How Important Is A Blog Design?
I’ve seen people ask in the past, should they launch their blog without a decent or final theme in place. They get varying answers, some say yes it’s fine, others say no wait. There are pros and cons for both of these answers.
If you’ve already got a decent amount of content written then in my opinion you need to get that site up and running, into the search engines and start getting it known across the web. These days you can grab a professional looking template for free, throw it up on your site within minutes and away you go.
Of course the downside to this is that you may not get the great impact you were hoping for as people may come to your site and judge it by the design and not the content within. However, are these the type of visitors you want to keep? The old saying ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ rings true.
You may wonder whether it’s worth worrying about this. Your site is ready to go and the design will be completed in a couple of weeks time. However a couple of weeks can turn into a couple of months, which could then turn into a couple of years. All the time you’ve still got that content ready to go but the blog isn’t live and so it isn’t established. I’ve had a domain name registered for 8 years and it still doesn’t have a site on it!
So stop procrastinating, find yourself a semi decent theme and get the site going. Once you’ve done that then you’ll be more motivated to get the design finished and make your blog a success.
Clog Money | September 30th, 2008 at 10:25 am #
What I would say is that the design of a blog can make people come back. I know it’s worked for me with several sites. The best I can think of was John Cow. His content wasn’t fantastic but the theme attracted me to the site enough to keep me coming back. Weird I know… but true!
Rarst | September 30th, 2008 at 2:28 pm #
Having awesome theme is good. But not free.
It’s all about budget I think (even if you set one for yourself).
JD | September 30th, 2008 at 5:18 pm #
i wish mine looked good, i wish i had the talent to make it look legit, lol, i’m just gonna hire someone.
Mike Huang | September 30th, 2008 at 6:26 pm #
Is it me or is EVERYONE talking about a new blog design this week?
-Mike
punkypaige | September 30th, 2008 at 10:28 pm #
I am wondering now, if my theme is good. My other articles are already on the top of Google.
Sarah (Post Author) | October 1st, 2008 at 2:23 am #
@Mike no
I was talking about launching a whole new site and whether it’s worth waiting for that slick, fantastic design before going live, you know, the design that may take days, weeks, months, even years to sort out. I can knock up a 10 page site in an hour, I could take a month to do a design.
Is it worth delaying a new site over the design?
@punkypaige, sounds like you’ve got your content sorted. If you’re happy with your theme then keep it. Fact is, if your visitors like your content then they’ll most likely subscribe via RSS and not return much to your site anyway, and if you’ve already gained a good reader base from your current theme then maybe you aren’t doing anything wrong
slee | October 1st, 2008 at 3:35 am #
i think this is quite a big thing as a design for a site is very important. if it looks like a shell then it can look like a spammy site. The other thing you have to think about is how to let the user navigate your site, users arent necessarily going to find that great article you have just written if tehy site isnt layed out in a way that is easy for them to find.
Sarah (Post Author) | October 1st, 2008 at 3:57 am #
I don’t meant to use the standard default theme as a temp design, but just spend 10-20 minutes looking for a simple, straightforward (and accessible/usable) free theme to get the site going. Of course if you can design in your sleep then it’s not a concern
punkypaige | October 1st, 2008 at 4:21 am #
There are lot of people who are telling my article are good but i wonder why they do not know how to subscribe to my rss.
Salwa | October 1st, 2008 at 8:09 am #
Nice blog design can work wonders especially when accompanied with great articles!
Reinhardt | October 1st, 2008 at 5:15 pm #
I think you are right here. A great blog design is the way to go from the start.
The only thing stopping people is that they don’t know if they are going to blog religiously, so why then spend all that money on a blog design. But for a firey blogger, a unique design is a must.
Regards,
Reinhardt