MelvinBlog

A blog that chronicles my journey on online marketing, blogging, social media, technology and life.

Great Blog Design & Why it Can Make or Break your Business

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Most of my readers here treat blogging as a business and if you’ve already read my Blog Marketing for Fame report (w/c is free!), you can see how much I emphasized good blog design as one of the keys in blogging success. Just by simply paying attention on the top blogs in any niche, it’s easy to spot that no one in them sports an ugly design. That being said, you can’t expect people to read your content (even if its a good content) if your design is crappy.

As always the best time to get the perfect design is at the start or at the earliest time possible. The reason is you don’t want to waste new readers by leaving a bad impression to your blog.If your design alone can persuade them to subscribe then why not! But what is a good blog design?

Great Blog Design

If you are thinking that a superb design is synonymous with the price tag, then you’re wrong. I’ve seen a lot of custom-designed blogs that sucked while others simply use a free tweaked theme and it looked awesome.

To achieve a good design, you don’t really need to pay for a custom unique theme from a certain company. All you need to do is grab a design and then lay out your brand properly and clearly. The key here is lasting impression and brand awareness. Of course the basic things are important as well like readability, typography, cleanliness and etc but these days one way that people can remember you is through your design.

For instance here in my blog, people (imo) do realize that I am using a custom theme when in fact it’s just a premium theme. Why? Because I don’t think anyone using Colormatic Theme (my theme) has done good branding for their blogs enough for people to realize them. In short, when people see my theme, they know I’m the only one using it.

Importance

Two things I’ve mentioned above is lasting impression and brand awareness. For me design is neither a part of content nor marketing, it’s actually a  part of both. People won’t read your content if your design sucks (debatable) and on the other hand I’m amazed to see how a lot of big firms have used attractive design as a major marketing strategy to boost their business! All together it speaks both of content and marketing.

How do I know I have a good one for my blog?

This is actually a pretty opinionated question but all I can say is your readers will tell you. I’m sure you all do forum reviews for your blog. If it’s your first time to hear it, its basically when you solicit reviews on large forums for your blog.

Funny thing is that most people view that strategy as a traffic generator but the real key in there is still the review itself. I, myself seek for tons of those forum reviews and it has really helped me out in improving the design of my blog.

You can also do so by observing the top blogs in your niche and see what they have. Although one can say it’s just a time-waster, you can still gain something because blogs from different niches accomodate different layouts so that may probably be useful as well.

All up to you

Tackling blog designs, how to have one and how to maximize it, is a HUGE topic. In fact there are blogs who are solely dedicated in writing about it. I’m no expert and heck no good designer (I always seek opinion).

What I intend to share here is the importance of good blog designs and how it can make you ahead of those so many lame bloggers sporting stupid crappy designs. 😉 What say you?

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  7. Some of my readers have said I have got a good design. A blog design is good if it has good navigation and less distraction.

    I have never tried to get Forum Reviews. Guess I should.
    .-= Agent Deepak´s last blog ..My 4 Golden Tips for Google Buzz =-.

    Melvin Reply:
    February 24th, 2010 at 7:18 am

    that’s one good factor as well deepak. Superb navigation is a key

  13. Melvin, you have an interesting article here. I personally think that a Great Blog Design can either make you or break you. From a sole business perspective, first impression is what matters.

    If you have a good design, you will automatically be considered credibility on the first impression. You can have an OK content and a great design and still get by.

    If you have a crappy design and great content, you cannot get by because most of the time, users will leave before reading 😉

    Just speaking from experience. That is why, now I always try to launch things with a custom design. But if you are jumping into a new niche, then using something simple like Thesis would work. But you must be credible.

    Example: Darren Rowse – Twitip site << Started on a Thesis site which was a clean design, but nothing really spectacular. But Darren is a high profile blogger, so he can pull things like that. The site literally got 10k subscribers in less than a week, but most bloggers can do that.
    .-= Syed Balkhi´s last blog ..How to Install and Setup WP Super Cache for Beginners =-.

  17. Your blog design is as important as your content itself. With new visitors it is the first aspect of your site that they will notice. If the design and layout is poor then some visitors may not even get as far as viewing your content.

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