TIPS|| BLOGGING 101: BLOG LAYOUT & DESIGN MISTAKES YOU SHOULD AVOID

Everyday this week will feature a series of posts on Blogging tips, I will occasionally keep writing them but consider this week a free course on Blogging from my little experience as a blogger.

I have so far built and tweaked my blog to what it looks like now and built and helped design about 5 other blogs which is somewhat becoming one of my freelance jobs. With my little experience, here are a few mistakes that I have noticed so far that I think you should try avoid whether you are using a blogger template or custom template.

• DARK BACKGROUND LIGHT TEXT

When you start(ed) blogging, the first thing that comes to your mind is to stand out because at that point all you have are Ideas and passion to stand out and wow the world. You immediately start to explore blog designs and majority of people including I myself usually go for dark backgrounds, greys and blacks instead of whites, pastels and nudes and light texts instead of dark ones.

After a while, you start to lose readers or if you are lucky to have those who are straightforward and care or you are lucky to be reading these posts, you would realise that this is the reason most of your readers don't really comment or come back.

Aesthetics wise, it might look fantastic but readability and usability wise its not very proper.

think about it, reading books and papers is way easier on our eyes than reading on the computers, tablets or phones.

• TOO SMALL OR TOO BIG PICTURES

I have gone to so many people's blogs and noticed images that are too small and I can't really see them, or images that are too big that they spill out of the blog's layout. Its important to find a decent balance for your blog's images. If you are a fashion or beauty or products blogger whose blog revolves around pictures, you may want to set a permanent width for your pictures on your blog.

• NARROW BLOG LAYOUT

When I say narrow blog layout, I'm referring to those who use less than half of the enter blog width, those whose blog's computer view is similar to the phone view. This also affects visibility.

Utilize your blogs width well using up atleast 3/5 of the entire width to avoid your readers having to squint or read a sentence on about 9 lines.

• TOO MUCH SIDEBAR CLUTTER

Quit using unnecessary widgets, people have calendars on their phones, you blog doesn't need one, move your labels to a decent part of your blog preferably the bottom alongside other long apps.

Awards, Features and all the Badges can all be put on a page and linked to on the home page, you can turn 2 to 2 million items into 1 word just by adding them into a page.

the more white space you have on your blog, the more people know what is important and the more they notice what you want them too.

Cluttered sidebars take away from your posts and important informations.

• HUGE AND HEAVILY DESIGNED HEADERS 

Even though blogs may seem similar to journals and digital scrapbooks since what we do is basically share our ideas, thoughts, opinions and obsessions, It's Still not okay for your blog headers to be so Huge taking up most of the entire homepage or too heavy in design that the colours are something of a nightmare. when it comes to blog headers, simple does it, use simple fonts, small cliparts and take up just about 5% of your homepage.

The reader has to scroll down several times just to get to the content. In a book you have a title page; on a blog you have a title bar. The title bar should be visible and eye-catching, but it is not the thrust of your blog. Keep it simple and small. Focus on your content.

• CHOOSING A NAME

If you don't learn anything from this post, this you should learn, correcting people  every time because you used a weird name, getting blocked on social networks because you used a suggestive name MYSTYLEORGY or just pure using redundant names that would in a few month or years not make sense anymore MYFIRSTBABYBUMP should be avoided.

I get that you want to write about your NYSC experience but using a name like NYSC Musings instead of say After University that can span across your Nysc experience, job search, interviews, marriage and maybe even love life just ends up restricting you.

•  NOT OWNING YOUR DOMAIN NAME

Domain names are the cheapest and easiest things that a blogger should invest in once you decide to start a blog, it's a part of the Blogging must haves.

It is cheap costing as low as 3k for a year to about twice that for two years depending on how sort after your name is.

However, they are the ultimate start of branding your blog, they make it so professional and so easy and instead of people having to type www.Deemako.blogspot.com or www.deemako.wordpress.com they can easily just go to Deemako.com.

If you want to employ my service to help you with your blog design, or you want me to write more about a particular topic do leave your comments or email me on makodesola@gmail.com.

Related posts you should have read by now:
BLOGGING PREREQUISITE: 10 MUST HAVES FOR EVERY BLOGGER

TIPS FOR POSING FOR PICTURES FOR FASHION BLOGGERS

MULTITASKING TIPS: BALANCING WORKING, SCHOOLING & BLOGGING

TIPS FOR GETTING OVER A CREATIVE BLOCK

More posts to come, do leave your comments and questions.