Blogging is huge!
A blog is a website containing a group of writers’ own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other websites. Blogs can be used for any or all of the following purposes:
- Personal journals (hobby blogs)
- Creative expression
- Teaching and coaching others
- Selling products
- Promoting brands
The term web log was first used during the late 90s, which later became ‘weblog’, and then ‘blog’.
Blogs evolved from online diaries and journals in the mid-90s. At that time, internet users were already running personal web pages where they published regular updates about their personal lives, thoughts, and social commentary.
More users will enter your website via your blog articles than ever on your homepage, so your blog design should put your “best foot forward.” When it comes to blog design, there are a variety of different factors to look at, including font sizes, hierarchy, calls-to-action, and text width, among other things.
The marketers who prioritize blogging efforts are 13 times more likely to see positive ROI, according to HubSpot.
Therefore, here are some facts about the most important design tips that your blog’s design should have and how they work individually to help optimize your blog to rank higher in google and increase traffic for the blog.
1) Choose large, beautiful featured images
One of the current trends across many blogs is including large images for each blog card and inner blog post.
Look at the following given example blog post.
Here while the featured image is very large, so that it pushes down the content, it acts as the main element to help connect the user to the article before reading anything beyond the title or author.
It is important to allow your featured image size to be large enough, so it holds enough visual weight to stand out from the elements close to it.
2) Include article quick-summary/conclusion at the end of the article
Most of the articles we write that could be answered in a sentence or two ends up as a 1500 word post. While writing content to that length is what Google exactly wants, it’s not entirely intuitive to users who are looking for quick answers to things.
For example, think you want to know what is WordPress.
You will find many articles giving you everything you would want to know about the topic.
But if you’re someone just looking for the definition of WordPress, skimming a 1500 word post to find might be a little difficult. This is where short summary or conclusion is really helpful.
This also has another advantage, other than the user getting the answer they want faster. Google will use the content in these summaries for featured snippets. This means you show up as the first post in the SERP, resulting in an increase in click-throughs for your article.
3) Use short descriptive subheadings
Writing short, clear headers to separate sections in your article, makes it easy for your readers to consume. Generally, people will come to these articles with the intent of skimming them until they find the section(s) that answers their questions. Therefore, you need to add headers that define exactly what readers will learn about in those grouped paragraphs of your article.
Further, adding subheadings will add quality to your writing and help make your article engaging for your visitors, especially those visiting for the first time.
4) Make social sharing is accessible on all devices
Most blogs use social sharing buttons to allow users to easily share blog articles. But, many sites aren’t granting that same experience for tablet and mobile users.
Most people are browsing social platforms on their mobile devices, so you can bet they are willing to share content on mobile too. Therefore it is necessary to show sharing buttons when browsing and reading articles using mobile devices.
If you know your users are using new social platforms, make sure your social links reflect that. Or, if you have a social link to a platform that’s rarely used, maybe it’s time to remove it.
5) Highlight your authors
Your authors put a lot of time and effort into creating the content for your blog, and you should celebrate that by posting them as the author of their respective articles.
Further, you should give them short bios that appear at the bottom of articles so your users are able to distinguish who’s written what on your blog. This helps users for searching articles by authors they like.
6) Utilize legible typography across all devices
Smaller font shortens everything up but it doesn’t necessarily make your readers want to keep reading. As all the visitors don’t have 20/20 vision and some don’t like to read small font we have to consider font size when writing blog articles. It should e the last thing users are complaining about.
7) Use a blog card layout
Depending on how often you publish blog posts, once a week or twice a day, you already have up to 500+ blog posts on your website at the end of a year.
With that many posts, how do you use your website’s space to organize those articles so you can display the most at once without hitting visitors with information overload?
Here, the card design is applied throughout the web. The architecture of cards helps us to easily recognize, recall, and read the information that’s important.
And also make sure to focus on incorporating the below elements into the card when organizing.
- Featured image
- Blog title
- Blog author (and image, if there’s available space)
- Blog excerpt
- Post date
- Category
- Social share links
- Read More button
Conclusion
Always think of the user first. A design can be instrumental to the success of your blog. The most important part of the design is testing it with your specific users to make sure it’s the experience they want and the experience your company needs.
Therefore, now you can use these design principles in your blog designing and then sooner you will begin seeing more conversions and traffic.