How To Design A Blog: The 13 Best Practices Of The Top 100+ Marketing Blogs
So much is written about blog content.
Much less is written about the container of that content.
But the design and structure of the blog are a big part of your visitors’ experience. If we are thoughtful when we design the blog templates, we can create a better experience for our readers.
The content will be easier to find, easier to read, easier to share, easier to sign up and get more.
There are two templates on every blog: the blog main halaman template and the blog post lebih jelasnya template. They hold everything in your content marketing together.
We looked at 100+ top marketing blogs to see the design trends, and what features appear on the blog post templates in 2021.
Here are the research and recommendations, along with decision criteria for what might work best for your blogging platform, starting from the top of the blog layout.Search tool
Even with careful curation, blogs are still piles of articles, listed in reverse chronological order. The search tool is a popular way to help visitors find relevant content quickly.
76% of blogs have a search tool. About half of those just show the icon (click to see the search field and enter your query) and half show the open search field.
The blog designer is making a decision about the visual prominence of the tool. Should it be a very prominent, big open box? Or tucked away behind an icon? On every post or just in the main blog template?
Analytics can help inform this decision. If you have a search tool (and Analytics is set up properly) you’ll get insights in your site search reports. These reports show how popular your search tool is.
These reports also show what your visitors are searching for and when they don’t click after searching (% search exits) which usually means they’re unhappy. Here’s how to do analysis of the site search reports in case you’ve never checked.Should I add a site search feature to my blog?
If your blog is a resource with a large body of content on a variety of topics, add a search tool. If Analytics shows that the search tool isn’t popular, remove it or reduce its visual prominence.Author name and photo
Virtually all blogs show the name of the author. Most blogs also show the picture of the author. 63% of the blogs in our dataset show the author’s face in the template.
Seeing the author’s face helps build a connection between the reader and the content. It makes the content more human, maybe even giving a boost in social engagement. “They look friendly, I should look them up on LinkedIn, Facebook or Slapchat.”
The identity of the author is also important for thought leadership marketing. The visual just makes their identity stronger.
Should I put the author’s face into the design of my blog?
Unless you are not active in social media and no one involved in the content program is interested in personal branding, add the face.Published dates
Most blogs show the date the post was published. Some show two, the date published and the date updated. In our review of the 100 marketing blogs, we found that 71% of blogs show the publish date for each article.
More blogs are showing more dates. See how this CXL post shows both the publish date and the updated date.
But there’s a downside to dating your content: it makes your articles look older sooner.
Although the content may be evergreen, filled with tips that are just as relevant today as they were years ago when the visitor sees the date they bounce. Or worse, the publish date appears in Google search results and they never click at all.
Removing the date from the template may increase CTR from search and time on laman.
If the publish date isn’t built into the template, you can still mention the date to the headline and in the body text. We do this for research-based articles. If the article is called “2021 Blogger Survey” no one will wonder when it was published.
This is a controversial recommendation, I know. In my defense, this blog is written to help you, the marketer, get better results from your website. This is about your ROI, not your readers’ preferences. And those do not always exactly align. If they did, there would be no pop ups on the internet.
Should I put the date on the design of my blog templates?
If your content strategy includes news or trends, build the date right into the template. If you don’t put the date into the layout itself, don’t forget to date any timely content in the header and body text for any timely posts.
News or no news? Should news be part of your content mix? Not sure?
This post may help you answer that big content strategy question.Share buttons
Obviously, these are popular features on blogs. There are a lot of places designers can add share buttons. So where do share buttons appear in blog designs? Often in more than one place. Here’s the breakdown:
- 36% of blogs have share buttons at the top of search post
- 33% of blogs have share buttons on the side, often as a sticky element that follows the reader down the page
- 28% of blogs have share buttons at the end of each post
- 12% of blogs do not have share buttons at all
The most popular place to put social sharing buttons is at the top of the post. But why put the buttons at the top? The visitor hasn’t read it yet!
Actually, there is no correlation between reading and sharing. People read without sharing and share without reading. So putting the share buttons at the top of a blog post template makes sense.
Share buttons are often added through widgets, which creates some issues. Often, these are visually noisy. Sometimes they’re the most colorful element on the page. They can distract from the content.
Also, those little widgets affect load time. This may not affect the visitors actual experience (they should load last, after the content is already visible) but it will show up in page speed reports. Because they connect to social networks, share widgets can make the site look very slow in reports like Page Speed Insights.Where should I put the share buttons on my blog?
Put share buttons at the top of the article template, and potentially on the sides and bottom, but make sure they’re not too distracting.
Email signup box and calls to action
Visitors who start their visit on a blog post are very unlikely to become a lead, but not unlikely to subscribe. One of the best outcomes of having a blog reader is a new subscriber.
But getting the visitor to subscribe is all about the little signup box. This is conversion optimization for email list growth and it happens in many places.
Signup boxes can be built into the blog design itself, often built into the WordPress theme. They can also be added using a plugin (in the CMS) or widget (in Google Tag Manager).
CTA boxes sometimes appear as overlays, on top of the content. There are three main types of these overlays: popup windows, slide-in boxes and sticky elements, that stay visible regardless of scroll depth.
Here we see how common these features are on blogs. Keep in mind that some blogs use all three.
- 44% of blogs use popup windows
- 13% of blogs use sticky footers and headers
- 12% of blogs use slide-in boxes
- 43% of blogs do not use CTA overlays of any kind
Sarah Noel Block, Tiny Marketing
“Adding a sticky footer to your blog is one of the least used, but most effective ways to get passive subscribers onto your email list. I have found that my weekly newsletter (which also has a sticky CTA) has been a huge win for my business. I get to have real conversations in my inbox with prospects and provide weekly value.
So many people are afraid of email marketing, but – done right – it can grow relationships and be the main driver for sales. But, without subscribers, email marketing will just not work, will it? So, add that sticky footer!”
Wherever the CTA appears, it should be visually obvious (prominent), tell the visitor specifically what they’re going to get (promise) and remind people that it’s good (proof). Prominence, promise and proof are the keys to high-performing email signup forms.
The most common feature on blog articles is more blog articles. 79% of the blogs we reviewed show related articles. They are generally under a subhead such as “You might also like…” or “recent articles”
Traffic is hard to win and easy to lose. A great blog design pulls visitors deeper into the site. Related articles are really just a very visual approach to internal linking. It’s simple and powerful …why don’t we do it on this blog?
Marketing sites have an average bounce rate of 62%, but it’s much higher for blog posts. Adding “related articles” to the bottom of each post can help.
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