SALAM NEGARAKU - Appetizer4Party

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10 BLOG DESIGN DOS & DON’TS

1. Make sure your site is mobile responsive

As more and more people access the internet via their handheld devices, it’s important that your site shows up well, regardless of gadget. This handy tool will tell you whether or not your site is mobile-friendly. Just enter your URL.

2. Do make your blog’s purpose immediately apparent

Visitors should be able to tell within 3 seconds what your blog is about. Use a bio box, tagline or something similar to communicate it. Would visitors be able to describe to others what you do?

3. Use lots of whitespace

Whitespace allows your site to breathe and is less overwhelming.

4. Don’t clutter your sidebars with all sorts of gadgets and widgets

Only keep things that have a meaningful purpose. Besides, all those fancy plugins can slow your site down.

5. Do keep your header height minimal

Don’t make your header image so tall visitors have to scroll down excessively to see your content.

6. Do make navigation clear and obvious

You don’t want a visitor to land on your site, read one page, not know where to go next and therefore leave. You want them to stick around a while!

7. Don’t have auto-play music, videos or ads on your blog

Many an unsuspecting blog reader has come upon a site that scares the eebie jeebies out of them (or worse, their sleeping infant) when the auto-play music or video starts blaring.

These days, this happens most frequently with ads, so if you use display advertising in your monetization efforts, make sure you know what your readers will experience. Is it worth it?

8. Do put a contact link, button or page on your blog

Do make it clearly visible. Blogging is part of social media and is meant to be engaging.

9. Do look at your blog from a reader’s point of view

Does your site make sense to a new visitor? If you’re not sure, have a trusted friend look at it for you.

10. Don’t use light text on a dark background

This is extremely difficult to read and is hard on the eyes.

Optional resources 

• Print Friendly – A tool that gives your readers the ability to print out your posts easily. You can add a Print Friendly button to your site.
• HTML & CSS tutorials – Get a crash course in CSS or HTML.

So much design can be done on your own. For those of you who have good design sense, this shouldn’t be difficult. For those of us with little design talent, it can be learned. I am completely self taught. There are so many free tutorials and free or very reasonably-prices resources online. Canvaand PicMonkey are good places to start for designing graphics. For site design, I recommend you pay a little bit for a Genesis theme.

Sure, there is a learning curve, and it takes longer, but I do think it’s worth the experience.

If you are working within a small budget (or no budget as I was for years), DIY is the way to go. However, if you have a healthy budget or you don’t have the time to learn on your own, you might want to hire a designer.

Designers via a service

I have also used Upwork and 99designs to find designers and have been quite pleased with the results. I’ve tried Fivrrr as well, but was not impressed (others swear by it though).

If you use a 3rd party service here my tips:

• Take the time to look through lots of profiles of various freelancers. Be sure to look at their portfolios to get an idea of their style.
• Start a relationship with that person by giving them a small project at first. Clearly state the objectives and the end date. Note their responsiveness in communication, eye for detail, follow through and of course, the final product. Hire them for additional projects before hiring them ongoing.

Other ways to find designers

• Minted (referral link) – I’m pretty much in love with most of the designers here and if you click through to their profiles, many of them do freelance work.
• Dribbble – I could browse through this website for hours and not get bored. The talent in this world is stunning.
• Word of Mouth – By far, the best way to find a designer is by word of mouth. Don’t forget to ask on Twitter, Facebook or even your own blog for suggestions.