6 Design Changes You Should Make So Your Blog Doesn’t Look Like a Dinosaur

How long have you been blogging for? When you look at random blogs it’s quite clear to see they are doing things that everyone else left behind years ago. This not only looks unprofessional, but I bet it’s hurting their profits. Even if you have not been blogging for very long there are still things you might be missing out on because you’ve not seen them yet. We’re going to look at a few things you need to add straight away because the way your blog is designed is very important.

A clear opt-in form

Do you have any idea how much money you are leaving on the table if you don’t have a way to capture someone’s email address? What will you do if they never come back to your site? You won’t be able to contact them again and they will be lost to you. If you have an opt-in form somewhere you can add people to your list and they will only be a quick email away. You can use the list to sell products, or even drive them back to your site.

A plain design

Do you remember all the flashing icons and sliding photos they used to have on all the websites? We all went through a phase where all of that stuff was exciting and we wanted our website to look as fancy as possible. People suddenly realized it actually hurt conversion rates and the best thing to do was keep their website as clean and simple as possible. You should be taking unnecessary things away rather than adding garbage that fills up your pages from now on.

Easy-to-use navigation

Back in the olden days if you wanted people to find your content you would use categories and tags. If you still use them today you are in trouble because they aren’t much use to anyone. If you want people to find all your great content you have to make it as easy as possible for them. That means they should be able to get to all your important pages in one click and most other helpful pages within two. It is hard to accomplish this, but nothing great is ever easy.

Fewer colors

No longer are blogs to be considered exploding rainbows and you are looking to use as few colors as possible. Your brand should consist of a limited amount of colors and when people see them they will instantly think of you. You can use any colors you want and they should be used for most things including the logo, headlines, and the sub-headlines. You should also use a separate color for your links and it should be different from all the others you use on the site.

Social media overload

If you don’t have thousands of ‘likes’ on Facebook you probably don’t want to advertise the fact in your sidebar. The same goes for Twitter and if you show everyone that you only have twenty followers they won’t be impressed. Don’t use social media icons all over your site in the beginning. I know they were popular a few years ago, but these days’ people realize they would rather keep visitors on their site instead of passing them off to someone else.

Try to make sense

When you look at some sites you don’t even know what to do because people use funny words. If you want people to visit your ‘about’ page you shouldn’t call it the ‘my life’ page in your navigation bar. What does that even mean? This goes on all the time and it’s obvious 99% of the visitors will be completely clueless. That means they will just click away and go somewhere else, so start making everything as clear as possible.