The Secret to Great Blog Design

There are lots of great tips I could share with you about website & blog design (which I will do, don’t fret!) But really there is one big secret to great blog design. Blog design that is creative, unique, easy to navigate, and memorable.

In a word, the secret to great blog design is:

a great designer

OK, so that was three words. But you catch my drift.

There’s a sort of magic that happens when a person is able to take what he sees in his head in the way of combing content, colors, fonts, illustrations, and images, and translate them into a beautiful, usable website that is easy to navigate and share with other people.

I am incredibly blessed to have a ridiculously talented web & graphic designer as a husband. He’s the mastermind behind my Laurel of Leaves design. And we have just joined forces to create a new website & blog design business which we affectionately call Green Pond Creative!

I’m just a little bit excited to share it with you. (Can you tell?) We created a super cool animation to tell you more about what we do and what makes us different. It’s not even a minute long, so check it out and let me know what you think!

Blog design really is about more than just having a pretty place on the Internet to call home. You might find fancy design to be unimportant and superficial. But think of it as your blog’s clothes. If you show up to a job interview in a pair of ratty Mickey Mouse pajamas, no one is going to take you seriously. The same goes with any visitors to your blog. If they are blinded by fourteen different flash ads above the fold or they can’t figure out how to browse your recipes archives, they’re going to leave. There are plenty of other fish in the sea.

This quote really sums it up nicely for me:

“In recent studies on web design, they found out that users make an almost instantaneous judgment about a website based on nothing more than the site’s “look and feel.” This judgment happens in about one-twentieth of a second and the initial impression is pretty persistent.” –Jeff Wisniewski

Here are some tips that you can implement on your blog to hopefully improve that ‘first impression’ element:

• Use WordPress. This might just be a personal preference, but I’ve found WordPress to be by far the superior blogging platform. The user interface is very intuitive and user-friendly. Plus there are about a thousand awesome plug-ins you can install for everything from copyright notices to calendars to Twitter feeds. (And ps-Google loves WordPress, meaning your site has a better chance of showing up higher in search engine results.)
• Make it easy for people to connect with you. Feature links to your Twitter profile, Facebook Fan Page, StumbleUpon profile, and RSS feed in a prominent place above the fold. ‘Above the fold’ is an old newspaper term that references the top half of the front page that is, appropriately enough, above the fold in the center of the folded newspaper. With websites, it means the area on the screen that people see without having to scroll down.
• Don’t litter. By this I mean, don’t litter your blog with hundreds of tacky advertisements. There’s nothing wrong with a few tasteful ads or affiliate links, but your content is the main attraction. Keep things simple and streamlined by designing any ads or affiliate links to coordinate with your blog’s look and feel.

So there you have it! Hopefully those tips will help you jumpstart an amazing blog design makeover to showcase your content. We are having fun doing exactly that at Green Pond Creative!

What are your best blog design tips? 

This post is linked to Monday Mania, Simple Lives Thursday, Fight Back Friday