Image by HAM Guy This is a guest post by Hans. Visit his blog, Catchtheposts.com, for more blogging tips, or you can subscribe to his feed here.

We used to hear that content is King. I agree with the fact that creating original and valuable content is a critical element to succeed online.

However, I would like to add my 2 cents: content is King but the container – the web space design – is not far behind! I really like metaphor, because it often helps us understand what the concerns really are. So let me bring you into the following metaphor.

We talked previously about how the needs of a new visitors differ from those of a returning visitor.

One way to solve this problem is to create a page specifically for new readers. It is very easy to do, and will help convert more of your one-off visitors into loyal readers.

Don’t Change Your Home Page

The traditional blog home page is well suited for returning visitors. It lists the most recent articles first, it emphasises headline so they can be easily scanned, and has a clear About link for learning more about the blog itself.

This is what a person expects from a blog, and that alone is a good reason to give it to them. The New-Visitor page must be something people choose to use; not something that is forced upon them.

New and returning are two very different types of visitor to a blog. One has been here before and knows the drill; the other is still wondering if they’re even in the right place. This is the most basic, but the most important distinction between visitors in your audience.

Why then, would we treat them the same?

The answer is that if we had an easy choice, we wouldn’t. But we don’t have the luxury of such choice. It would take a complicated setup to serve two different pages to new and returning visitors, and might merely confuse your visitors.

Instead, we can use an easier method. We use our regular home page for our regular visitors, and link to a special made-for-newbies page, for the newbies.

Minimalism is a big craze at the minute. Think for a moment; how many pure white designs did you see online today?

There are good principles underneath this all of course, and most likely you already know them.

Minimalism = Less clutter = Less distractions = More time focusing on the important stuff.

But do all minimalist designs work with this principle in mind? Do you not feel that in some cases, a designer has just thrown a few divs together and dubbed his theme minimalist?

Choosing the parts of your site that a user sees is all about prominence. The more prominent something is, the more often it will be seen.

The problem with prominence is that it’s relative.

Simply giving something a bright background and a bigger font does not make it prominent. It must stand out in comparison with the rest of the design.

For example, the "Come On In. We’re Hiring" badge on Authentic Boredom may be very noticeable, but if you put it on this site, it would just blend in. They need a different method of getting attention.

Many of us include the time in our comments.

The comments should serve as a conversational area, and it makes sense that you would be interested in when the last reply was written, or how long it has been since you left your reply.

However, time is relative to where you are in the world. While it is nearly 10pm here in the UK, it is past 3 in the morning in India. On the internet, hearing the time is meaningless if you don’t also know the time-zone it is in.

And that begs the question; why do we bother to include the time in the comments at all?

When I asked what the most important aspect of design was, many of you replied that it was readability; how easy it is to read your content.

People come to your blog to read articles, and the easier they are to read, the better. A design that obscures the content will only turn visitors away.

So what can we do to increase readability, and keep those readers reading?