In Does Your Blog Design Matter?, Instigator Blog’s Ben Yoskovitz asks you if your blog design is as important to you as it should be:
The beauty of blogging is that you can always change things, experiment and see what works. This holds true for copywriting, social networking and your blog design. You might start by changing some basic colors in a WordPress theme or moving things around in a sidebar (which can have a big impact) and eventually get into more sophisticated changes.
…Your blog’s design should be important to you. It reflects more than you might realize on you and how you’re perceived by others. You should always want to put your best foot forward.
An important point he brings up is that your blog should reflect who you are and what and how you blog. While many people are reading designed-stripped blogs in their feed readers, the majority of visitors to your blog “see” your blog and form an instant decision on the quality of the content based upon their first impression.
Are you making a good first impression with your blog?
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Lorelle on WordPress 
4 Comments
my opinion is obviously a bit biased, but I do agree that design is really important, not only with blogs, but for any type of web property. For example, I recently bought a journal and was so impressed with it that I immediately visited their website, which was so ugly and unprofessional that I was completely turned off.
Sometimes I do wonder if the average person really care how well-designed a website really is, because in conversations with my husband, it becomes really obvious that I am extremely critical of designs, but as long as he likes the content, the design doesn’t really bother him (he does appreciate well designed websites, but it’s not that important to him).
One thing we do agree on however is flashing, animated images all over the page – not a good first impression!
🙂
I don’t think a good design will save you from anything. I mean, if you’re writing is bad then nothing you do with your theme can fix that. And a bad design isn’t going to keep most people from coming back if you have god content.
Obviously if I can’t find what I’m looking for, or if the colors don’t have enough contrast and I can’t read, there’s going to be a problem. But you can’t let yourself get to the point that you change whenever someone says they don’t like something. You can never please everyone.
For the mass public, only two things matter: 1) Good Content. 2) Easy to Read.
Design matters. Good content isn’t enough if people are turned off immediately by the design. You have to get people in the door before they buy.
To Chris’s point, I would never suggest you change everything people recommend you change. You’re right – you can’t please everyone, and you’re not trying to. That’s not the goal. But design definitely matters. I’m living proof of it with my site.
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