Just started your blog and want to get off on the right foot? Or, are you looking to up your blogging game and give your website the love and care it needs. No matter what it is, we’re here for you. See out guide to the 10 website blog layout best practices you need to know.
1. Easy to Read Typefaces
What good is it writing compelling content that people struggle to read? That should answer itself. To avoid this make sure you follow these simple tips.
- Keep your font at a comfortable size, usually around 16px should do but you can go up or down a little bit from this.
- Keep to fonts people are familiar with. Using one of the web safe fonts is always a good idea, if even just for the body.
- Avoid using overly complicated fonts. Steer clear of anything scripty, and of course avoid comic sans.
2. Organise Your website Blog
To keep people interacting with your blog, they have to be able to move around it in a way that makes sense to them. At a very basic level your blog should focus in on one, and only one, topic in general. Have a blog about women’s fashion? Then don’t start writing about dog toys.
Taking this idea to an even more macro level, your blog should be broken down into further categories. Organise it so that you have a few topics you can put your blogs under. Taking the women’s fashion blog again. We would have categories for shoes, outfits, coats, hair, makeup etc.
Having the content organised like this means that not only is it easier for your readers to get about, but it’s easier for you to be able to understand your content and your blog.
3. Give New Visitors An Area To Get Up To Speed
This stops your blog from becoming blog with repeated posts about basic topics that people aren’t willing to go back and check. It will also stop your emails from filling with basic questions. The biggest reason to do this however is to keep the reader engaged. If they come in and are at level 1, whereas your blog is aimed at level 10, this lets them get to level 10 quickly.
This kind of area is best suited for big blogs that want to give readers specific info quickly.
4. Have Content That Can Be Scanned
Writing for the online realm is a bit different to writing for print. No one will appreciate your wall of brilliant text as it will be too difficult to read. Rather you should write it so that it is easier to hop along and scan as you go.
To do this, keep your paragraphs short. Three sentences in a paragraph is the ideal amount. This allows peak scanning.
Break text up with images and use headers to let people find the relevant content quickly. Utilise bullet points to avoid big chunks of text.
5. Fast Loading Pages To Keep Visitors Engaged
Having a fast blog is vital to keep users engaged and your bounce rate down. Getting your load time down to under a 3 seconds is vital. Use Google Insights as a guide for your website load speed.
How do you get a speedy website?
- Keep plugins to a minimum
- Choose a fast host, like SiteGround
- Use a caching plugin
- Use a light, fast theme
6. How is your website blog actually laid out?
How your blog appears on screen has a huge effect on what way people will interact with it. A messy blog will cause people to get lost and be too difficult to navigate.
What do you need to know? Well, you don’t need to go super minimalist with your layout, but keeping it clean and tidy to some degree is a good idea.
Utilise a grid layout to really help get the best look possible. This means the look of your blog will be consistent in terms of how it looks and also ensures you have total control over how things look.
Keep your blog very user friendly, putting the readers experience first. Don’t try and push too much content with your sidebar, and keep ads to a minimum as they are distracting.
7. Brand your website blog
Consistency is key to a blog and a website. Whether it is the typeface or images, everything should speak to each other and have the same feel.
When designing your blog keep in mind any chances you may have to add branded content to your page. What niche are you in? How can you push that with your blog?
If you’re a graphic designer then you can show how you can layout content in a unique way. As a photographer show your skills with big, prominent imagery.
Know your brand and keep it consistent. Use correct imagery, colours and typeface. Branding your blog will be easy once you know what your brand is.
Whatever your blogging style, we at Meath Web Design know how to get the job done.