My 22 Best Design Tips Ever – Part One
I was recently asked by Brian Clark over at Copyblogger to write something – if you read his post The Cosmo Headline Technique for Blogging Inspiration, you’ll understand why I’m writing this. Such a creative way to invite others to participate, and I am cordially accepting the invitation. Thanks Brian!
So, what I’m going to do is write a two-part series on my best 22 design tips (including a few other random things as well listed in chronological order of my existence on the web.)
1. Obtain the domain name you want.
This was huge for me, because I knew the only domain name I wanted – which somebody owned. It never hurts to do a Whois search, because it’s likely you might be able to contact the owner and work out a deal.
2. Come up with a plan before you write your first post.
This is actually something that I didn’t do, but wish I had – I spent the first few months of my blogging trying to figure out what it was I wanted to blog about. I took my visitors (what few there were at the time) on a roller coaster from personal blogging, to poetry, to design tips and back – a few times.
3. Create the design of your blog/site before you start.
The truth is that people are attracted to the design just as much (if not more) than the content of a blog. Yes, I believe that content is king, but what keeps your readers coming back isn’t just the writing you produce, but also the readability and layout of the blog.
4. Research similar blogs that are in your niche.
Because I have a knack for wanting to be different, this is something that I personally choose to avoid – primarily because I enjoy setting trends. However, it’s important that if you have a blog on tech/gadgets, that the overall feel of your site makes people feel like they are on a blog that will discuss those topics. Having colorful rainbows and other neat imagery on a site that discusses iPhones might be a tad distracting.
5. Don’t copy the look of another blog in your niche.
This one is huge, because the last thing you want to do when trying to establish readership is to be known as a copycat. Yes, it’s easy to be inspired by people like Michael Arrington and Darren Rowse, but I guarantee you that your potential readers will know what their sites look like, and will feel you are not a credible (not to mention lame) source of new information.
6. Take risks with what you do.
I’m not encouraging you to do something crazy here, but people are attracted to those who try new things, and do something innovative in their industry. Trend setters are known to be pioneers in their field, and there’s nothing better to be known as the one who started something.
7. Don’t overdo advertisements on your blog.
There are a lot of people who make this vital mistake at the beginning of their blog, and it can kill potential readership very quickly. Just because bloggers like John Chow and Jeremy Shoemaker have a lot of advertisements on their site, doesn’t mean that you should. They get away with it because they have a very loyal readership, and quite frankly deserver to be compensated for all of the time spent on delivering their readers quality content.
8. Make your RSS/email subscribe section prominent.
I was encouraged by my friend Daniel Scocco over at Daily Blog Tips one day to place my RSS/email subscribe in a better spot. The truth is, at that point, I had just rebooted and didn’t even have one on the site – a total oversight. People who like to visit your blog want to follow your content in a way that’s convenient for them to read, so why not make it easy on them and allow them to find you subscription information?
9. Write posts that inspire reader comments.
One of the things that keeps a blog “alive” is constant communication between site visitors and the blogger. I’ve noticed that when I write something controversial, there is a great chance I’ll get more people commenting. The more people comment on your blog, the better chance you have of others doing it as well. Worst case scenario, if you are looking for a way to have people comment, do something lame like I did and invite your visitors to delurk.
10. Avoid writing really long posts.
One thing I personally don’t like doing is spend a lot of time reading one post – if you have that much to say about something, try breaking it into a few posts, or make it a series. Although people are attracted to good content, you may also lose your visitors’ attention by making them scroll down the screen a hundred times.
11. Stay on topic.
This post is an example of NOT staying on topic. I was asked to write about my best 22 design tips ever, and it turns out the first 11 were more on blogging in general. I did this on purpose, to see if anyone would catch it – a fun experiment. I promise that the next 11 will be more design oriented, but I just wanted to start off by talking about the basics of the blog before going into the detail.
I will put up #2 (Come up with a plan before you write your first post) as #1. Brainstorming what to blog can be one of the most important thing in my opinion. There’s millions of blog out there and there are also millions that are stagnant simply because the bloggers just couldn’t create the content. There could be a lot of reason why the blog was started but I think if one could just be passionate with what they have to write about, and have relevant information that a reader could use, I believe readership will naturally follow.
I don’t claim to be an expert in this and I myself have made this mistake before but I believe a natural flow of brainstorming the blog content will be my #1 priority.
Great insight George – I suppose that in a lot of cases #2 should go before #1. You don’t want to obtain a domain on technology and decide you want to write about celebrity gossip!
Good stuff Brian.
I am looking forward to the next piece, and glad the advice helped!
For sure – friends helping friends, right? Notice the location of my RSS & email subscribe?
Number 5 strikes home. We’re in the process of picking our new look and site design to move into bigger leagues, so we’ve been scoping out what the best sites (or what we feel are the best sites) look like. We want that “pro” look – but we don’t want to be copycats. That means hours spent analyzing what we like about a design and what we don’t – patterns shine through and we narrow down what fits for us.
We’re still working on it
James, best of luck on your hunt for the right design – it is ok (in my opinion) to use elements or concepts from sites you like, and mash them all together. That’s what I ended up doing on my Revolution themes.
If you want compliments tossed your way, your themes gathered almost everything we were looking for in one place. Now we’re looking at customization to reflect our business.
Hm. I should email you, shouldn’t I…
I just wrestled with No. 3, choosing to create a new design from two themes that I really like. I’d be the last one to say content comes second to design, but approaching a new site can be akin to starting a conversation. Someone could be making the most eloquent speech, but all you can think of is ‘gee, he really needs a nose-job.
Anyway, great tips, Brian.
James, that didn’t take long – will read your email now!
@ Ed – In all honesty I think that design/content are 50-50 in terms of importance, one way or the other depending on what niche. The content is king theory really is more a matter of search engines, and how to establish traffic.
If content is a king, then design is a queen. And every king needs a ( proper ) queen.
Hmm… the point is that I agree with you about 50/50 in terms of importance for successful website. Without proper design you can’t have good navigation, good add placement, search engine friendly coding etc….
I’m not 100% sure about creating the design first. I know you were not trying to say “don’t you dare start without a theme,” but… I wanted to have the perfect theme before I began my blog, but that was keeping me from getting started. I decided I just needed to jump in and start writing. I still want to do my own theme (seriously planning ideas now!) but I’m glad I started before I was completely happy with the theme. Yes, I use one that many people use, but I think producing the content with an acceptible theme is better than avoiding starting!
Good list, Brian. Can’t wait to see the design one!
Haha, no I didn’t notice that your “design” points were mostly “blogging” points. For the firsst 18 months (or more) of blogging I failed at most of these things. These days I try to stay on topic, but I still don’t consider myself with any particular niche. I’m not sure what to do about that, my blog started as a personal blog, it still is, but I don’t talk about what I do everyday or anything like that anymore… I can’t decide if I really need to narrow down or not.
LaurenMarie – I’m glad you jumped in! You picked a good theme to start with until you find your own
Thanks, for good tips…actually sometimes i got confuse about my wind hehe
Avoiding long stories is really hard for some sites. Much like mine. Where everything needs much analysis, and people who are truly interested are the ones who stay around. Intellectual and intelligent information is becoming scarce on the internet now. Its kind of sad.
A really good resource for me who’s planning to get busy blogging again.
Many thanks man!
Hi Brian, Nice trick with the 22 and 11. I also hate long posts but sometimes I get in the flow of things and it just ends up so long! And pictures make it look even bigger. Oh well, some things do deserve longer posts though.
Nice Tips.
Nice
I can see that you have updated your Magazine theme to Vol. 2 on your site.
Looking forward to see the same on my site. Cheers!
#10 – unless you have a history of writing huge posts and that is what your readership expects…
#3 – thanks for the help Brian! (template is nearly perfect..)
hi brian,
I was surprised why people are thinking brian clark copyblogger wrote this, until I saw u r url. My bad
looking forward to your next 11. High level gyan is generally boring as everyone seems to be knowing them and they look so obvoius. But these were really good.
thanks again.
I m bookmarking you for future posts.
vineet nair
http://internetbusinessjunkie.blogspot.com
I totally agree with you on #5. Use other successful blogs as a guide but don’t copy their exact look. Although it’s really hard these days with all the free blog themes out there. For businesses, that’s not an option but for smaller blog sites or personal sites, there’s nothing wrong with using a free blog template.