negative impression of your company.
Read on to learn the top tips to create a blog design that will keep people on your site and have a positive impression about your business.
Table of Contents
Have a Mobile Version and Desktop Version
You have to design for your users. That’s the number one rule in website design. That means that you have to account for the variety of screens that they’ll use to get to your site.
About 57% of all web traffic is from tablets and smartphones. Your blog design has to look good on all of those devices.
Take a look at your blog and read an article on a desktop device, smartphone, and tablet. Notice the differences when you use each device. This will put you in your user’s shoes and show you how you can improve your site for your users.
Make the Fonts Easy to Read
Part of the usability of a site how easy it is to read across devices. You want to have a font that is readable on a variety of screens. You want to avoid script fonts as they are very hard to read.
People usually read blog posts by scanning headlines, and if they find something interesting, they’ll read the text. You want to make sure that your heading sizes are larger than the text in order to stand out.
The font sizes also matter. Font size too small or too large will be difficult for people to read. You may have to have one set of font sizes for desktop devices, and another set for mobile devices.
Use Whitespace Well
Whitespace is the empty space on a page. You can use whitespace to your advantage by strategically placing text and images to draw the reader’s eye.
You can use whitespace creatively in the margins of your blog design, in between lines, and in the use of buttons and links on the page.
Always Include a Call to Action
When you have a blog, you want to make sure that people read your content and take additional action on your site. You may want them to purchase a product, sign up for your email list, or have them read another article.
Your blog content always needs to have a call to action to tell readers what their next step should be. At the very least, that should be at the end of the blog post.
Some blogs are including a related email box in the middle of their blog post to encourage people to sign up.
Sidebars or No Sidebars
There’s an ongoing debate between using sidebars or not using sidebars in your blog’s design. A sidebar is a space on the right that contains popular articles and blog categories.
Some bloggers will have a newsletter sign up, blog posts, or ads in the sidebar. Others will have a page that contains only blog content.
The advantage to having a sidebar is that you can increase time on site by giving readers options to consume more content.
The main advantage to not having a sidebar is that your readers are on your blog to read that particular article.
You can test your site with sidebars and without sidebars to see if there’s a difference in the time on site. If you find that the time on site is longer using either option, you’ll want to go with that option.
Fast-Loading Pages Are a Must
Users and search engines expect speed when they’re visiting your blog. More than half of your site’s traffic is likely to come from mobile devices. Your site needs to load fast on mobile and desktop devices. If your site takes more than three seconds to load, the probability that someone will leave your site before it loads is 90%.
There are a lot of factors that can play into site speed such as the blog design, your website host, and the user’s internet connection.
Test your site’s speed using tools such as Google Page Speed insights, which will tell you how quickly your site loads and what adjustments you can do to make it faster.
Use Visuals in Your Blog
People love images. They process images faster than text and they’re much more likely to remember images than text.
When you use images, you want to make sure that they’re high-quality images. Images that are pixilated or that look like bad stock images can give a poor brand impression. You can easily find quality stock images on sites such as Pixabay or create your own using a tool such as Canva.
Images are often the cause of slow-loading website. When you do use a lot of images on your site, you have to make sure that you compress the images to make the file sizes smaller.
Blog Design Can Turn into More Traffic and Revenue
You invest a lot of time and resources in driving traffic to your site. You want to make sure that your site is set up for success.
A blog is an essential part of your business. It’s often a person’s first interaction with your company, so you want to make sure that you make the best first impression possible.
You want to make sure that your blog design is ready by using the right visuals, making it fast, and usable on any device.
Does your blog design need an update? Check out my web design services and how good design can make a difference to your bottom line.
