5 Great Tips to Build a Strong Blog Design Foundation

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Every evening this week I’ll be giving you a sneak peak into the new Mom-preneur Blog & Etsy Guide.  It’s only $19.95 and is a compilation of advice from over 80 women in business! {{squeal in delight}}

Today’s sneak peek is from Anne-Marie who is featured in the “What I Wish I Had Known” section of the Mom-preneur Guide:

5 Great Tips to Build a Strong Blog Design Foundation

Since design is a foundation…  here are five great tips to help you build a stronger foundation, so that hopefully your blog or website won’t be the one that fades away:

1.  Are you dreaming in Technicolor?

Joseph is the only one allowed to wear bright flashy colors.  Joseph, or Vegas showgirls.  And unless you lived in Bible times or you ARE a Vegas Showgirl, then tone down the bright colors. The same goes for loud flashy clashing fonts. No one wants to read at their computers with sunglasses on. If I can’t read the text, I’m not going to hang around and try and figure it out. If the background color hurts my eyes, bye bye birdie. The same goes for white text on a black background…. Oh for the love of pickles, please don’t. I love my eyesight, I don’t want to loose it looking at your site.

2.  Who Are You?

This is not so much a design issue, but we’ve all had those situations where we need to introduce friend A to friend B and we can’t remember friend A’s name, so we just stand there awkwardly waiting and hoping that the two friends will just introduce themselves, and help you out so that you can remember friend A’s name. Well, we don’t want to do that to our readers. Make sure they know who you are, and what your site is called – not the address in the address bar (I’ll get to this little pet peeve in just a bit), but your TITLE. And for Pete’s sake, please put a home link somewhere on your site that links to your homepage. If you don’t have your title visible and read-able, you can betchurbottomdollar that I’m not gonna remember it. I have a hard time remembering to pick up the milk on the way home, so do me a favor and let me know who you are.  And while we’re talking about titles…  if you are working with a website or blog designer, please make it known to them that your header needs to be no bigger than 300 pixels in height.

On average, a reader stays on a new website page for 10 seconds.  Two seconds of that has been proven at looking at the title and then searching for what to do next.  So you’ve got 8 seconds to make a great first impression.  And yes, your header is important, but so is what you want your reader to look at next.  If all a reader sees when they first arrive is two thirds a page worth of your header, and they have to find the scroll-bar and search for what it is that you are selling or writing about, you are wasting valuable time.  If you sell shirts, then that information should be in a tag-line somewhere.  If you write about home decor – then the topics you write about should be in horizontal navigation bar.  If you want your reader to buy your shirts that are on sale, maybe it would be a good idea to have your sale items featured with a content slider.  But above anything –  your title should be clear and concise, and should represent who and what your are.

3.  Are you sure you are who you say you are??

And speaking of titles. Can we just all agree to agree… can you please call your site what is says in the address bar. Not that this is such a horribly horrible thing if you don’t, but I don’t know how many times I have visited sites like – “Sew Cute Buttons” (that’s totally an example, so if you run a site called sew cute buttons, then I’m totally not talking about you for real) then your address should be something like www.sewcutebuttons.com or sew-cute-buttons.com or something. Not www.pinkismyfavoritecolor.com Especially…. if you don’t have a feed link, or facebook, or twitter link visible – the chance that I’m gonna remember your actuall site address is slim, so if by chance I do remember what you had in your cute header title, and I went back to Google sew cute buttons and found nothing cause your address is really www.pinkismyfavoritecolor.com then you and I are out of luck on ever meeting again.

4.  Hello Friend!

And speaking of meeting. How are your users going to contact you?? What do your readers call you when they do contact you?  And don’t go on pretending like no one is ever going to want to try and contact you. If you don’t want your readers to think that you are a hermit, and who does, then have your contact information handy and visible. Homepage.  Up top somewhere, in the footer on top of other information…  it doesn’t really matter where, as long as it is in a neatly organized, visible place.  Oprah could be trying to talk to you and you’d never know cause she can’t find your email address. And if Oprah wanted to call you on the phone…  what is she going to call you?  I’m not asking you to advertise your social security number or to appear naked and speak in front of the president or anything. If you don’t want to deal with spam, then open a separate email account for your blog – there are so many out there that are free, and you never have to share your REAL email address with us visitor type folks, but for heavens sake, put it somewhere – and not in a contact form or linked up in a word that says ‘contact me’ but actually type out your email address and *gulp* yes put it up. Deal with the spam, delete it, block it, whatever.   But if you are willing to post information about potty training little Johny, then please, it’s just an email.  I don’t have a default email like outlook or anything set up, so if I don’t see your email address anywhere handy, then you can forget about going on Oprah with me when she calls me. [email protected] there – see I did it. It’s not that hard. I promise.  I bet I’ll get five spam emails from this alone.  Two words.  De.  Lete.

5.  Clean up your room!!!

Sometimes I’ve got to make my kids do things that they don’t want to do… eating veggies, cleaning their rooms. As a designer, it’s my job to tell you… CLEAN UP YOUR BLOG!!!!  A nice, clean, sparkling freshly organized blog speaks volumes about how nice, clean, and sparkling you are.  I am not ever going to want to advertise on a site that is cluttered up with buttons and flashing gizmos and trinkets and badges, and what not of varying sizes and colors….  I would just be too afraid that my button would get lost in a sea of messy buttons.  I want to advertise on sites that have their sidebar content organized, that seem to fairly rotate their buttons around, and who have a clear concise fair advertising policy.  These sites will attract millions and zillions of readers who will hang around and drool over your content and come back for more. (ok ok, I know I’m a drama queen) But really, you might want to get out your broom and dustpan, get ready to clean!!!

Loud flashy sites with too many buttons flashing and blinking and advertisements splattered all over everywhere are a big turnoff for me. I like to look at sites that are well organized, and sites that I don’t feel are trying to earn money off of me when I visit. I don’t want to feel pressured to click an ad or join this or that – I’m just here to read your blog, not to shop at amazon or find you through a gazillion momblog flashy buttony thingies. If I like your CONTENT, I will want a way to easily access more content and an easy way to find it again when I want to come back. That means it might be helpful to have your subscribe or twitter info highly visible. And yea, that’s cool that your best friend’s aunt’s cousin who read your blog sent you a blog award and you want to display all of your bloggy awards like a proud girl scout would display her patches, but really… we’re all grownups here, I can tell for myself if your blog is the cutest mom blog on planet pluto or not. I don’t need you to tell me that Sally thought it was. Take it down, clean up the clutter.

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Again, I’m not promising that by doing these things that your blog will automatically jump to number one on Google.  Success comes with many factors, social networking, developing relationships, content, and time.  If you are blogging about the same thing as 50 other popular blogs…  then what makes you different?  What can you offer readers that someone else is not?  Having a great design can help, but it is only a foundation.  So maybe you need to ask yourself today…  how strong is my foundation?

Simply Delightful Designs hosts Technical Tuesdays, where you can find a plethora of blogging advice, tips, and tutorials, to help your blog grow and to help you understand the more technical side of blogging.

When I started BrambleBerry.com in 1998, the internet was still in its infancy and the ‘strategy’ portion of getting sales wasn’t the science it was today. But, one thing has remained the same: the connection with customers mattered then and it matters now. People buy from people they like. When you are selling on-line, strive to connect with your customers. Be helpful out of a sincere desire to help – not just to sell – and your customers will reward you for it.

Anne-Marie
Bramble Berry Inc.
www.soapqueen.com
www.brambleberry.com

If you like this, you’ll LOVE the rest of the Mom-preneur Blog & Etsy Guide!  It also includes three bonus checklists that you’ll never want to be without.

Get your printable copy of the e-Book
Mom-preneur Blog & Etsy Guide
only $19.95