3 Key Web Design Features That’ll Help Your Blog Get More Engagement
Blogs make up a significant chunk of the internet, so you need to call upon different factors in order for your blog to stand out. Web design forms a core part of this, and there are separate elements of web design that are more important than others.
You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that an attractive blog will be more appealing than a non-attractive one. The way your blog looks can dictate whether people stick around after visiting it, but here are three specific web design features that’ll help you improve blog engagement.
1. Usability
How usable is your blog? One of your biggest blogging mistakes is designing a website that’s a pain to use. Common usability concerns involve:
- Links that don’t work
- Menu buttons that are impossible to click on
- No search function
- Scrolling through entire blog posts instead of including snippets
- No mobile-friendliness
You must design a blog that’s easy for anyone to use. The harder it is for people to do simple things (like find a specific blog post), the sooner they’ll leave and find a better blog. Good usability keeps people on your pages and secures more engagement – so make this the number one focus of your web design.
2. Uniqueness
It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of picking a blog design based on preset templates. Most bloggers do this, and the results are clear for all to see. You use Wix or WordPress and end up with a website that looks extremely similar to hundreds of other blogs out there.
The issue with this is twofold:
- Your web design isn’t that interesting to users because they’ve seen it before
- It confuses your blog’s brand image, as other blogs look the same
Try to craft a truly unique blog website by working with a web design agency instead of resorting to template designs. You might look at this as a pointless investment, but if you’re serious about setting up a blog and making money, then you need to invest in quality web design. An agency can build your site from scratch and make it as unique as possible; all the while, they also help you tick off the other two features on this list.
3. Speed
Your blog’s speed directly correlates to its bounce rate. Statistics demonstrate that slower websites have a significantly higher bounce rate than faster ones. More specifically, a website that loads within 1 second will have a 7% bounce rate compared to websites loading in 5 seconds, which have a 38% bounce rate.
People don’t like waiting around for a website to load, so you must optimise your blog to run fluidly and boot every page within 1-3 seconds at least. The faster, the better. Don’t give users a chance to be frustrated; let them view every page the moment they click.
Usability, uniqueness, and speed. These are the three most important web design features that’ll help your blog get more engagement. An extremely usable site with a unique web design and fast pages will encourage users to hang around and read much more of your content.
This is a collaborative post.
