Good Design Looks Good. Period.
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It’s the final saga in our quest to decide What Makes Good Blog Design? and today we are coming to one simple truth, good design looks good. That much is obvious, but good looks are for more than just looking at.
You don’t design a blog to print it out and hang it on your wall to be admired and you don’t design it to keep up with the Joneses. Stunning designs are good simply because they get you more readers.
Design Says 3 Things on the First Impression
- How much effort has been put into this site? If the design looks gorgeous and is a joy to use, then a lot of time has been put into it. We can then assume that the same level of care has been put into the content of the site.
- How modern is this site? This isn’t always as crucial on blogs (Where the date is usually shown), but it still bears mentioning. We can all recognize 90s design a mile off, and subconsciously we can even pick up on less drastic differences, such as differing styles. Whilst good design is in no way limited to the most recent trend, keeping up the pace will help your image as a modern blog.
- What is the personality of this site? Colorful? To the point? Friendly? A good design fits the image of the blogger behind it. Your aesthetics are all you have to paint that initial picture with.
As you can see, there is quite a bit to be gleaned from a first impression. A good design will say the right things, and is the most effective way of slashing your bounce rate.
One of your most valuable tools is to make good use of the fold. Whilst many users will indeed scroll down the page, it doesn’t change the fact that the first thing they see is still the top of the page.
From that one glimpse, they need to discover the name and purpose of your site, but they also need to decide if it is worth their while viewing it. That is what makes attractive design useful.
Beyond that, it’s up to you to create the best design you can, whilst still succeeding in your own goals, user goals and being distinctive. A good design can be made up from any combination of colors, shapes, designs and fonts.
I’ll end the series with a final question. Are usable designs attractive? The most usable web sites are often the most forgettable, and not by mistake. They were built with the user experience in mind. But is that on its own enough?
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About the Author
Michael Martin
Michael Martin is the founder of Pro Blog Design. He works as a freelance web designer, loves WordPress, and has an unhealthy addiction to smilies.
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I love this blog, I have been working on a new blog design for a while now and every time I read one of your articles it helps me get farther and farther along with the design. I’m not very good at it, but I hope others like what I’ve been working on, I don’t know how long until I debut it but hopefully it is a good design.
I really love this blog too !
Hey Michael. Glad you’re enjoying the blog!
The fact that you’re trying at all puts you above many others, and over time, you can easily become a very good designer if you want to. The nice thing about web design is that it’s never finished. If you put it live on your blog, you can let your readers pick out any “mistakes” and then fix them over time.
No web site is perfect on launch, so don’t worry about the debut too much. :D
Hey Michael,
Good post and great blog. I agree with all your points. I just restarted my blog after a year off (and lost the data :( ) and I noticed that while searching for other folks blogs, many have blogs with the last entry being months ago. My advice is to just keep the blog updated as much as possible, even if that means posting once a week, or once every other week.
To answer your question if a usable design is attractive, the answer is YES. Keeping a clean, organized, and nag free design is what will attract visitors, and repeat visitors. Too often I visit a blog that is so cluttered with ads, that it’s difficult to tell the difference between a link and an advertising link. On top of that, they use super super tiny text, with colors that don’t even go together. I don’t even waste another second on the site.
On top of that, some blogs require that I register to comment – the more difficult they make it to make a comment, the less likely I will hang around.
Great post :), love the items you posted in the little list. All definitely valid points by far.
To answer your question I’d say yes and no, the more there’s focussed on just usability but less on design the content has to be really good.
Just take a look in example at Google.com, design simply sucks of course. Ever since the 90’s it has barely changed and if any other site would try to pull that off chances are low they’d come far. Since what Google offered though was absolutely brilliant, the design didn’t matter.
These days though where it’s getting harder and harder to break through design is like your first thing which welcomes the user, if usability is the only thing focussed on but the design is far from to be found they will probably be forgotten just as quickly.
A good balance has to be found between the two I’d say, too much focussed on design after all isn’t too handy either. Since as we all love artistic freedom, some things just don’t work out well on the web and usability gets reduced to pretty much 0%.
So to put it short:
Are usable designs attractive? Definitely doesn’t have to be.
Are attractive designs usable? Same answer.
What matters is the balance between them two which has to be found for the site.
Most important factor of all would be usability.
I personally like clean and easy to navigate designs.
I hate flash-based websites, especially those that use odd fonts and tonnes of textures. I come by some that after loading it, I don’t know where to click so I ended up being moving my mouse all over the place to identify what are clickable and what are decorations.
A website can look beautiful and usable, if you can master CSS. Easy to learn, difficult to master.
Check out this site for inspiration:
http://www.csszengarden.com/
I have just updated my theme to a more beautiful and sleeker one and best of all it was free!
I truly think that first impression is important too.
I’ve been against using a header until now, but now I am thinking that a well-designed header gives a design unique brand, and I have actually a new mock-up of my design with a header ready in Photoshop.
The header can still be put to good use. For example, I’ll move the subscription link and search box to the header to free up the sidebar space for more valuable content and so on.
What do you think?
Robert – Frequent updates are definitely the best way of staying fresh, but only if users are landing on your home page. What if they’ve arrived on a page in your archives though?
I agree that a cluttered design is very off-putting, but that is poor design. Does an uncluttered design constitute a good design though? eg. Jakob Nielson is a usability guru, and writes great advice on usability, but would you say his site looks great?
Slevi – I agree that balance is key, but you think the Google design sucks?? It’s one of the best design sites on the internet. Even today, that design is probably the main reason that I use Google and not Yahoo. :o
Goldfries – Flash annoys me as well. Great designs are one thing, but making me wait 30s while you load that design? No thanks!
Dave – It can indeed. CSS is a necessity these days. :D
Warrior – Looks good. First impressions do matter a lot.
Mohsin – I’ve always wondered about that on your blog. I love the design of it, and I like how you get straight into your content. It works really well on your article pages (Btw – Is the sidebar font supposed to be that small on article pages?).
I’m not so sure about the home page though. For instance, the top commenters list doesn’t need that sort of attention, and the recent posts list isn’t very useful on the home page anyway (The posts are already listed on the page). Perhaps that space could be better used?
I think you hit the nail on the head.
If I go to a web site that is styling an over popular layout (like K2), then I tend to glaze over that particular blog. It shows that the blogger doesn’t put much effort into the site – thus, the content isn’t worth looking into.
Agreed. I think that all of us have that same reaction on various levels. Some people aren’t as bothered by it, but others certainly are. :)
Michael the text in sidebar looks too small? I guess my stylesheet is not cross-browser compatible :( If only all browsers used the same rendering engine.
Well yeah, I don’t see the purpose of top commenters list and recent posts so much up there anymore, hence thoughts about new design.
I’ll let you know when I put up new design so you can critique it :)
Seems so. It’s fine on the home page, but perhaps FireFox is having trouble on the single pages for some reason.
But yes, do let me know! :D
Mohsin, Your design rocks. I agree with Michael, the sidebar font is extremely small when viewing articles (compared to the size on the main page). I’m using Firefox with a 1920×1200 resolution.
I went ahead and took the liberty of making a screen shot so you can see how small it looks on my screen.
http://cache01.ae1.net/bc2b82d466df31b22e39a165197bf93c.jpg
Thanks for that Robert. :)
Thanks for pointing that out Michael and Robert. I’d have never known FF was rendering the fonts improperly because I am on Opera these days. I tested my template on FF a few days ago, but it was working fine back then. Now I gotta hunt down this weird problem.
Robert, thanks a lot for liking my design :) I am flattered!
Good luck. It will probably be something in your single.php file, or some conditional sidebar code (Though a bug that effects FF but not Opera is a strange one! xD )
I agree with every point. Thanks also for your kind comment on my design site. I’m getting there- slowly but surely!
The CSS problem, just check whether there’s any inheritance issues.
I did have a quick glance at the CSS but I don’t see which part is causing it yet.
Viewing it over Mac OS Firefox, the links are still small. On Mac OS Safari, the links worked fine.
It’s the first time I see Safari and Firefox displayed conflicting size for fonts. :)
Tried validation and I keep getting – 500 Can’t connect to bloggingbits.com:80 (Bad hostname ‘bloggingbits.com’) – even though I could browse the site.
@Michael: Personally I don’t like the yahoo design either :P. The live search is something which design wise appeals more to me, but still an avid Google user though anyways. Design just isn’t everything :).
OK guys, check out now. As I said yesterday, and as suggested by Michael, the design has got wholly new look :)
@ goldfries, the other day I was messing with the comments template and forgot to close a tag (you guessed it, it was ‘small’ font tag). Strangely, other browsers were ignoring the unclosed tag but FireFox kept pointing out that something was wrong.
Though, I guess we should credit FF for showing such great love for web standards ;)
Dunno what your old design looked like Mohsin, but your current thing is look good :). Not too sure about the drop shadow on the search box though, but I suppose it’s just a personal thing I created against drop shadows :P.
I definitely agree. The “how much effort has been put into the site” quote is right on. That’s not to say that you can’t have a successful blog using a theme that that 10,000 other people use, but it’s so much better to have some sort of a custom design. I think it really shows that the author gave it that little extra to stand a bit and usually their content is reflective on the design.
To many people see John Chow making bank so they started a blog, loaded the Misty theme and then started talking about making money online hoping for the same success. You gotta stand out.
Thanks Slevi :) and thanks everyone else for giving awesome critique.
And Michael, sorry for hijacking your post ;)
Glad it’s all sorted now Mohsin. It’s always something stupid, isn’t it? xD
Deron – JC is a great example. The number of imitators using that theme and style are ridiculous (Well, expect for John Cow of course. xD ). Hopefully that will numb down a little now that he has a custom. :)
Hi there! Good work! Excellent article on design. ,)
Thanks. See you around Emotion. :)
I saw this article a month ago when it was first posted and now it’s up to 27 comments. Good stuff Michael.
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
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thanks alot for this nice post!
Very nice stuff! We just uploaded a new design to our website that you might be interested in actually. http://su.pr/AECOS4
Have a look and let us know what you think!
even pick up on less drastic differences, such as differing styles. Whilst good design is in no way limited to the most recent trend, keeping up the pace will help y
How much effort has been put into this site- the most important impression your reader should get. That would mean that you care enough for the site and that will make them more interested to it.
Cool! Thanks.
If it looks good, then its a great page and site! You must have that impression on your page to keep your audiences coming.
Thanks very much for this nice article and many other nice article that I’ve found on this nice Web.
Great!, Frequent updates are definitely the best way of staying fresh, but only if users are landing on your home page. I think it really shows that the author gave it that little extra to stand a bit and usually their content is reflective on the design.
Good website design will attract a lot of users, I suggest simple and clean sites would be the best design.
Yeah I believe you good web design will bring a lot of traffice.
I have been working on a new blog design for a while now and every time I read one of your articles it helps me get farther tenant Screening and farther along with the design.
Keeping a clean, organized, and nag free design is what will attract visitors, and repeat visitors. Too often I visit a blog that tenant Screening is so cluttered with ads, that it’s difficult to tell the difference between a link and an advertising link. On top of that, they use super super tiny text, with colors that don’t even go together.
I think it really shows that the author gave it that little tenant Screening extra to stand a bit and usually their content is reflective on the design.
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Some good points in there, I think keeping a blog simple and yet beautiful is the key to making it look good. Having a strong grid / structure to a site means it not only works for you but the viewer too, just like composition in a piece of art or a print piece websites have to have a way to draw the eye where is most important and guide it around the browser
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