7 Blog Design Tips That’ll Make Your Site Look Professional
The number of websites online is quickly approaching 2 billion. Yes, I said billion, with a B! Wow!
How do you possibly compete with those billion other people that want your customer’s attention? It seems impossible, right?
Well, I have good news for you. Many of those websites are not good at all. Their blog design is – let’s say, not so great?
If you want to get the respect and attention you deserve online, you need to have a professional blog. You need to make sure your brand is on point and representing you in a way that is going to get the right kind of attention. The good kind that is.
To learn more about how to make your blog look professional, continue reading this article.
Boost Your Blog Design to the Next Level
As you’re looking over the latest web design trends, it is easy to get distracted. You aren’t sure what you need to do first. Maybe you start one thing and then another and another.
Before long, you’re left with a bunch of half-finished projects, and your website is looking a little neglected. Knowing how important the design of your blog is, you’ve come here. And you’ve come to the right place.
1. Plan Out Your Design
If you throw your design together on a whim, everyone is about to tell. Instead of piecing your design together element by element, make a plan before you even get started.
As with your content marketing strategy, you need to have a strategy when you want your blog to look professional and well organized.
2. Watch Your Grammar
The fastest way to negate from a beautifully designed site is to riddle it with terrifying grammar mistakes. You don’t want to make your readers gasp and shake their head when reading through your information.
While grammar isn’t a design element, it will kill all of your chances of credibility, so we wanted to throw it in here for you.
3. Don’t Sacrifice Too Much for Conversions
We’ve all been to that website. You know the one. The one with three different pop-ups, a scroll over and an abandonment opt-in form.
Sigh.
Frustrating, I know. You don’t want to be that guy or gal. When you’re going for conversions, make sure you keep the user experience in mind.
If you sacrifice the user experience to increase your opt-in rate too much, you may lose a high percentage of your visitors. And you’ll definitely upset more than a few.
When you have too many pop-ups, pop-overs, lightboxes and such, it doesn’t look professional. It looks cluttered and unattractive.
4. Thinking in Colors
When you’re building your brand, you need to create your brand color palette. Your business cards, website, and other marketing materials should all work with those same colors.
People associate you with colors, and it makes it easier for them to remember you. You want people to remember you and your brand so don’t forget your color scheme when you’re designing your blog.
A professionally put together color scheme compliments the other colors in the scheme and makes people enjoy browsing through your website more. Avoid flashy and clashing colors as they may hurt the eyes and be a turn-off.
5. Branding Your Graphics
Honestly, people are going to hi-jack your graphics. We know it, but if we’re prepared, we can get some exposure out of it, at least. Put your logo in your graphics so if someone takes them from your site, they will still know who made them.
Not only will branding your graphics help you keep your name in front of people looking at your content, but it will also make you look more professional. When you brand your graphics in a classy manner, it shows you know how to take care of business.
6. Bye Bye Clutter
Remember when I said early about all of the pop-ups, pop-unders and other opt-in forms? Well, those aren’t the only kinds of clutter that make a blog look unprofessional.
Think about some blogs you’ve visited. Maybe you’ve seen a blog with a tag cloud with random phrases. If you click one of those phrases in the tag cloud it takes you to a blog post that is tagged with that keyword.
People very rarely use tag clouds and it looks tacky. You can either get rid of the tag cloud or put another type of more useful navigation in its place.
7. Hello White Space
Whoa. You’ve got a lot of stuff going on there.
Just like you wouldn’t want your date to show up wearing a striped suit with a checkered necktie and bowling shoes, your website shouldn’t have too much going on either.
Leave plenty of white space, so people’s eyes get an opportunity to rest. When you leave white space on your blog, you allow users to focus on the most important part of your website. Use whitespace to direct attention instead of feeling like it is a waste of blog space.
Bonus Tip – Your Content Needs to Be Easy to Scan
When you write your blog posts, make sure to break your content into easy to scan pieces. If people don’t want to read a specific part, they should be able to skip to the next header to get into the next important part of the post.
When you structure your content this way, it is put together thoughtfully. Thoughtfully and well-structured content is valuable to your visitors and shows your level of professionalism.
Creating a Content Marketing Strategy for the Win
Now that you’re a blog design ninja and you know how to give your users an amazing experience, it’s time to level up. Learning how to make your blog look amazing is great, but now you need eyeballs on the blog.
We’ve created amazing content for you so you can learn how to promote your blog and get more traffic. Read our content marketing strategy articles today and learn how to grow your traffic.