Image Credit: *spoOky*

Have you ever wondered why some people make more money from their blog than others do?

You might even ask yourself, “What the heck? It’s impossible to put more hours into blogging than I do; I sit at my computer all day. What is it she’s doing that I’m not?”

The first thing you need to understand is the fact that blogs suck at making money. Blogs don’t make money, people and their creative minds do. In other words, it’s what you do with your blog that makes the money.

People will tell you content is king, and if that’s true, then blog design is the engineer that builds the glorious kingdom. Without a kingdom, what would come of a king?

So how do we create a blog design in a way that gets people to click where you want them to click and their eyes to look where you want their eyes to look? That’s question that cannot be answered in just one blog article. People have written entire books on the subject.

Over the next several weeks, we’ll discuss some major points I think are mission critical to building a better blog design which will answer the question above. For now, let’s take a quick look at how I compare building a better blog design with how designers build a supermodel.

A Supermodel Analogy

Let’s compare building a blog with building a supermodel (and yes, they build them). Please excuse my very poor excuse for a flowchart.

As you can see, there is a certain process to building both a supermodel and building a better blog design. Let’s take a look at my top 6 better blog design bullet points you can use to build a supermodel blog.

Topics will include (but are not limited to):

1. Professionalism and production quality
2. Page layout and the use of screen real estate
3. Navigational architecture
4. Trust and credibility
5. The main content area
6. Calls to action

One thing you should come to understand, however, is the fact that we are all too close to our own work. Because we understand our products and offers so well, sometimes it is difficult for us to design our blogs and websites in such a way our target customers will react positively to. So the first thing we should try doing is taking a good look at ourselves and realize what we’re assuming about our site visitors is probably wrong.

Once you understand that fact, then you can go about designing an effective blog design which your site visitors will react in ways you want them to.

The questions then are: Have you taken a good look at your blog or website lately through the eyes of your target audience? Do you understand that what you’re assuming about them is probably wrong? What is it you want them to do? Have you made it easy for them to quickly find what they’re looking for?

For WP Blog Host, we’ve been testing design changes and you’ll probably be seeing a new design here soon. Our target customers for web hosting are bloggers; so shouldn’t our site reflect blogging?

I think so, and I’ve convinced others.

Related posts:

1. Creating A Blog Supermodel: Professionalism & Production Quality
2. Landing Page Optimization: Lesson Learned by Watching Jesse James is a Dead Man
3. 20.4 Ways People Scan Your Website
4. Lateral SEO Thinking: 3 Things Most People Don't Consider
5. Using Photos On Your Website