Blog design rules are not set in stone by any mean, but there are a few things that you can do when designing your blog that really will hurt your blog’s success. While we all like to believe that the content is more important than the design, there is just no getting around the fact that the blog design is what your visitors use and see when they navigate your awesome content. If you make dumb mistakes when you design your blog you can outright prevent your reader to read any further, subscribe to your blog, or buy something.
Here are five mistakes to avoid when designing your blog.
1. Hard to find RSS button
This one is not so bad as it use to be, but it is still pretty common that it drives me nuts at times. While every blog has different goals, one of them usually involves increasing the amount of readers that subscribe to your blog. So it makes no sense to make the RSS button hard to find or to use a text link alone.
In order to avoid this mistake, use a RSS button with a text link and not a text link alone. Then put it in an area that makes it easy to find like the top of your sidebar. There are plenty of free rss buttons out there so there are no excuses for using a text link by itself.
2. Hidden dates
While we all like to believe that our posts are timeless, hiding the date from your reader or not having one altogether is not the best thing to do. Some material expires faster than others and some well really are timeless, but that decision should be made by your reader and not you.
You don’t have to make the date scream out in big text as long as it is visible near the top of the content.
3. Ads > Content
Don’t make the mistake of making your ads more prominent than your content. This practice makes the ads very distracting and is only going to make your visitors more likely to leave before they read anything. They will leave your blog because you communicated to them that your ads are more important than your content.
All you have to do to avoid this mistake is place the ads on the side or at the bottom of posts where people expect to find them.
4. Sidebar = Link dump
Your sidebar is not a dumping ground for links. The more links you have in your sidebar, the more likely none of them will get clicked. It has been shown in studies that when there are way too many choices to decide from, a person is more likely to make none at all in order to save themselves from the mental anguish. (1)
When designing your sidebar, limit the amount of links and content you have in there to only the important ones in order to increase the chance that people will use it. In order to decide which one is important, refer to the excellent post I wrote on redesigning the sidebar.
5. Large blocks of text
Large blocks of text is likely to remind your readers of high school English class and very few people have fond memories of those times. So don’t make the mistake of making your blog hard to read by having large blocks of text with no hierarchy.
In order to avoid this mistake, make use of your heading tags in the body of your content so that the material is organized nicely and easy to read. See there is a reason why they gave you so many heading tags. For more information on creating a hierarchy in your blog read WebDesignerWall’s awesome tutorial on typographic contrast and flow.
If you want to learn more about how to avoid dumb blog design mistakes and other cool stuff, then subscribe today for free and get updates that can help you make your blog design be more successful.
Reference
1. “The Paradox of Choice - Why more is less” - Barry Schwartz
43 comments
I’m guilty of some of those transgressions myself… the picture isn’t quite related to the article - I dub it ‘toilet surfing!’
what do you think about mine (andrisetiawan.net)?
@kevin: I would equate toilet surfing with dumb things to do so in a way it relates a lot to the article.
@AhnShev: I like the sleek look of it and it is well organized. I would like to make one suggestion and it is to make the text under your logo easier to read. I had to squint and look closer to read it. I would also recommend using the universal symbol for RSS so it pops out easier. Other than that, good job.
Though I have mixed feelings about the first one, I do strongly agree with the rest of the list.
On the first one, I tend to assume that those who want to subscribe know how to find the feed address — all modern browser make that relatively easy to do — and those who don’t know probably don’t know what RSS is anyway.
I’m sure there are flaws with this theory. Though Firefox handles all RSS feeds perfectly (offering you either it’s RSS reader of an online option), both IE and Safari are a little awkward about it. It’s certainly something I’ll be giving more thought to.
Great tips. I especially like the one about links and content length.
@david: Yes, that is true, most people who know about rss probably knows that it is in the url section of their browser. But making the RSS button easier to find also helps to remind people that it is there.
For example, everyone knows about Coke, but Coke keeps spending millions on advertising in order to keep it in people’s mind. This makes it easier to recall in people’s memories, which increases the chance that a person will buy a Coke when they are in a store.
You do bring up a good point about people who don’t know about RSS feeds. There are still a lot of people who just bookmark websites and visit them randomly. I wonder if it’s the blogger’s responsibility to educate people who don’t know about RSS feeds.
@firedward: Thanks, and thanks for stopping by and making a comment.
Great stuff!! Pointing out even common mistakes, makes us realise that after a while, these basic no-no´s can be overseen when we become burdened by spammers, traffic, link exchanges, etc.
Thanks again and regards from Mexico!!!
Thank you for this great article about to avoid mistakes with blog design. I will start my own blog in the next months, i hope so
Ralph
6. Putting a box with the rest of the site content at the bottom.
@Hugo: Your welcome.
@Ralph: Good luck on your blog!
@Fail: Thanks for your suggestion. The content you speak about is not of great importance though so it doesn’t really need to be displayed higher up. It is more of a “some other things that might interest you” sort of box.
Nice read, the one that is hardest for me (since I tend to be a long winded talker) is breaking up each paragraph with Images, large headers, or shorting long winded sentences. I have been blogging for a long time even before I started working as a web designer, but still I find myself talking for too much for my readers own good.
It was a nice read.
Personally, I never understood the need to push a big ‘Subscribe to RSS’ button into the reader’s faces when all modern browsers have this handy RSS autodiscovery icon in the adress bar.
I’m with you on #1. I get it, it’s a symbol, a button. But when it’s so tiny that I resort to using a search (firefox ctrl+f) for RSS and it turns up nothing, I walk away. Text + image = easy to find.
Now if it was just a standard to have it in the same location across all sites…
great tips.
I have some work to do on mine
Your information is useful 2 me….thanx for the information..
How do u find my blog and please send me the feedbacks to my blog.
http://www.blogsudin.blogspot.com
Great Paradox of Choice reference! Go Barry !
Good article, it made me look at my own blog again. It is amazing how people tend to forget how important usability is. I am blogging about usability as well and from time to time I am just amazed how people ignore simple rules and construct something that confuses and frustrates people.
I would appreciate it if you could give some feedback about my blog, kind regards.
For a blog all about blog design…I can’t seem to find the Archives on this blog anywhere. Only able to manually go through the previous posts (smartarchives is an *excellent* plugin).
Also, there’s no Home button that I could find when browsing the blog design gallery, I had to keep using the back button, or manually edit the address in the address bar.
Nevertheless, I’ve found a lot of great tips on here, I hope to see more.
Thanks for the nice tips. I have been blogging for more than a year now but was always uneasy to touch up the HTML tags. However, I think that it’s time to customize my blog aided by some nice information that I have gathered at your blog. Thanks for sharing the info.
Gah there’s no search either. :doh:
thanx, i like about large blocks and links
pretty helpful, thanks
Good advice. Especially the one about having too many choices. I know exactly what you mean because I’ve been there many times, lol. If it looks too confusing I usually end up leaving.
Thanks for the pointers!
having big blocks is a part of web 2.0 movement…
and ads… u gotta love’em :)))) joking.. yeah if u want your blog to be readable… forget about much advertisement..
excellent post, all suggestions are 100% correct and it’s stuff I have definitely observed in blogs I’ve visited in the past.
It seems I have some work to do.. Thanks for the post
As correct as you are, the problem is that, to the degree we follow those pointers, we participate in the dumbing down of the Internet. I mean, give me a break, except for those of you who simply market marketing, is that what we want to cater to, an audience who made up of people who, more and more, read less and less?
I added the date to my blog, but its in ‘Small’ tags and a less prominent color, however its at the top of my post, I added it so that people could keep track of the date of the post, perhaps I should put it at the bottom, or hide it somewhere, such as a “more” button with info like date and whatnot? This is a good point, what do you all think, I’m always open to new ideas
Those are some really useful tips..
But can’t agree with #1 completely..
good thanks
Nice
You have mentioned a very important point, i have seen large blocks of text on many Blogs and it look weird.
Hey, this comes a little late, but thanks for this lsit… Brought to my attention how much of a link dump thing i have going on at my blog. oopsie. he he.
Thanks for listing the common mistakes the designer do in normally, I will cross check with my blogs and rectify my errors if any.
I will be very careful whenever i design a blog that i will not make any mistakes, thanks for sharing useful information
This site rocks!
Thanks for listing common mistakes that may occur while designing the websites, Thanks for posting this great information
hersey guzellll
Great Blog very useful to all webdesigners, I suggest all designer to share this blog
Nice resources, Thanks
Thanks, useful tip.
Always something new to add to blogs.
Latest is tweets.
have to stay updated all the while.
I will cross check with my blogs and rectify my errors if any.
i always used to make these kinds of stupid mistakes. but having seen this blog now i’m trying to avoid these mistakes.
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