Don’t you think that the design of your blog plays a vital role in the time spent by the reader on your blog?

Don’t you think that it is the design of your blog which compels a visitor to stop and read your content?

I guess other than your writing style blog design also plays a very crucial role in retaining the visitors on your blog.

If you too are thinking the same, then we two are on the same track.

Great to hear that; let’s go ahead with the top 5 blog designing tips which can stop your visitors on your blog and compel them to read your content.

Undoubtedly, it is no hidden truth that many people determine to stay on your blog or to click on the close button from extreme right or the back button of their browser within a few seconds. You know the fact that first impression is the best one, and thus the same should also reflect from your blog.

If your blog is unable to impress a new visitor within a few second, they won’t give another thought to stay on your blog and will leave your site. This is the design of your blog which can give this first impression on the visitors mind.

Content, how you present the content, all these things matters a lot, but all those comes as a secondary stuff to the visitor. The first thing which attracts a visitor is the design of your blog.

Being an active member of a few blogging community website, I usually go through hundreds of blog on a daily basis; I usually click on a link only when I got attracted by the title and the short description of the same. Exceptions are the blogs on food items; I can click on any link which shows some food items especially some chicken items.

Whenever I click on a link, within a few seconds my mind decide about whether I should stay there or not. Undoubtedly it is the design and presentation of the blog which forces me to either close it down without reading the content, or to stay there and go through the content.

My around 8 years of experience as a blogger (though I am in SEO since 2004) taught me that if your blog is not at all readable or having poor color combination or take hell lots of time to load, no one will give more than 5 to 10 seconds to your blog. On the other hand if your site loads immediately, having simple navigation, readable content and mobile-friendly, then it will have higher chances that the readers will stay for long.

 Top 5 Blog Designing Tips!

Here are the top 5 blog designing tips as per my own experiences which can compel a reader to stay long on your blog:

 Blog Loading Time

Although it is not a point related exactly to the blog designing phase, but it is an important factor related to blog and the engagement of readers on a blog. You all know the importance of the blog loading time, especially when it comes to do the search engine optimization of your blog. Especially after the updates like Penguin and Panda updates of Google, we all are being forced to take this signal seriously. Although in my opinion site loading time is the most important criteria behind the success of any blog, and this is the reason why I never compromised on getting the best quality web hosting services for my blogs.

Those who are the regular visitors of my blog they know that I always prefer Hostgator for all the web hosting purposes. My second choice always remains as GoDaddy, and the third choice is obviously the BlueHost. Although, I myself has used Hostgator for all my blogs, and GoDaddy for a few blogs, though did not used the BlueHost personally.

Being a blog owner the first thing which you need is that your blog should host at a place which can be easily retrievable, should always remain online, and should be recalled on a faster note, and this all can be achieved only if you can have a quality web hosting service provider.

Ideally you should improve the performance of your blog as much as possible. Don’t make your visitors wait for your blog to load. Your blog must load quickly. Try to optimize your image sizes so that it can load faster and decrease the bandwidth as well. Try not to use many flashy things on your blog. Although it looks good, but take hell lots of time to load, causing irritation in the visitors.

 Readable Content

Although most common tips for the success of any blog is to write compelling, evergreen, informative and great content. I am not at all against them, but then the most basic criteria for the success of your blog is that whatever you write or publish, should be readable to your visitors, else there is no point in developing such a nice content.

I guess on Saturday only I came through one interesting blog post on some SEO tips, and I like that as well, but I did not like one thing over there. The paragraph spacing was missing in between the content, which was stopping it to look attractive and readable. I shared the same as a feedback over there.

Undoubtedly, there is no point in presenting a blog post without any paragraph breaks (people don’t like reading a huge long paragraph), or having bullet points. The font size and the font itself matters a lot. Also you should focus on making your blog as a responsive one, as with the increasing use of mobile phones (smart phones), tablets, etc. responsive web designing is becoming the most important need of the time.

With responsive blogs your blog will easily be readable to a visitor, who is reading your blog on a low-end mobile phone, or a person who is opening your blog on a very high-end smart phone, or a person reading on a laptop.

Mostly the responsive blog designs resizes your blog as per the screen resolution on which the reader is opening it, and not only that they also optimizes and resizes your images too.

This is the reason why I do recommend the professional and premium WordPress themes for each and every bloggers, which I personally take from MyThemeShops or StudioPress.

You won’t believe the fact that the bounce rate of my blogs I News India and Tech Acid reduced heavily after I switched to the present themes, and the credit goes to the designs.

 Simple Navigation

Navigation, sounds very simple, but in fact plays a very important role in staying of the visitor on your blog.

Many bloggers simply ignore this point. For them navigation only includes the categories of their blog, which is not true.

When we are discussing about navigation, it includes the things like Menu, Search Box, Static pages and blog posts, Achieve, etc. Undoubtedly the main aim of your blog should be so, that your visitor will easily navigate into your blog. They should easily be able to locate the related blog posts of your blog. They should easily be able to locate the different categories and tags of your blog. They should easily be able to navigate from one blog posts to another. Don’t make it hard for them to move in between your blog posts.

Also don’t irritate your bloggers by opening each and every link of your blog post in a new window or tab. Ideally all the links of the same domain should open in the same window, while the links from others website or blog should open in a new tab.

 Browser Friendly Blog

One of the most irritating things which I usually face (normally with free blogs) is that their design breaks into pieces when it’s being opened in some other browser. Many a times I have seen this that bloggers usually don’t emphasize much on the browser friendly design of their blog. Try to test your blog on each and every possible browser and see if your design is working fine on that.

Undoubtedly as I said that responsive and mobile friendly design is the need of the hour, similarly emphasize should also be given on browser friendly blog, else your bounce rate will definitely increase.

Do also understand that whenever you are making any changes in your blog design, do look closely for the bounce rate of your blog. Try to understand if the new design is increasing it or decreasing it.

It will give you an idea about whether your readers like your new look or not. Also please don’t forget to read my blog on SEO tips for website redesign purposes.

 Show Your Most Popular Content

Let me give you a trade secret. If you really want to increase the engagement of your visitors, try to show them the most popular content of your blog.

Undoubtedly if a few particular blog posts of yours attracting a lot of traffic, or attracting a lot of discussion on it, that probably means that it has the potential of being liked by most of your readers. It is not that difficult for you to provide a link to that particular content to your readers.

Ideally you can include a list of most popular blog posts of your blog in your navigation menu or on to your footer section. You can also include some plugins for related blog posts at the end of your blog post, providing more options to your readers.

So those were the top 5 blog designing tips which might help you to increase the time spent by any of your visitors. I guess you might have some other tips as well, or I might also be missing some point over here, if so then please don’t hesitate in sharing the same in the form of comments.

Please not that along with all these above mentioned points you can also need to use the header tags like H1, H2, H3, etc. in a better way so that your content will look further readable to your readers.

Although I have written all the points considering a self hosted blog, but all these points are somehow also related with any blog. So you can also consider applying them on your blog, no matter on what platform it is running.