On Monday, I discussed some of my pet peeves that can be found in YA. Today, I’m going to discuss some of my pet peeves regarding blog design. While the design of your blog is not as important as the content, it is still important. So here are some of my pet peeves, in no particular order (aka what you should NOT do with your design). Note: I am not a design expert, I am simply stating my views as a reader.
Music
Music may be one of the most annoying things I can find on a blog. Especially when I have more than one tab/window open. Especially when I’m listening to my own music. Especially when I’m in public with no headphones… If you want to put music on your blog, go ahead and do it, as long as you make sure it is not on auto-play. I takes me awhile to find the website that is committing the offense of auto-playing music and let me tell you… it is SOOOOOOO annoying.
“Ahhhh, my EYES!” or “What does that say?”
The point of visiting a blog is to read the content (usually). But how am I supposed to read it if it hurts my eyes or is very difficult to read the words. I hate weird background colors and I hate weird text colors. I also hate weird fonts when it’s being used in a paragraph. Why? Because those make words on the computer hard to read and sometimes gives me a headache. MAKE SURE EVERYTHING ON YOUR BLOG IS READABLE and that people can read it easily!
“Ewww, what is that?”
One reason why blog design is important is that it can be a turn off. What do I mean by that? Well, do you know the saying don’t judge a book by it’s cover, but people do so anyway. Yeah, it’s kind of like saying don’t judge a blog by it’s design. The design of a blog is the first thing most people see when they visit it. And it also often determines if they want to stay and read the posts or not. So, just make sure your design is easy on the eyes. You don’t need to buy one, just make sure it won’t make people shy away from reading your blog.
“Wait, did I just visit that blog?”
Be unique. One of my biggest pet peeves regarding blog design is that a lot of people leave their blogs to the default template. Which is okay, but not the best thing to do. Why? Because a lot of people do the same thing and besides the header with the blog name, the blogs tend to look the same or very similar. At least change the background or the header. There is a lot of tutorials online about how to do that if you don’t know already. It may sound a bit daunting and difficult, but I assure you, it’s pretty simple to do on Blogger. As for WordPress (the free one), just pick a theme you like and customize it a bit.
Those are just a few of my design pet peeves. If I had the time, I could probably go on for awhile…
What are some of your’s?
It’s the uniqueness that is a big thing for me (I hope by now that readable and not annoying is a given? I guess it’s not from some that I’ve seen… but 😉 ). I don’t think people realize that if they like a default theme, lots of other people probably do too. I visit so many blogs in a week that unless your background/design has something that makes it stand out, I won’t be able to remember your blog D:
On WordPress, you honestly can’t customize all that much unless you’re willing to pay. That was a big thing I missed when I switched from Blogger, where I could customize nearly everything. So I purposely looked for a theme I hadn’t seen elsewhere. I should probably make a custom header as well (one of the few things I can change free of charge) but so far I’ve only come across one other blog with my theme, so it hasn’t been a huge priority.
Nice post. I think it’s easy to forget that design is subjective, and just because something doesn’t bother me doesn’t mean it might not bother potential readers.