This is the second in a multi part series of articles on creating and building a business blog to extend the reach of your business. If you missed part one you can read it here –Creating and Structuring a WordPress Blog For Your Business.

Design Decisions

Design is very subjective and therefore not easy to make recommendations for. What may appeal to one person will not appeal to someone else. What one person finds pleasant another might find boring. The key is to design for usability, speed and identity.

My mantra is “Less Is More” and that’s how I try to guide my clients. Now that doesn’t mean that a design can’t be beautiful and have great looking graphics, the point is that your site has to be easy to navigate convey your message clearly and “speak” with your voice.

How do you do all that? Careful planning a good designer and patience. Of course you don’t have to use a designer and you can do it yourself, just take your time and research everything. There are many different resources you can use for ideas and inspiration. The first and one of my favorites is Smashing Magazine, you’ll find a ton of information on design, themes, best practices,examples and a lot of good advice. PSD-Tut’s is another one of my go-to sites when I need some inspiration or when I crave a new tutorial. It is mostly a Photoshop tutorial and howto site but you can walk away with some very good ideas. Another good web design stop is Net-Tut’s, yes they are affiliated with PSD-Tut’s but they have a different focus and look at other aspects of web design. At Huzzer Magazine there’s a good list of fifteen different websites to inspire ideas and creativity.

Color Considerations in Design

The use of color on websites is a never ending point of disagreement among designers and marketers alike so it is something you should give a lot of consideration. I like dark colors and textures, not really suited well for marketing but pleasing to look at if done right. Statistically speaking the majority of people prefer to read black on white, that is to say black text on white backgrounds, but I also think it really depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. If you are going to publish a lot of readable content then yes I agree you should have dark text on a light background. If however you will mainly promote your product or service then I believe you do have some leeway, but as a rule of thumb, keep it dark on light.

You can also use colors to drive your visitors to specific actions on the page, like an optin for a newsletter (more on this later) or to a video or set of images or links. Color is also very helpful in creating your identity or voice. If you were to study art, you can always recognize a particular artist’s work because they apply their style, their voice, to every painting they create and you can do the same thing if you use color the right way. If you already have a brick and mortar business and already have a color scheme for your business cards and stationary it would be a good idea to extend it to your site to make it instantly recognizable to your existing customers.

When I create a WordPress site from scratch I try to relate a color to a product and work outwards from there. For example, let’s say Coke Cola came to me to create a blog for them. The whole world knows the red and white Coke Cola can or logo and it would be foolish of me to use beige and brown to create their blog, that just wouldn’t make sense. Or let’s take Levi’s jeans, blue denim, red text on beige for their waist label and a red on white Levi’s logo on the little pocket tab on the jeans. With Levi’s I can use a number of colors to create a compelling looking blog but I would stay within the recognizable brand colors they use on their clothing. If you go on over to the Levi’s site you’ll see a great use of different colors to make their site look very unique. Also take note of the dark background because that’s exactly what I meant when I was referring to using dark colors if promoting products or services. Coke Cola on the other hand created a great looking light colored site with splashes of bright red. These two sites give you a great example of how one site looks great because it’s dark and the other looks great because it’s light.

The Layout

The layout of your blog is just as important, if not more important, than the colors. This is where a lot of people fail miserably. First of all design and layout are two different things. The layout is how you structure different elements on the page and design means style, the colors and typography you use to create your identity. First of course you have to decide what elements you want to have on your page, especially your home page but also remember that you will have other pages and what might be a good idea for the home page may not necessarily be good for an inside page. That’s one of the reasons that most WordPress themes will have multiple page templates giving you more control over how your inside pages look and how the content is presented. You can also install some plugins to give you even more control over your sidebars and widgets. (I’ll get into plugins later in the series)

When working on the layout I use my most trusty tools, pencil and paper. It’s a lot easier to conceptualize and design your structure using visual aids and to me a simple legal pad and pencil is the best place to start. Once I geta rough outline of what I want to accomplish I then move on to other tools like Photoshop and Mock-up or Wireframe applications. One of my favorite is called Pencil (Ironic huh?) it’s a free application you can download or use as a Firefox plugin. Using an application like Pencil gives you the freedom to create the exact look you want. If you decide to hire a developer to install your WordPress blog for you it’ll make it a lot easier to convey your wants and needs if you create a mock-up of what you envision first.

Since every business is different everyone’s needs will be different but keep in mind when designing your blog layout that your content is the most important part of your blog. Most businesses that use WordPress for a blog or as a CMS, will have a home page that describes the business or product and have a separate blog page. If that’s what you plan to do then concentrate on what you want your visitors to know about your business or product. If you could only choose one thing about your business or product that you could showcase or describe, what would it be?

Next, what do you want your visitors to do? Obviously if you’re selling a product you would want them to click a “Buy” button. Think about that, how will you highlight or showcase your product? If you’re offering a service do you want them to fill out a contact form or maybe call you? No matter what it is that you want them to do it has to be so clear that they don’t have to wonder what to do next. You have 5 seconds to to make this happen, if within 5 seconds it’s not clear to them there’s a good chance they will click out. That may sound like an exaggeration  but I assure you it’s a fact that if a visitor to your site doesn’t clearly understand what to do within a very short period of time they will move on.

The bottom line is this, you want your most important information to be above the fold, meaning that your most important content should be visible and not have to be scrolled down to below the bottom of the browser window.

Your Optin Form

One of the most important parts of your layout is your optin form. This is a mistake that a lot of people make when creating their first blog or site. You must understand that when people are surfing the web and gathering information they are unlikely to buy from you on their first visit. Statistics show it takes seven times seeing your offering before a they buy. Gathering your visitors names and email addresses gives you the opportunity to market to them through email and remind them of your product or service. Now that doesn’t mean that as soon as you get their email address you email them seven times and your going to make the sale. You have to cultivate a relationship, email them some valuable information, keep them informed about changes in you industry or to your products and as you cultivate a relationship with them then email them about a special sale or offer, just as a “thank you” for being on your list. But email marketing is big part of doing business online and deserves a lot more attention than a paragraph, possibly a series of articles (hint hint). Sign up with an autoresponder service like Aweber as soon as you have your site ready to go live. Please don’t wait or ignore this like so many people do who later come to regret not working on this very important aspect of online marketing.

Summing It Up

Blog design doesn’t have any set rules you have to go by but rather more theory and concepts than anything else. You have to research, find inspiration and use common sense when designing your WordPress Blog. Always try looking through the eyes of your visitors; Is what you’re designing going to make sense to someone when they land on your home page? Is your information clear and concise? Is your blog pleasant to look at? Does it convey your personality or business ideals? If you have a mission statement it’s a good idea to let your customers know what it is so consider publishing it on your site’s “About” page.

Design is very personal and while you should seek out help and advice you should also make sure that it represents what you want it to represent. I hope all of this makes sense to you but if you check out the sites I referenced and read more about web design and usability I’m sure you’ll come up with the right combination of content, layout, colors, bells, whistles and whatever else you decide on.

Up next I’ll discuss WordPress Themes and traffic. Originally I planned on covering themes and traffic in this article but it turned out to be a lot longer than I expected and I’m assuming you’ve already had enough:)