URL : http://enews-update.com/10-common-blog-design-mistakes.html
Posted : February 23, 2016 at 10:21 pm
Author : eNews Update
Tags : Aesthetics, blog design, blog mistakes, Blogging Basics, usability
Categories : blogging
Blog visitors use two factors to determine whether a web site design is good or bad: usability (how efficient and functional the site is ) and aesthetics (presentation and visual design). If you want to reach visitor and hold their interest, you need to make the best use of both aspects of website design!
Usability
1. Can Visitors Tell What Your Site is About?
Readers should be able to figure out what you site is about in less than 3.5 seconds. Marketers call this time period when a visitor lands on your website, judges it, and decides if they want to stay or leave The Blink Test. Make sure your title, tagline, menu categories and author information are clear, concise and easy to find AND above the fold.
2. Can Visitors Find Their Way Around Your Site?
Your site needs simple, intuitive menus and an easy-to-find search box. These tools make it easy for your visitors to find information. Make sure your search box is in your sidebar or header, close to the top of the page.
3. Is Your Contact Information Missing or Hard to Find?
A 2012 survey ( http://www.biakelsey.com/Company/Press-Releases/120416-Less-Than-20-Percent-of-SMB-Websites-Link-to-Social-Presence,-According-to-SMB-DigitalScape.asp ) of 1 million small business websites found that 75% lacked basic contact information on their homepage and less than 20% had social media links. Make sure to clearly identify yourself and the location of this important information before your readers have to scroll.
Although, you won't want to neglect your footer either. Users often scroll down to the footer of a website to find contact and legal information. Your footer should contain, at a minimum, links to your home page and contact information.
4. Do You Require Users to Register to Read or Comment?
Are you providing readers with great content or locking it away? The harder you make it for readers to access your content, the less likely they are to stay on your site or comment. If you are concerned about spam there are plugins available ( http://enews-update.com/must-have-wordpress-plugins-the-plugins-we-actually-use.html ) to help you–not your reader–manage it.
5. Do You Divide Your Content Unnecessarily?
Posting "10 Questions to Ask When Choosing a Blog Theme" on ten different pages or in ten different posts will annoy visitors who have to click and wait for ten pages to load. Make it easy for readers to access content instead of trying to get them to click through one drawn out (and slowly loading) article.
Aesthetics
6. Is Your Site Visually Overwhelming?
Blogs should visually function like glossy, tabloid magazines–not textbooks. If you use large, dense blocks of text, your visitors will be overwhelmed with information and they won't read it. Internet users scan. Give your readers room to breathe!
Some simple ways to make your content easy to consume include:
* spacing
* bulleted lists (like this one!)
* headlines
* subheads
* numbered lists
* images and
* other subtle elements to make your content easy to consume.
7. Are You Using Too Many Fonts?
Blogs look the best with a limited number of simple serif and san-serif fonts. There is no hard and fast rule to the number of fonts that can be used, but most designers recommend that you limit the number of typefaces (also known as font families) to two or three. Each font family can include bold, italic, condensed, light, etc.
You should also be consistent in your use of fonts. For example, all headlines should be the same size, all quotes should be in italics, etc.
8. Does Your Site Have Too Many Unnecessary Bells and Whistles?
There are many cool design elements that can be added to blogs: glittering text, music, auto-playing video files, blinking type, and animated GIFs to name a few. While these elements can make your blog more fun and lively, they can also slow down your site speed and distract from your content. Unless your target audience is Liberace, limit your use of these flashy design elements and simply supply great content.
9. Do You Include Multiple Badges, Awards, and/or Buttons?
A site overflowing with badges and awards is visually distracting. If you MUST have a particular badge or graphic, find a discreet location to place it, such as a separate page or at the end of a post. As fellow bloggers, we get it; you are proud of your hard work. Unfortunately this is just visual "noise" for your readers. Don't distract from your content.
10. Are Your Colors and Patterns Overwhelming?
Bold design choices can be lovely but users need to be able to focus on content. Select a color palette that matches your topic and desired mood. There are great sources online for learning about the meaning of colors and what colors symbolize.
Think about your content and how this affects the design. If you use lots of images, limit the patterns and colors in your overall design. If you have plain content, think about boosting the overall design with more color and patterns.
Bonus Blog Mistake
11. Does Your Site Have Spelling and/or Grammatical Errors?
While not necessarily a web design mistake, errors definitely affect the overall quality of a website. Make sure that text, links, and pages do not contain spelling or grammatical mistakes or risk your reputation, and even traffic, as a result.
Fixing these common blog design mistakes will elevate your blog and help attract more readers. And thankfully–most are easy fixes to make.
Which of these common mistake bothers you the most? Comment below and let me know!
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