In “The Secret of Great Blog Designs,” I talked about using schemas and the peak-end rule to not only make your blog design more memorable, but to also associate your blog with the concepts, images, and ideas that will help you towards your goals. Before we can go deeper into that, we have to first make our blog design POP.

What does it mean to make a blog design POP? A blog design that pops is simply one that grabs people’s attention and can often times evoke a “Wow!” Does it mean that you must make your blog really extreme in order to get noticed? No, it does not, especially if you are doing it just for the sake of getting it noticed. The pursuit of just that one goal alone won’t get your blog design very far.

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What is the purpose of a blog design? There are no blog designs that doesn’t have any effect on its blog, its message, and its goals. A blog design is either helping you move forward with your blog or it is not only hindering you from moving forward, but actually pushing you backwards. There exists no stand still between the two, because a blog’s design acts as the frame that a reader uses to decide on what the message you are trying to say actually means.

So what is the purpose of a blog design? The purpose of a blog design is to support your goals, communicate your message, and make your branding memorable.

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Why is Your Blog Design Important to Your Blog’s Success?

You have been told over and over again that the key to success with your blog is creating quality content. That is true, I won’t argue with that, but if it was that easy how come your blog isn’t as successful as you wish it to be? I know it isn’t, because you are still looking for new articles on how to make it even better. What people often don’t tell you that can keep you from the success that you want is your:

Blog Design.

Who are you more like you likely to believe when looking to buy a house, a guy in his pajamas or a guy in a suit? The power of first impressions can not be denied in first person contact, but it is often overlooked online. just because you can hide behind your computer doesn’t mean your blog is immune to the same effects. The people visiting your blog operate in a very similar way to how they would in first person contact.

A blog that looks like it was put together by someone’s nephew in their basement or uses a free template will give off the impression of being unprofessional, lack of credibility, and sketchy. You could have created the world’s most comprehensive blog on a subject, but your blog design can prevent people from even giving you a chance. And without readers, how are you suppose to make any money?

Focus on the following strategies and you will be able to design a better blog and make more money, gain more traffic, and get more subscribers.

Usability

If it takes too much effort or time to navigate around your blog, find articles, or use, then your visitors will leave you for your competitor. The most important thing to pay attention to in regards to usability is to make it so the blog is easy to use.

People are use to a certain way a blog works. There are headlines, posts, comments, archives, and links to posts that are usually in a general area. When you try to get too innovative with your blog, you might end up making it harder for your visitors to use your blog, because they never used anything like it before. Don’t assume they are willing to learn, because they really don’t care. This is even more true for first time visitors to your blog.

Color

Don’t choose a color because it matches your personality or it just looks good. Pick each color you use with the full knowledge of what it will do for the message you are trying to communicate. This has a lot to do with knowing your audience, which I assume you know very well or else you need to start researching again.

Visual Interest

Visual interest is all in the details of your blog design. They are the little details that leads a visitor’s eyes to certain parts of the blog that you want them to pay attention to. When visual interest is weaved into your blog design right, you will be able focus the visitor on the most important parts of your blog, such as your money-making posts.

The dangerous thing about visual interest is that if you overdo it, you can make it harder for the user to pay attention to anything as there are too many things on the blog that is vying for the user’s attention. Attention is a scarce resource that users give so don’t squander it. Use it only for the most important parts of your blog design.

Functionality

While blog design is an art, it is first and foremost an interface people use in order to get to the information that you have written. That is why it is important to breathe more life into a blog design by enhancing it with increased functionality through the use of javascripts, ajax, widgets, and other extras.

The point of increasing functionality has to do with usability, which is to make it even easier to use. The easier you make it for a new visitor to navigate your blog like they been there 10 times already, the more likely the visitor will find your content, subscribe to your blog, and make you more money.

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The title of this article is still true even if you don’t want to be the best. By constantly working on yourself and improving little by little you will be able to get a whole lot better faster. The following articles pretty much covers a lot of the good resources available online to help you improve your skills.

50 Ways to Become a Better Designer

Stepping Up Your Skills: Areas for Continual Improvement as a Web Designer

On Designing a Better Blog Design

While online articles and resources are fantastic, there really is no substitute for a good book. Each month I give Amazon a huge chunk of my check in return for a bunch of books with that new smell. Yes, I smell my books when they arrive. Me and my UPS delivery man are on first name basis now as well. Here are some useful books I have read that will improve your blog design skills. I will write a more complete review of them in the coming weeks.

Design:

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

Typography:
Designing with Type: The Essential Guide to Typography (Designing With Type)

Usability

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition

Color:

Color Design Workbook: A Real-World Guide to Using Color in Graphic Design

CSS:

The Art and Science of CSS

Photoshop:

The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques

In order to redesign my blog, over the past few days I have been soaking up inspiration from other blogs, reading books on blogging, and closing my eyes while on the train and imagining the different possibilities the blog could look like. I find the last one to be a very interesting and helpful tool to not only design websites, but to survive the daily commute as well. This is all done in an effort to create a better blog since there is no point of just throwing on a new coat of paint without improving it or reaching new goals.

To that effort my main goals are to increase readership by developing more original high quality content and designing a blog that facilitates the process that readers go through in order to find that content on this blog. In order to accomplish these goals, I have been taking useful advice that I have found by reading books on blogging. Most notably I found the following two books very helpful in this endeavor:

“clear blogging” by Bob Walsh

“blogging heroes” by Michael A. Banks

They contain very useful advice on different areas of blogging, but the most useful for designing a blog is about the usability of it. Most importantly the link provided by Bob Walsh to Jakob Nielsen’s article Weblog Usablity: The Top Ten Design Mistakes expanded my thinking greatly. I have read Nielsen’s book “Prioritizing Web Usability” before, which was great, but the information on that site is very specific to blogs. Covering the same subject with a few different points is Jeff Atwood’s article Thirteen Blog Cliches. I recommend reading Jakob Nielsen’s book and Steve Krug’s book “Don’t make me think: A common sense approach to Web Usability” in order to get a more complete understanding of usability subjects that concern blogs. I think in the future I will write a short review on these books so people get an idea of what is inside and if it is worth purchasing. It is definitely worth reading though and probably available in your local library.