Creating a good and attractive blog design may be a challenge for most people. The problem is usually because you don’t know where to start. Well, this article will discuss how to design a cool and interesting blog from start to finish.
Here we present how to design a blog so that your website has a cool and attractive appearance according to the type of website you have. You can easily follow each of the tips and immediately put them into practice on your website.
1. Set goals first!
Before thinking about what color, what font, what kind of header, the very first thing you have to do in designing a blog is to set the purpose of the blog first.
Why is the purpose of the blog important in blog design? Because the goal you want to achieve is the basis in determining the overall blog design. Is the purpose of your blog to share travel stories? Or will you fill your blog with tech tutorials?
Know the goal you want to achieve first, then you can continue reading the points after this.
2. Blog Structure
After knowing the purpose of your blog, the next important step that you need to understand is about the structure of the blog. The picture above is a blog structure in general, there is a header, sidebar, main content, and footer. Every blogger can modify it according to taste and desire.
What are the contents of each section of the blog? Here’s the explanation.
In the header, usually filled by the title or name of the blog along with a brief description of the blog. Navigation menus and search fields are usually also located in this section.
Then in the sidebar, you can fill it with social media profiles, most popular articles, recommended articles, article archives, or blog subscribe buttons.
The next section is the main content. The main content of course is filled by the articles that you write.
Lastly is the footer. In the footer you can fill it with a disclaimer, privacy policy, your contact, or social media share buttons.
3. Show Short Description
First, make sure you have a short description of your blog. Usually this short description is under the title or name of the blog. For example, your blog is a techno blog, the description could be something like, “A blog that discusses all about technology”.
In this step your creativity begins to be tested. You need to tell about the entire blog in a short sentence. Why should blog description sentences be short? Because your visitors need to know what blog they are reading.
Short descriptions are not only important for the blog as a whole, but also for any article or blog content. That way, readers can find out briefly what kind of article they will read, before pressing the “Read More” button.
4. Easy and Simple Navigation
When your readers want to read a particular topic from your blog, which menu should they click on? If they wanted to read an article published two years earlier, which menu should they choose? If readers want to know who owns the blog, which button should they click?
The bottom line is that you need to make navigation simple and easy for everyone to understand. This makes it easy for blog visitors to move from one page to another, from one article to another, from one tag to another.
If visitors can easily read your blog, of course they will spend longer time so of course it benefits you as a blog owner. Don’t make navigation complicated, especially if the goal is just to “look cool”. The real cool blog design lies in the ease with which visitors can navigate your blog.
5. Using Sliders? Consider Again!
Maybe you’ve ever thought that using a slider on a blog is a cool thing. However, you should throw that plan away. According to a study, only 1 percent of visitors click on the content on the slider. Again, only one percent. That means if there are 100 visitors, only 1 visitor clicks on your slider.
Sliders do look cool, but they are neither effective nor efficient. Of course you don’t want to sacrifice 99 blog visitors just for one visitor, right?
What’s more, the slider takes a long time to load so it will have a bad effect on the page loading of your blog. The worst thing is the decline in your SEO performance caused by slow page loading.
In addition, not all sliders have been optimized for the mobile version. So not using a slider is the best step for your blog design.
6. White Space is Important
Before bothering about choosing a color, there is one important thing you should pay attention to, namely white space. What is white space? To borrow a term from Computer Hope, white space is an unused part of a design.
In simple terms, white space is empty space in your blog design. The existence of white space is important so that your blog does not look too crowded. White space also helps readers to more easily read blog articles.
7. Show Social Media Profiles
Social media profiles are also an important component of blog design. Don’t forget to display your social media profiles in the sidebar or footer so that readers can find out who owns the blog they visit.
8. Importance of Subheading
Start to get into the discussion for content structure. Content structure is also important for blog design. With a good and consistent structure, readers will find it easier to read your articles.
Well, one way to create a good content structure is to use subheading. Subheading is used to explain important points in an article.
If you are using WordPress, you can find this subheading feature in the editor menu. There is a choice of Subheading 1, Subheading 2, Subheading 3, and so on.
Subheading 1 is usually used for the title section. While subheading 2 is usually used to show the main points in the article. Then subheading 3 is used to explain the points of subheading 2.
9. Add Image
After creating a neat and easy-to-read writing structure, you also need to add images that are still related to your writing. We recommend that you use images that have a clear copyright. If you use someone else’s image, don’t forget to include the source under the image.
It’s even better if you use an infographic. Infographics make it easier for readers to understand articles through visual illustrations.
10. Also give color to the link
In your article, of course there are links or links, either internal links (links to other articles on the blog) or external links (links to other websites or blogs). Don’t forget to give a different color to the word or sentence that contains the link. For example, if the font color you are using is black, then the font color for the linked sentence is blue.
11. Maximum 3 Fonts
The phrase the more, the merrier does not apply when you are choosing a font for a blog. Font types for blogs don’t need to be many, just three types. Three is the maximum number, More than that will only make your blog look messy and unprofessional.
12. Maximum 3 Colors
Likewise with colors, you don’t need to choose many colors for your blog design, just three. The first color is the primary color, which is the color associated with the identity of your blog. For example, your blog logo is blue, you can choose blue as the primary color of your blog so that readers are more familiar with that blue is the identity of your blog.
The other two colors you can choose freely, of course adjusted to taste and the primary color that has been determined at the beginning.
13. Keep Consistency
The most important thing in blog design is to maintain consistency in every part of it. From colors, fonts, content structure, sidebar, footer, blog header, menu, to the navigation bar. The color of the menu button on the home must be the same as the color of the menu button on other pages. Likewise with fonts and other blog design components.
The consistency of blog design will make readers feel more familiar with your blog.
14. Mobile Friendly Blog Design
When choosing a blog template or theme, always choose a template that is mobile friendly. Because most people access the internet through mobile devices.
According to a survey of internet usage behavior in Indonesia by APJII, it was found that 44.16 percent of Indonesians access the internet only through mobile devices. Then as many as 39.28 percent of the people access the internet through mobile and desktop devices. Meanwhile, only 4.49 percent of those who access it only access the desktop.
15. Don’t Use a Dark Background
Lastly, don’t use a dark background as you will need to choose a contrasting color from the background for your font. In the end you should choose a light font color if using a dark background. And bright font colors are not familiar to most readers so they will interfere with their reading experience. Therefore, avoid dark colors for the background.