Blog Design is one of the essential things in blogging.

Your design is your brand.

So care about it.

Your design gives a first impression to your readers, so they may close your blog after a second, without seeing any content–all because the design is bad.

You can check this post to learn more: How Can Great Design Help Your Content Marketing?

When Brian Clark started Copyblogger, he spent his first $1,000 on blog design. He has changed it more than six times since, which mean that you must care about it. However, I’m not necessarily recommending that you go and pay $1,000 for a blog design!

In this post, you will read some of the tips and mistakes, plus 5 interviews with 5 experts! =)

Excited about discovering all of this? If yes, then keep reading.

Note: This post is a part of our Blogging 101 series.

Let’s start with the tips (or maybe essential factors) you must have in your design.

1- Keep it simple as much as you can.

The most important factor that you must care about is to make your design simple. Don’t place lots of ads and widgets that are useless. The theme also mustn’t be fancy. This isn’t a decorative store. Yes, you need to make it good, but don’t make it overly fancy. (However, it depends on your audience.)

2- Make it easy for your readers to take action.

You must provide your readers with all they need, so that they don’t leave your blog without action. Make it easy for them to share their posts (place a floating widget beside the post). Make it easy for them to comment (place the comment after post directly and make it easy to comment). Finally, make it easy for readers to subscribe (place subscription widget after your posts and on your sidebar).

3- Make it fast.

This is another important fact you must know to make your design better. Google has shared that page speed can affect your rank! As a result, you can lose some targeted visitors from search engines because of the speed.

Also, your first-time readers will leave your blog if they find it slow. So, you must make your page-loading speed fast.

4- Make it of one purpose:

Try to focus on  a purpose that you want your readers to do. Of course you want them to do more than one action, but also focus on a single action or purpose. Many of these purposes include:

• Getting more subscribers.
• Getting more likes to Facebook pages or followers on twitter.
• Registering to the site.
• Buying a product.
• And much more…

The most important thing is to have a goal that you want to reach with your design.

5- Important things first!

Make your important things first, not only in your design but also in your whole life. Place an emphasis on actions that you need your audience to take first.

So place your subscription widget first in the sidebar (or whatever you need), THEN the ads (or the things that are less important).

6- Know your audience, and speak their language.

Make the design related to your audience’s needs.

Make it related to your niche, and give your audience what they want.

You need to know your audience well first (Who are they? What do they want? etc). Then, speak with their language and make them love it.

7- Ask your friends for advice:

You must take the advice of your friends. It doesn’t matter if they are online or outside friends, if they know about blogging or not. Ask them. If they visit your blog for the first time, will they stay on it or not> What do you need to edit to make it better? And so on.

The answer to these questions will help you a lot for a better design.

The next 5 tips are from this post: 5 Easy Tips to Improve Every Blog Design

8- Make your blog easy to navigate.

Make it easy for readers to navigate your blog. You must care about your readers when you design your blog.

9-  Increase spaces.

Don’t be afraid of spaces–it gives your blog a better look. Here is where you can add spaces:

• Between content and edges of the page (not less than 20 px of free space)
• Around the images (at least 20 pixels)
• Before and after the block quotes
• After the paragraphs (the ‘margin-bottom’ can be same as your body text ‘line-height’ to keep a nice text flow)
• Before the subheadings

10- Increase the size of the heading font.

Increase the font of your headings; people check the post with the headings first.

Check this example to see what I mean.

11- Increase the contrast between text and background.

Make it easy for people to read your blog.

This image will show you a simple example:

12- Remove distractions.

Make your design simpler for your readers. Remove all distractions that can affect your site readability. Check the following image to learn more:

Thanks again for Rafal Tomal (who is interviewed).

13- Be different (the most important tip!).

The most important factor in your blog design is to be different. By different, I mean different than other designs in your niche.

Why?

I have asked James Chartrand (interviewed below), what do you think about my “old” theme?

Here is what she said:

My first thought is that the site looks like any other blogging-advice website out there – it has a typical layout, colors and a generic brand image that makes me feel it’s equal to all its competitors. That’s not a good place to be!

 When visitors land on a site, they want to know what this site is about and what they’ll find here. Why they should stick around. That’s all well and good, but what’s also important is conveying (in just a glance) why this site is different. What’s the personality of the site and its owners might be. 

 Think of it this way: Why should readers stick around here instead of going to competing sites? What makes you different? That’s a good question any website owner should ask himself… and if the answer is difficult to come up with, then a good exercise in building a stronger brand image might be a smart choice!

I think you know why to be different.

After these words, I have changed the theme.

I was using gray as the main background, “which is used a lot in my niche.” After this advice, I chose a blue theme in my new design because it isn’t common in my niche.

Make first-time visitors remember your brand. Like this you will succeed online.

These were some of the tips. Other tips and mistakes are shown in the interviews below. I will try to highlight them, so you can check them easily.

I hope you like these grouped interviews.

Who will be interviewed?

Here are the amazing designers who will be interviewed “Thanks for taking your time to ask the answers”:

• James Chartrand of Men with Pens
• Rafal Tomal of Rafal Tomal (lead designer at Copyblogger).
• Alex Mangini of Kolakube.
• Mohammed Zai of My Blogger Tricks.
• Catalin Rosu of Red Team Design.

Amazing people, right?

Questions asked

• You are a person who does not need any introduction, but as a part of formality could you tell us a little about yourself and why you are awesome?
• What are the most important factors that you cares about, whenever you design a blog? Why?

• What are the mistakes that you find on other blogs? What do you try to avoid while designing?

Now, let’s see the answers. They are all amazing, and unexpected.

Interview with James Chartrand about Blog Design:

Here we go with the first interview!

You are a person who does not need any introduction, but as a part of formality could you tell us a little about yourself and why you are awesome?

The nutshell version is that I’m the owner of the world-class website design and copywriting business, Men with Pens, as well as the online writing course for business owners, Damn Fine Words.

I like to think I’m awesome just because I am, but people tell me it’s mostly because I’m a straight shooter who tells it like it is. I focus on helping other people get ahead, get results and get more out of their business.

I’m also told I have sharp wit, a fine mind for crafting good prose and the ability to make others feel inspired to act on their hopes and dreams.

And yes, I’m a woman.

What are the most important factors that you care about, whenever you design a blog? Why?

Most designers are very good at making websites look “pretty”, but pretty doesn’t mean the website is effective and has the power to pull in tangible business results. There’s a big difference between a website that pleases the client and a website that pleases the client’s target market!

That’s why it’s important to look at the business brand image, the main goals of the site and proper layout that guides visitors to where they need to go. It takes a lot of time to analyze the proper flow of traffic so that it brings better results, but it’s a worthwhile investment – it’ll result in one darned happy client who knows his site is his biggest business asset.

The result is an expensive and time-consuming website that delivers free content to an audience who eventually comes to expect and feel entitled to the advice.

Blogging should be a perk – not the main course. So when I work with clients, I make it clear that we’re going to help them achieve tangible results – more sales, more income, more customers – by focusing on websites that presents the business face forward, with the blog as a secondary offering to visitors, instead of the other way around.

Interview with Rafal Tomal about blog design:

You are a person who does not need any introduction, but as a part of formality could you tell us a little about yourself and why you are awesome?

Hi, I’m Rafal Tomal and I’m the Lead Designer at Copyblogger Media. I originally come from Poland, but I’ve been living in Chicago, IL, for over 5 years.

I’m awesome because I work with awesome people every day

What are the most important factors that you care about, whenever you design a blog? Why?