Decorating Your Blogs – Tips from a Design Expert

In our ever evolving Internet there emerged a subset of people who called themselves “bloggers”. These bloggers have created their blogs in order to express their feelings and thoughts on virtually anything they want. They can have a blog about fashion, cars, video games, celebrities, interior design, or sometimes just an outlet to vent or share their life and opinions to the world. As blogs are viewed somewhat like an online diary, it is important to keep them updated to keep “followers” interested in following your blog regularly.

This is especially true if you are an online retailer and are using your blog as a medium to market your products. In this case, that is when you have to view your blog as perhaps a magazine or even the store that your potential customers will see. The average attention span of web visitors usually falls anywhere from 3 to 15 seconds, with the majority of people falling under the 10 seconds range. If you want to keep the attention of your readers within those first 10 seconds instead of having them easily clicking to the next blog, you would have to make sure the design of your blog is vibrant, fresh, and uniquely you. Your blog and its general look will be the first impression you make on your visitors and content only comes second to this.

As a designer myself, I have realized many important elements that come with having a fresh and an easy-to-the-eyes blog or website. It is just like having a room filled with beautiful expensive furniture. We don’t want this furniture to look like it was just thrown into the room and placed anywhere into a clutter of chairs and tables. Instead, we have an idea where we would have this nice mahogany coffee table stand, where the accompanying chairs sit. We need to visually enhance the room and make space between the furniture for us to walk comfortably in. The same concept can be applied to blogs and websites. A blog needs to be arranged and consciously decorated in some way for people to want to read what you have to say. If someone lands on your blog, they would probably be discouraged to read if all they see are paragraphs of words with no pictures or design. They would have to go through too much information: if you do not have images or videos to break things up visually the eyes get well…bored.

If you look at some very successful blogs, you can notice the reasons why they have so many followers and traffic coming in each day. They take care of their blogs and show their personalities through their blog’s color scheme, banner, and many other details such as font choice.

1. The first thing you want to have is a customized banner as it will be the header your visitors will see. Think of this as the foyer or entry way. This banner should include the name of your blog and perhaps a tagline that might give them an idea what you are all about.
2. The second thing is to choose the color scheme and font of your blog and blog posts, so everything looks harmonious together. This is like theming a room, based on color, style, or time period. You want it all to flow and make sense. Using complementary color swatches for different parts of your blog helps organize but maintain a cohesive spirit.
3. Organize your blog so that people could navigate it fairly easily, such as having different sections on the side so when they try to find your contact information they wouldn’t need to dig through your site.
4. The next little thing you can add to your site is a favicon. In case you are new to the term, it is the little icon on the address bar right before the website’s URL link. Perhaps you would need to come up with a logo for your blog so you can customize a favicon into something unique to your site.
5. Also, keep in mind that with your blog posts it would be a great idea to insert photos so that a paragraph would have a little visual assistance, and would be more interesting to read (remember, no matter how interesting the content, a reader isn’t going to read it unless something keeps them scrolling down.

With all these awesome tips in mind, the simplest thing is to be yourself, present to others who you are, and not be afraid to share it. Just like the clothes you choose to wear, you design your blog as you would like to see and be seen in. With that said, go forth and dress up YOUR blog!

Rebecca Chelsey is a working mother who has found herself leveraging her design background in the digital world for work and personal projects. Beyond her job as mother and wife, she also works for Homeseasons, which has simplified the holidays with 4th of July decorations, Halloween Holiday arrangements and ideas for every holiday in between.