Many businesses are turning to blogs as an extension of their marketing collateral. Blogs are a great way to provide insight to your audience, give them an easy way to get to know you and allow them to build a relationship with you so that you can achieve brand loyalty.
Some companies have very successful blogs. They produce the content their audience wants and they have an aesthetically pleasing design that makes their site easy to navigate.
On the other hand, there are some businesses that cannot find success with their blog. Most businesses assume that the content is to blame, but oftentimes, the problem lies in the design. The following are three common design mistakes that could end up killing your blog.
1. It’s too busy.
Though you may not think that it’s fun, a busy background and busy font can make people turn away the minute they land on your blog. Bright backgrounds with bright fonts can be hard for your audience to look at. Plus, if your background is too busy, they may not be able to focus on the content, which is the most important part of your blog.
Crazy fonts can also be hard for your audience to read. If you use something other than a simple font, your audience may have a hard time figuring out the words on your blog. And along with the font, you also want to make sure that the size of your font is not too small or too big.
2. The navigation is confusing.
You don’t want your readers to simply land on a blog post, read it and leave. You want them to land on a blog post, read it, and stick around for a while perusing past blog posts and possibly even getting back to your website. This is where simple navigation is essential. If your navigation is hard to find or hard to read, your audience is not going to stick around. Don’t be cute with titles for your navigation. If the navigation is leading to a page about your company, use “About Us” as a title. If your audience doesn’t understand where a link will take them, they’ll be hesitant to click on it.
You also want to make sure that your navigation is easy to find, such as along the top or along the left-hand side. This is how most websites are set up, and this is how most Internet users expect to see a site. While placing your navigation somewhere different shows that you’re unique, it can also frustrate your audience trying to find it.
3. Your audience can’t share your posts.
The more your blog content is shared, the more traffic you’ll receive. Thanks to social networks, sharing your blog content is easy, but if you don’t have share features on your blog, you’ll never see the virality that some blogs do. When a reader lands on a blog that interests them, they may be inclined to share it with their fans, friends and followers through social media. If you don’t have a share button, they’re not going to take the time to copy and paste the URL. Instead, they simply won’t share the info, which means that your blog posts aren’t reaching as wide of an audience as you possibly can.
Jacob Smith is a business owner and avid blogger. He created his own business blog and used the wordpress themes business layouts.