How to Increase Your Blog Traffic Through Effective Web Design

A good blog design is essential in achieving your blogs potential. Web design is the first thing your visitors will see. If you want to make a good first impression, you must be sure that your design is worth the second look.

There are several websites that can help you to redesign your blog including Typepad, Squarespace and WP101. Typepad provides various blog designs and publishing. On the other hand, Squarespace is more suited for service providers and other professionals such as lawyers, doctors or educators whilst WP101 is ideal for new bloggers who run WordPress. WP101 provides video tutorials about creating, optimizing and customizing a WordPress installation.

Whilst the design of your blog is important, choosing extreme themes will not do your blog any favors. The content needs to be the focus of your blog. Inappropriate design can be too distracting. It is important to keep in mind that a great website needs to have the following:

1. A Footer

In order for viewers to be able to navigate to the website with ease, footers must be implemented. Important information must be placed in your website like copyright information, links to the website of the author, as well as social media profile links and contact information where appropriate.

2. A sense of Uniqueness

Due to the vast number of websites on the internet, making a lasting impression is vital. Creating an aspect of your website that is unique can help people to recognize your website, generate links and help you stand out from the crowd. Creating wonderful designs, color schemes and great images will not be enough if all of them are seemingly familiar. Needless to say, you must ensure that each element you put into your website complements each other. To design your colour palette we rcommend Adobe Kuler

3. A Sidebar

Another important factor you should consider when developing a website is the sidebar. It is often neglected by web designers, but it can provide you the website owner many advantages including: opt-in forms, showcasing your top content, highlighting your post popular articles and promoting your products / services. Make sure that the side bar has an interesting appearance and is user friendly.

       4. A Place For Feedback

What others think about your website is important! You need to gather feedback on how your viewers view and interact with your website. It will provide you insight on what to improve or focus on. Knowing your weak and strong points will help you in playing the game right. Comments are one of the reasons why blog sites are popular to many individuals. It provides the readers a platform to express their ideas and thoughts on various topics. Keeping your readers engaged is vital to the success of your website. Split testing is becoming more popular and can help you improve many website statistics including pages visited, time on site and lowering bounce rate.

Aileen Galsim is a blogger for Showcase Creative (http://www.showcasecreative.com) a UK printing company, based in Camberley, that provides bespoke presentation folders, calendars, and other printed presentation products.