If content is king, then your blog is its castle. Whether you use a no-code page builder or a web design tool to design a blog layout, it’s crucial to adopt a content-first approach to blog designs. Your blog’s design can help capture readers’ attention and keep them engaged on your website
What you’ll find out What blog design is and why it’s essential to your website’s success
Contents
7 actionable factors to consider when designing your blog
Examples of how popular companies have approached their blog design
How does content-first design work? Content-first design is an approach in which the content for your blog or website is considered most important, and takes priority over aesthetic elements like typography and themes.
In a content-first style, your designs act to serve the communication of information supported by images and videos. Putting content first can enhance the reader experience and simplify your website design process.
Why is blog design important?
Blog design is important because it enhances the user experience, encourages engagement on your website and improves your brand’s perception. A user friendly blog design can capture readers attention and help them stay longer on your blog.
A well designed design can also help your company appear more credible, with 48% of users associating website design with trust.
Good blog design can foster brand loyalty and lead to increased traffic, shares and conversions in the long run.
What distinguishes blog design from website design? The way information is presented is the primary distinction between blog and website design. Website design’s purpose is to present products or services by communicating benefits, features and use cases while blog design emphasizes the delivery of long-form content aided by infographics and video.
A website hosts a collection of content, which could be a simple one-page portfolio to a complex e-commerce site with thousands of products.
A blog is a collection of articles. A blog can be a part of a website or a separate site. News publications and content sites, for example, are basically big blogs but are also called websites. Publications like news sites and other article-driven websites are blogs, but we call them websites because there are no additional features or web pages.
This is because your blog’s content ranking on search engines can bring in new visitors to your website.
7 expert led blog design tips for better engagement
Most of the time, people visit blogs to read content or to find an answer to a question. Therefore, the primary objective of blog owners and designers is to develop a layout that is simple to navigate and contains content that is legible.
Design your blog for readability
Readability is important in blog design because it has a direct effect on how users interact with your blog and how much content they read.
A blog that is easy to read makes sure that your content is digestible and keeps people from leaving your website.
Make it easy for people to get the information they want, and they’ll be happier, come back more often, and be more likely to share your content. Notice how our blog’s font is slightly larger to aid readability.
Here are some suggestions for making your blog easier to read.
Choosing a legible typeface
Use a font size between 15px – 22px for the blog post body
Headings and subheadings must standout to make content scannable
Set your line height to between 150% – 200% (will vary depending on the typography)
Set the body copy font’s letter spacing to the standard. Use white space to separate paragraphs, headings, and visual content (images & videos) so that it’s easy to scan a blog page
Use empty space around the content to help the reader focus on the texts
If your content is too wide, people must move their heads slightly to read and scan the blog page. Although it may appear insignificant, this makes content difficult to read and increases the user’s cognitive load. People won’t come back to your blog if they have trouble reading it. Be consistent with your design. Visual consistency is essential for UI blog design. A header or featured image can sometimes pose a serious challenge for designers, because of the different colors and contrasts that make blog feeds appear cluttered.
To match our overall brand concept while maintaining consistency, Surfer’s blog, for instance, employs a particular design and consistent color scheme for header images. Visual consistency also helps highlight blog design elements, like calls to action (CTAs). For example, notice the prominent header UI element; sign up for Surfer call to action on the top right?
We use the same button element and color for CTAs across our website, so users can always identify important actions.
Focus on mobile design. Mobile-first or responsive design may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised by how many blogs still get this concept wrong.