What Characteristics Make For Excellent Web Design For Blogs?

When it comes to the web design of blogs, there is a huge division between those that are average and those that are excellent. Which do you think are the more successful? Whilst creating a blog is not that different from creating a normal website, coming up with an excellent design depends on the inclusion (or exclusion) of a number of characteristics, including:

• Comments
  This is often the last area looked at during the web design stage but, when done well, the comment section can really make or break the feel of the entire site for visitors. You might want to consider including avatars for those who comment, making it so that the author’s comments stand out from those by visitors, using speech bubbles, and so on.
• Footer
  Unfortunately, web design for both blogs and websites does not tend to hold the footer in very high esteem, but this is a section that is vital for ensuring easy navigation. There are a number of things that a footer should include, such as links to social media profiles, links to the author’s website, copyright information, and so on.
• Sidebar
  This is one of the major areas for attention in blog web design, as it forms a large part of how users will navigate the site. A good sidebar will have an attractive appearance, be easy to use, and will contain relevant content. You could include sections like: popular posts, recent posts, date-based archives, recent comments, and so on.
• Subscription
  One of the main aims of a blog is to convert visitors into subscribers who will continuously return to read your latest posts. For this reason, you need to include links to the RSS feed and mailing list somewhere on the blog (usually in the sidebar). Many designers prefer not to tamper with the placement of these links, as this is where visitors expect to find them.
• Uniqueness
  As there are thousands and thousands of blogs out there, it is important to make yours stand out from the crowd. You could focus on making yours overly artistic or creative, or heavily typography based, or colourful, or even dark for an interesting effect. You need to ensure, however, that the entire blog has a distinctive look.

For many websites, the blog section is highly important for attracting new customers, clients or followers, but if you want your blog to succeed it is important that you employ an effective web design. There are, of course, many more characteristics involved with designing a good blog; the ones listed above, however, tend to be the most important or beneficial.