Introduction
Are you unhappy from the
look of your blog? Do you often miss
your visitors due to the not-so-impressive interface of your blog? And
all you can do is to let your hard work remain unseen from the eyes it
deserves? This wait has to be made over! So, this time I am writing an
article on how to design a blog/website making it look easy and professional.
What exactly are Professional blogs? How these are liked more by
our readers/visitors?
The term ‘Professional
blog’ is hereby used to define a blog that is pleasurable to
read by its readers. A simply cool and attractive design and
the art of presenting your work can get your blog what it was missing since a
long, the readers. You must agree that if your blog is cool enough in
information and look, then a visitor may like to check out more posts on your
blog, but if your blog lacks the charm, then we cannot even guarantee if
visitor will even read the information for which he/she had reached to us. With
a simple, elegant, cool and professional look of your blog/website, you
can establish a relation of friendship between your blog and
readers, so that they will not step back from visiting it more than once. Below
are some tips to make your blog look simply easy, cool and professional.
Keep it clean and eye-friendly
Clean blog designs make your readers see and what they are
actually looking for. Too much is never good for anything, specially the
clutter in a blog. Non-matching elements and third-party add-on may
drive the attention of your readers more to it and less to the main content.
Design it in a way that makes it eye-pleasing to readers. Serve
your readers with an ease and simplicity, and work
on your blog’s layout if required.
Use proper typography, font colors and background
How would you feel when
you are serve coffee in a bowl? Is not that unusual for anyone? In the same way, an
inappropriate typography may come in between your good content and
‘awesome’ readers. Avoid too much fancy fonts for your main
content. You may use different fonts for your heading,
sub-heading and content. One should try to use same font for all the posts on
your blog. It brings a similarity and balance in your blog posts, thus adds to
the look of your blog.
Also, incorrect
and inappropriate usage of font colors and background may irritate the
eyes of your visitors. A proper match is necessary between the font color and
the background of your blog. Never use dark font colors on
dark backgrounds, and light font colors on light background. Avoiding dark red
and blue colors is also recommended unless your blog and background suites it.
Using a black/brown/light blue font color on white/grey backgrounds is never a
bad choice. You may also use ready-made background pictures or
sheets which are designed in a way to draw readers’ attention to
content. I have used a white background as it is a symbol of silence, peace,
elegance and simplicity for me.
Work on your blog/Website’s favorite icon
A favorite icon or
simply called as ‘favicon’ is a special icon that represents your
website as a small icon when your blog/website is added as a bookmark. It is
also known as URL icon as it can also be seen before the URL in the URL box of
your browsers. It is commonly 16 x16 pixels and unique for each
website/webpage. If your blog is on a sub-domain like Blogger (Blogspot) or
WordPress, the favicon associated with your blog by default is company’s own
logo or graphical representation. To have professionalism in
your blog, one needs to add a self created and unique favicon. You may
Google out various favicon generator utility websites which get your favicon
done for you free of cost.
Use a professional looking blog logo/banner
If you are dreaming a professional
looking blog, then you must have a professional banner and logo to make it look
more professional. Using a plain text sometimes adds up into the unprofessional-ism.
So, if you are good at design/editing pictures, it is the time to utilize your
talent, or you may even get it done by a professional artist
or designer paying a bit or more.
Reconsider your banner and ad placement
If informative articles
and photos are all that your blog serves, then avoid unnecessary
pop-ups and forcing your readers to view a full page advertisement. Please ads
above or below the title of your post. Avoid placing ads twice between your
content if your blogs are not lengthy enough. Organize your
blog and ads taking your readers’ convenience in mind. Ads
should only consume a minimum of 2 to maximum 10% of your blog.
Get more from your header and footer
Header and footers are
an important part of your blog and adds a big percent to your
blog’s overall look and design. Instead of using the default, you can include
social plug-ins or home, blog, about links in your header. Similarly, you can
put your social media plug-ins, link fan pages, partner blog/websites, a
message for readers, contact us card, about us, about author, recent posts,
popular posts and links to main pages of the blog right there in the
footer, instead of just using a copyright text therein. If
used well, it provides your blog a more professional and eye-catchy look in the
eyes of viewers.
Avoid unprofessional and illegal/’stolen’ images
Images in your
blog/posts work as an interest generator for your readers. Do you
know why we never like studying history books as a student? Mostly,
it because the history books are either has boring/uninteresting black and
white image or no images at all. One should use original/self clicked images
for their posts or one may even write text in your plain images. The only thing
is you must have images!
You may also request the
website owners or other sources to provide you permission to use their
copyrighted pictures.
Pictures in your blog
posts do not only create interest in your readers but these images also
drive traffic to your blog. How? Image search engines
like Google, Yahoo, Bing and many others when shows you pictures in their
results, you always have chances that the searchers may visit your blog from
right there. For how long a visitor will stay on your blog, it depends on his
interest and your blog’s design and looks. Hence, a proper and clean design is
‘must-have’ necessity for every blog/website owner.
Use ready-made premium templates (free or paid)
If you feel it difficult
to work on a professional looking design yourself, you may use free or
paid ready-made premium templates for your blog. These have
a professional look and are search engine optimized too.
Another benefit of using premium templates is you get all the social
media plug-ins already installed. Though, your search engine’s rank
depends on the content of your blog, but these templates
promise to be 'search engine optimized' and thus helps in ranking us better in
search results.
Final words; Content is the real king
These are some tips on
how to make a blog/website look professional. But, we should also
keep it in mind that if a professional/attractive look can impress your visitors,
then your quality content stands for turning your visitors into your regular
readers. One needs to give enough time and effort to be regular with your
content posting to win your readers’ attention.