Ugly Does Not Sell: 5 Reasons to Look at Your Blog
It seems like a modest notion. People are drawn to attractive things. But some bloggers appear to overlook that. They think that the content of their blog is more vital than the design. Well, they are wrong. The most enlightening blog in the world will not be effective if it is indecipherable. Here are five things to look for in your blog.
1. Legibility– First of all, no reader will visit your blog for five seconds if they can’t read it. Is the text nearly the same color as the background? Do ads muddle up, cover up, cut up, or hover over your posts? You have a two second window of opportunity to hook a reader and draw them in. You’ll miss it if your site appears like it was planned by a kindergartener.
2. Attractiveness – This goes along with legibility. Does your site look nice? No, don’t tell me what’s written on it- just look at it. Is it appealing? Do the colors complement each other? Is the pattern set up in an attractive way? Do the pictures have borders? Are they the same size? Do you have pictures? Are you uninterested and just looking at a hunk of words sitting on your screen? Add some zing! Spice it up. Don’t go to extremes, but color and photos are great.
3. Usability– Can users get around on your site? Make sure you use all the widgets you need to make it simple to navigate through your blog. You don’t want users getting frustrated and departing, so make sure your blog is easy to use and doesn’t take a lot of effort.
4. Flow – Going along with the notion of easy to use; does your site flow? Does it logically progress from one post to another, or is it a jerkyjumble? Let the user’s eye move naturally, and avoid chopping up your site into little lumps of commotion. The less sidetracked readers are, the more they’ll read and the longer they’ll stay.
5. Coherence – At first this point seems almost the same as the first one, but it is not. Beyond just the appearance of the text, the color mixture, can a reader comprehend what you’re saying? Is your grammar right? Are you writing in proper English? Do you get your argument across without beating around the bush or using words that necessitate a dictionary? Remember that most readers have a reading level of around fifth grade. So unless your audience is strictly the well-educated, keep your blog easy to read.
Making a blog attractive really isn’t that hard. Consider what you look for in a site. What are your likes and dislikes? Go from there. Simplicity and ease of movement are key. Just stick to the basics and there shouldn’t be an issue. And remember not to spend so much time on the appearance that you forget to write!
Guest Post By: Melanie Slaugh is enthusiastic about the growing prospects and opportunities of various industries and writing articles on various consumer goods and services as a freelance writer. She writes extensively for internet service providers and also topics related to internet service providers in my area for presenting the consumers, the information they need to choose the right Internet package for them. She can be reached at slaugh.slaugh907 @ gmail.com.
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About The Blog Author
Alex Sysoef is an IT Consultant, Internet Marketer and ProBlogger who shares his passion and knowledge of WordPress, SEO, Social Media and traffic strategies on his blog WordPress Howto Spotter. Connect on Twitter or Facebook
Absolutely Melanie! Studies show that visitors decide whether to stay or go within the first 4 seconds of landing on your site, so it’s important to grab their attention with a user friendly and clean design. Good tips here!
You nailed it – visual is how marketing all got started, nice breakdown of the important elements thanks!
lizza recently posted..Stop your heartburn
I completly agree. Visual impression plays big role in bloging
Twitter: Solarbenefits
says:
Appearance is the primary factor that makes me buy something or not.
Radu recently posted..Getting Your Credit Card Application Approved!….Always
What makes me bounce right off a site is loads of ads – especially the blinking ‘BUY PR9 LINKS’ ads. That tells me that the blogger has sold out and I cant trust their content.
The blog should be easy on the eye and have a nice balance between content, ads and everything else (e.g. calls to action, subscribe, etc).
Colours also have a big impact and I love the pastel colours you’ve used here
What a great line: “Ugly Does Not Sell”! Personally I hate bright colors, popup windows and a lot of blinking stuff on a page.
Anna recently posted..dental crown cost
I really like reading this kind of thing, thanks for posting it! Its not that anything you said is growndbreaking but seeing a reminder of good web and blog design concepts is reassuring that I am going the right way with things. There are a few really ugly blogs about but they seem to have survived since the early days of the net where messy design was more accepted.
Marian recently posted..Snow socks
Twitter: nirmalche
says:
Yeah visual impression is the first impression to visitors. You have covered pretty vast and complete about the topic.
Hi Melanie
Having a visually appealing blog certainly helps keep people on your site and so gives you a better chance to sell to them. I think one of the benefits of using WordPress is the wide availability of well designed themes you can instantly add to your site to create that professional feel. Even a novice can have a site up quickly that already has well thought out font selection and color schemes.
Beth recently posted..What You Shouldn’t Do if You Want Your Ex Back
Absolutely correct! Everything mentioned here is true. The success of a website relies on these things. How can people stay long on your site if it’s not nice to look at and easy to navigate. And of course, the content is very important. It should be quality articles where people can learn. Great article. Thanks for sharing it.
Twitter: BrianHumek
says:
I’ve spent weeks trying to find a wordpress theme to make my pizza website look better. A few more fixes and I’ll be ready to promote it. I just could never get too excited about my site when it had an amateur look. Good point on aesthetics.
Twitter: hblawhorn
says:
I couldn’t agree more with all your points. I think you have covered them all very well. It is certainly true that if someone hits your site and don’t like the looks, they are very unlikely to stay and if they don’t stay you certainly can’t sell them anything.
So yes all the points you make are very important and should be considered strongly when designing your site.
Twitter: Loans4Tenants
says:
Spot on! Images and themes make a blog more attractive, which in turn gives the blog a personality, without this the site looks boring, and theres nothing less appealing than a boring looking blog!
This article has really touched me. I even spent my time to read out all of the comments. Appreciative!