Most bloggers want their websites to be seen; they desire a following of faithful readers that will appreciate the effort that they put into creating and maintaining their website. The success of this secret or obvious endeavor comes down to many factors. The most important of these factors is their website’s design.
The blog owner can advertise on social media sites and other blogs, but if readers cannot stand to look at your design scheme, they will not linger more than a moment. Below I will provide a few examples of design decisions that can kill your website before it even takes off.
Eye Straining Color Scheme.
This particular design faux pas is most commonly seen in primary and secondary school power point presentations. A faulty website design does not provide enough color contrast. Web designers who are using various tints and shades of one or two colors should be especially wary. If you are designing your website with different shades of the same color, you need to make sure that you do not choose two colors that are too similar.
If I created a website with a light blue background and light blue text could you read it? Would you want to read it? If I wanted to create a better color design scheme I should have selected a darker background and slightly lighter text. Remember that people need to read your website easily.
Poor Font Choices.
POOR FONT CHOICES CAN DRIVE away readers just as fast as a poor color scheme. Why? Because the lack of contrast makes the text more difficult to read. It is your duty as a blogger to create a natural reading experience. Here are some font techniques to steer clear of. All of these can be found conveniently on a list titled how to be annoying when online. Here are a few of the biggies:
- Create no contrast in your text by sticking with a single font and size.
- Use all caps or no caps on your website.
- Bold, italicize, or underline your main text.
There are 44 other ways to be annoying online. You should peruse the list and ensure that your website does not include any of the annoying traits.
Poor Website Alignment.
Does your blog have a reader retention problem? Does your website have two or three different alignment schemes? If you answered yes to both questions, your alignment might be the problem.
Good alignment is meant to unify and organize a page. If your website switches between right, left, and center alignment, your website separates instead of unifies. Constantly switching from one side of the screen to the other can look sloppy and force the reader to identify any connection between the different parts of your website. You can solve this problem by choosing either a left or right alignment for your entire webpage.
Website design is vital to all blog owners. While I cannot tell you exactly what color scheme, alignment, and font decisions will make a killer website, I can give you guidelines based on design conventions. For more information on design conventions that will make your website a success, you can check out some free online resources or sign up for some Adobe training classes. Remember at the end of the day, what color you should use or what content you should include on your blog, that’s all you. No get out there and start accumulating a following of faithful readers.
