I recently made some changes to my blog and I thought I’d share with you some things I think you should consider when creating a blog of your own. All this week I will be sharing my blog design tips. I hope you find them to be useful. First a couple of prerequisites:
i. Know the purpose of your site
Many beginners know they need a blog but many are unsure why. Your Internet Business blog is not simply to attract traffic from the search engines but to build a thriving community. It’s function is to provide great content, convert readers into subscribers and to promote your own products. If you follow this guiding principle you can’t go far wrong.
ii. Keep your target audience in mind
It is important to think about who your site is aimed at. Who is your target audience? Which type of reader are you trying to reach? Keep these things in mind when designing your blog.
OK, let’s get started with your 30 Blog Design Tips:
1. Opt-in
I am starting with this as it is extremely important to convert readers into subscribers. Your conversion rate won’t be as high as it would be for a squeeze page since a lot of your traffic will be less targeted, but an opt-in box on your blog is important all the same. It needs to positioned in a prominent position and you need to give people a compelling reason to opt-in to your list. Ideally offer something in return for doing so – a free report, or perhaps a free video.
2. Header
You don’t want your header to be too big. I’ve seen pages where it takes up over half of the page above the fold! This means that visitors immediately have to scroll to find the information they are looking for. You want it to catch the eye of first time visitors but not distract too much from your content or annoy returning visitors.
3. Title
First time visitors need to know what your blog is about quickly or they will navigate away. Tell them in your header with a descriptive title. No need to welcome visitors here, simply let them know in a short sentence what they can expect from your blog. e.g. Internet Business Blog by John Szram. Don’t forget you can use a popular keyword here too. e.g. “Internet Business Blog” “Make Money Online” “Hype Free Marketing” etc
4. Navigation
Your site should be easy to navigate. This is really important. Visitors should not have to spend long searching around for information. I prefer to have my navigation bar at the top of the page as I think this looks better. I have not tested with a side navbar however, and this might depend on the rest of your layout.
5. Sidebar
I like a 3 column layout as I like the option of using different sized widgets. Some things look better narrow and some in a wider context. However, above the fold I like to keep things simple and only provide links to my content and opt-in Remember your blog is all about providing great content and turning visitors into subscribers.
6. Footer
Here you can place your copyright information. Keep this simple. Place a link back to the homepage of your blog so that once a reader has read your posts they can quickly navigate back.
These are just some basic tips. Look out for Part 2 tomorrow. Parts 3 and 4 will be posted on Wednesday and Friday this week. If you wish to be notified subscribe to my blog announcement list and make sure you don’t miss out.
Take care, John Szram.
