One of the most important questions, in my opinion, when it comes to designing blogs is the question of, how design affects conversion on a blog. A lot of people get stuck when it comes to the design elements of their blog. It’s not as difficult as you would think.
Problems arise because people don’t know what they need, how to create and implement the design. First impressions count when it comes to trustworthiness. The better a blog looks, the more credible people rate it.
Here are some aspects to consider when designing a blog aimed to convert:
Keep it Clean
Take a cue from some of the most successful sites online – Google, Apple, Zappos, and even some of those single product landing pages and websites. One thing that’s common among these websites and pages is their clean layouts. When a customer lands on most of these sites, they have one product to look at, with a brief description, and a clearly laid out button which they can click for more information or to buy a product.
Remember the following:
- Text should be easy to read and properly spaced – strike a balance between cramming too much on the page and too much white space.
- Don’t use too many colours when it comes to text.
- Guide the visitor’s eyes towards where you want their eyes to land on by making it bigger and cleaner.
- Most visitors are able to concentrate on only one thing at a time. Filling the screen with too many things won’t convert them.
General Layout
Content and Sidebars
A classic layout seldom fails:
- Make sure that the content area is around 500-640px wide.
- Make sure that the background is very light and the text is dark.
- Use clear fonts such as Georgia or Arial.
- Ensure your font size is between 14-16. That is the web standard font these days and is much closer to reading a book or offline publication, so you should match your font to these sizes.
- People need to be able to read it easily.
- The sidebar should be from 250-300px wide – overall your screen width should be no more than 960px wide.
Themes and Frameworks
There are several free blog themes you can get for WordPress but only use those offered on WordPress.org. Free themes typically get no support. Premium offerings are more about support and updates than the actual themes themselves. This can make them worthwhile if you are running your blog as a business, which you should be.
A good theme places importance on the following:
- Opt-in forms.
- Navigable and easy to read – if people battle to find what they want, they will look elsewhere.
- Memorable branding and a unique selling point.
Last Words
Lastly, your blog needs to be branded in accordance with what your target market expects. Research your target audience and find out what they are looking for. If you consider your unique selling point when you brand your site, you will get better conversion rates.
Overall, these tips are simple – keep it clean, easy to read and make sure that your unique selling point is properly represented.
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