-
Website
http://www.instigatorblog.com/ -
Original page
http://www.instigatorblog.com/does-your-blog-design-matter/2007/03/14/ -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
All Comments
My recommendation. My back ups of all your originals, then start playing. Make one change at a time though. It is easy to make a change, publish, review and repeat.
The difference between something that has been developed by a trained professional designer and something that someone who has a 'bit of an eye' and a 'bit of coding knowhow' is immense.
If you show up to an interview with scuffed shoes in a shiny suit covered in coffee stains, you better be Albert Einstein. Most of us aren't Enistein and, much more to the point, our readers don't have a clue who we are and what our pedigree is when they arrive on our blog. Content is always king and must always grab the reader by the throat, but a look-and-feel that grates on the eye may make a seasoned reader look elsewhere quicker than they would otherwise.
One rule-breaker who never fails to surprise is Seth Godin. Who else could get away with flouting the Law of Maximum Contrast by having yellow text reversed out of white all over his blog?
I'll be talking to my web guy later today ...
I get massive Stumbleupon traffic, with a pretty healthy returning visitor rate. Since Stumblers only spend an average of 1-2 seconds checking out a site, I have put a LOT of attention into getting my message across in within that window.
Also, and this is the reason I chose Mike, my site is fully accessible (P2 compliant, "almost" P3). I needed it to be accessible for two reasons: 1) I will have visitors who may have disabilities, and 2) as a "health" blog, accessibility is good to have if in the future I have government agencies linking to my site.
O
Thanks for all the comments!
Char's comments are right on...if you have any coding skill at all, or if you're simply willing to tinker, make a backup of the WP theme you choose and then play, test, try. Use plugins. If you use an external editor instead of WP's Theme Editor, you have 'undo' capabilities. Just play and have fun. See what happens. And if you screw something up - no worries, you have your back up.
For a business, it's imperative that your site/blog be a true reflection of who you are and what you do. As Ben says here, first impressions mean a lot. It could mean the difference between making sales and not. I often don't even bother looking at sites any longer that are poorly designed.
Good design doesn't have to mean decked out to the hilt, either. Look at Ben's site - pretty straightforward. Or Copyblogger or David Airey - great, simple designs.
What important is that you keep your focus on the message you want to send your audience. While content certianly rules over all else, how you display that content is important.
I could go on and on. Guess I should write a few posts on this topic myself.
Confessions of a wordpress installationaholic
Although your point that it's never to late to go back and changing things is well taken.
andyberd.eu 2.0 is just around the corner and I do have to stop putting it off.
It won't be a major shift, but I need more space for community content.
James Brausch has several tools that can help you automate the testing. His blog is worth checking out. The design is original looking too (not to mention fairly clean). See www.JamesBrausch.com.
And more still, as more and more people begin using RSS aggregators, design will matter even less.
Ask yourself this, did the blog become more successful (however you measure that) after you redesigned it?
RSS readers/aggregators may diminish the importance of design somewhat, but more often than not a person still has to visit the site first and be interested enough to read and then subscribe. They may very rarely visit the site again, but they had to at least once.
I did ask myself that question - and the answer is a resounding YES - otherwise I would have never written this in the first place.
Design wasn't the only reason my blog has become more successful - it's been a natural progression on a number of fronts - but there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that it's helped significantly.
I've been tweaking my design somewhat lately, thanks to the suggestions of my readers. Asking my readers how to improve my blog proved an excellent idea.
In fact when I changed WordPress themes and launched this site I wrote a post of things to do when you change themes - I believe the last point was, "Tell people about it." -- you want RSS readers to come back over and take a look.
It can be a little tough to find the balance between spending time to cultivate your site's design & marketability versus applying your time to creating fresh, interesting posts. Certainly, content is key, but I've also been focusing my efforts on trying to ensure that my content is easily navigable.
Rob - You definitely want to focus on content first - but if people can't find content, navigate through it, etc. you do want to improve those things otherwise the content will disappear too easily.
I think you've done a great job getting a pro to design your site, but there's one minor issue to be resolved: the image of you on the right is a huge file that weighs in at well over 200Kb! It must be resampled and resized... for the love of your visitors who are not on broadband, etc.
:)
It either is a great bonus or it tips you over the edge to buy the car or in this case read/ visit the blog/ website
Thanks
seoblogcentral - vbulletin,jelsoft,forum,bbs,discussion,bulletin board,message board,blog,discussion forum
"Remember that blogs are like babies. No one thinks yours is as cute as you do."