Blogging is all about the content but a good-looking blog will improve the reader experience and people will stay for longer! The more engagement you get on your blog, the quicker it will grow and revenue opportunities open up for you. Design and user experience = money.
You’re a content creator not a graphic designer, right? Fear not, you don’t need to be a pro on the sketch pad to make your site look nicer and easier to read. I’ve put together 5 quick tips that you can implement today to end up with a better looking blog!
1. Navigation
Talking about site navigation isn’t the more enthralling of topics but it’s an important starting point! Organising your content in to categories that can easily be browsed in a top menu bar will help people find the content on your site that they are most interested in.
Readers will often land on a specific article rather than your homepage so remember to make your navigation site-wide to encourage more page views per site visit. This has a couple of benefits: people are likely to remember your blog as a place to go in the future and also you will get more ad revenue!
As well as the top navigation bar, you can add a “read next article” button at the bottom of each article. Have a quick search on Google for a solution that works for you. If people are in reading mode, give them something to read!
2. Fonts
There are endless memes and jokes about the use of Word Art and Comic Sans by companies. My aim when picking a font is to choose one that won’t get a reaction of any type! Fonts should be pleasing on the eye, not distract from the content and give your words some character.
As a WordPress user, I love a good plugin to make my life as easy as possible. Finding fonts and the right license for it can be a real headache and that’s before you’ve even tried to upload the file to use! Save yourself time and stress with the Fontsy WordPress plugin. They have over 1300 fonts to choose from with a mix of free and premium options.
Let the words do the talking and don’t be that Comic Sans site by using a WordPress font plugin.
3. Images
Stock images don’t need to look tacky or be expensive. My favourite resource for this is Unsplash. The site allows you to find a broad range of high quality pictures that can be used without a fee. If you don’t want to credit the artist then there is an easy way to get their details and link back to them as a thank you.
You can also use Canva to make bespoke images and headers for your blog and articles. Adding your headline to a banner image makes it clear for people what they can expect to read about. This is particularly important when it comes to sharing on Pinterest – a great source of traffic for bloggers.
4. Use Video
Video media consumption is ever-increasing. Some readers want to, well, read whereas others prefer audio or video content. Cater for all! Using a tool like Lumen5, you can turn your written article in to a video in a matter of minutes.
You don’t need to have any video editing skills to create a video if you use the tools available for free. Once you have created the video, upload it to YouTube and then embed it on your blog post. Creating a better user experience will also help you get more love from Google and should increase your traffic!
