12 Blog Design Problems That Are Killing Your Blog

566 Shares

In last Thursday’s blog post, I touched on a topic that is crucial to blogging success; Branding. A strong blog is the foundation of your brand, so it’s no surprise that blog design problems can negatively impact your blogging business. While most issues are relatively minor, others can be catastrophic.

In this blog post, I am going to reveal 12 major blog design problems that are killing your blog and how you can avoid or fix them.

*This post contains affiliate links. That means that if you make a purchase after clicking on a link I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. For more information, click here.

Poor Navigation

How many pages does your average visitor view when they visit your website? If you don’t know, it’s time to find out. You can find this information via Google Analytics under Audience > Overview. Look for “Pages / Session” section in the chart.

(If you are new to Google Analytics, my post, “Who is Your Blog Audience? Get to Know Your Readers Using Google Analytics” is a great place to start.)

This number is an indicator that once your reader reads a post, he or she clicks on other pages and posts. If this number is below 2, you have a problem. Your goal is to keep your audience on your blog as long as possible and to do this, you need to improve your navigation.

There are two issues that can cause your readers to abandon your blog. The first, which I discuss later, is poor writing. The other problem is your blog’s navigation. Navigation is critical to the success of your blog. If your readers can’t locate content, how do you expect them to read it?

Planning your blog’s navigation will greatly improve engagement and pageviews for your blog. Be sure that your audience has a clear path to help them find the content that might interest them. Make it easy for them by providing an easily accessible menu, categories, tags, and interlinking.

Your Website Is Not Responsive

Mobile users are dominating the internet. In the past year alone I have seen a significant rise in mobile readers. As you can see from the screenshot below, mobile devices make up the 61.25% of my blog’s audience these days. This can be a great thing if your blog’s design is responsive.

Responsive web design refers to how a website appears on mobile devices. If you have used a mobile device, you have likely noticed that a website appears differently on a mobile site than it does on a desktop. site This is because mobile devices have vertical screens and desktops have horizontal screens.

Responsiveness makes your blog easier to read and moves elements of the design so that it loads and performs well on mobile devices. If your blog isn’t responsive, your mobile readers will leave. The “Pages / Session” statistic is typically the lowest on mobile devices.

If this is not the case, you may have serious issues in your design and content. I highly recommend that you have someone that you can trust to be honest with you review your website. Even ask strangers or members of Facebook groups you belong to have a look and get their feedback.

Related Posts:

Annoying Ads

It’s perfectly acceptable to use ads on your blog. This is a common practice in blogging and is a great way for new bloggers to make money.

However, some ads will alienate your audience. For example, it is not a good idea to use pop-up or auto-play ads. It is also a bad idea to use too many ads. I can’t tell you how many blogs that I have left within a couple minutes, simply because the blog’s ads were too annoying.

When I am wanting to read a blog post, no matter how amazing I find the content, I will leave if I am bombarded by too many ads. Don’t give your readers another reason to leave. They are already prone to exit.

You have worked very hard to write blog posts and market them. Don’t destroy this hard work for the chance to make a small amount of income. Developing a loyal fan base and following on social media and email is far more lucrative than a few ads on your blog.

Poor Readability

Since mobile devices are so common these days, it is critical that you write content that is easy to read on them. That means using short paragraphs, headers, and short, concise sentences.

Mobile readers tend to skim the content for points of interest. They are looking specifically for content that appeals to them. These readers most frequently look for keywords in headers that pertain to the topics they are interested in and scroll past everything else.

Make your blog posts easy to read and skim on-the-go. This means using headers, bolding text, using keywords, and using short paragraphs. You need to get to the point and help your reader understand the content quickly and easily.

If you struggle with this, you may like my blog post, “How to Start Writing Blog Posts that People Will Actually Read.”

Poor Color Choices

There is a blogger on Pinterest who uses two contrasting colors on all of their Pinterest pins. For instance red text on a royal blue background with no border around the letters. The images always look almost 3D and it hurts my eyes to look at them.

Just because you have the ability to use any color you wish on your blog, doesn’t mean you should. It’s not a good idea to use colors that make your content difficult to read.

You also don’t want to stand out for this reason. Your brand should be at the forefront of your mind on your blog and social media and the last thing you want to be known for is something annoying.

Choose a maximum of three accent colors for your brand and use these colors with more neutral shades as part of your branding. Use black or dark fonts on a white or light colored background. You need this contrast for clarity.

A blog with a black background and red font will damage your blog and brand pretty quickly. These color combos should be left in the 80s and 90s, where they belong (with the exception of a retro computer blog).

Difficult to Read Fonts

Script and handwritten fonts are fun and pretty, but they are not always the easiest for your audience to read. That means that they should be used sparingly and only if the words you type are legible in the font.

For the body and headers of your blog posts, be sure to use a plain serif or sans serif font. Serifs are the tiny feet or lines that appear on the ends of a font’s characters. Perfect examples of serif fonts include Times New Roman or Georgia. Sans serif fonts like Arial or Monserrat don’t have these lines.

This makes sans serif fonts very clear easy to read for everyone and helps the letters flow together more easily. Serif fonts work best on print media because the small lines help connect the letters and make the words flow together better.

There has been a great deal of debate in recent years as to which is easier to read. In general, it is recommended that you use sans serif fonts on the body text of an online publication, but you can do as you wish. Just make sure your font is clear and easy to read.

Also, limit your brand to 3 fonts on any given page or image. This builds continuity and makes your words easier to read. It also doesn’t distract from the content itself.

Poor Quality Images

With excellent quality smartphone cameras, free stock photography websites, and free websites like Canva and PicMonkey, there is no excuse for poor quality images on your blog. Your images represent your brand so take some time to make them look good.

Nothing screams “Amateur!” more than pixelated or distorted images that can’t be read easily. It also immediately cheapens your blog and damages your authority. If you struggle with creating graphics, I highly recommend watching some Canva tutorials on YouTube. This is really a worthwhile investment in your time.

To prevent creating bad graphics, avoid the following:

Stretching and distorting images
Using low-resolution images
Using text on graphics that aren’t easy to read
Crowding the image (you need some whitespace)
Using more than three fonts on the graphic

If you continue to struggle with your blog’s graphics, you may need to hire a graphic designer or someone to help you out on Fiverr. If you can’t afford someone, maybe you can enlist the help of a photographer or tech-savvy friend.

The main takeaway here is that you need high-quality graphics on your blog in order to succeed. Don’t underestimate your graphics.

Too Much Clutter

I know that it’s difficult to resist the urge to share every single thing you can on your blog, especially on the homepage. Unfortunately, that isn’t practical or good for your blog. Instead, keep your navigation simple and well-organized.

A cluttered web design is a huge distraction to your audience. I know that I am one of those people who can become easily distracted when there’s too much going on visually. If in doubt, remember to keep it simple.

Instead of linking to all of your best blog posts from the homepage, interlink to them within the text of your blog posts. This helps your reader find the content that they might be interested in as they read and keeps clutter to a minimum.

Grammar And/Or Spelling Errors

Grammar and spelling errors are another major blog design problem. It is best to proofread your copy and avoid as many errors as you possibly can. It’s understandable that from time-to-time you may have a typo (I know that I have made several). However, there are few excuses (or forgiveness) for copy that is riddled with errors.

I am one of those people who can’t proofread their own work. I finish the sentences in my head and miss the errors. This is a common problem. That’s why so many professional writers hire proofreaders to go over their work. If that isn’t in your budget (It’s not in mine either, but that’s okay), use the free tools at your disposal to help you out.

I use the Grammarly add-on for my Google Chrome browser to check my spelling and grammar. Grammarly is free (although there is a souped-up paid version) and automatically scans the text you type on any website that you visit in your Chrome browser.

You can also type your blog posts into word processing software and use the software’s spelling and grammar checker before copying and pasting the text into the text editor on your blog. I prefer Grammarly because I can save my work on my website and access it from any device. It cuts out a step, which is a huge convenience for me.

Grammarly won’t catch every mistake, so it’s important that you still read through and edit your posts before you hit publish.

Text Alignment

Alignment can be fun to play with. It reminds me of writing papers in junior high with colorful ink pens or funky text. However, as most of you know, those cool fonts and colors can be tough on the eyes. That’s why my school teachers banned them.

Justified alignment is great for paperback novels and center alignment is good for printing flyers of your lost dog. However, when it comes to digital media, it’s almost always best to stick to left alignment. The truth is that plain Jane left alignment is the easiest to read on any device and that’s what matters for your blog.

It’s okay to use center alignment for headlines and photos, but the body of your text should always be aligned to the left. Always. This is one of those rules that aren’t the most fun, but you should always follow.

Slow Load Times

If you are using oversized graphics or high-resolution video, you may need to reconsider. These elements of your blog, although visually appealing, may cause more harm than good. These types of media significantly hog bandwidth and can take much longer to load than a simple JPEG image.

If you blog is loading slow, edit your photos to the optimum size for your theme. Also, use JPEG image files which maintain a significant amount of quality, but are much smaller in size.

Ads and plugins are two other culprits that may slow down your website. In my blog post, “Blog Speed: How Your Slow Blog Is Scaring Off Readers,” I go into detail about how to speed up your blog. If you are experiencing slow load times, be sure to read that post.

In my experience, the vast majority of load time is caused by graphics. Swapping images is the easiest and most effective way to speed up your blog, so I suggest that’s where you begin.

Lack of Branding

Lack of branding is probably the greatest mistake you can make when designing your blog. You should know the colors, fonts, and have your logo in your header. This helps you brand everything, from your Pinterest images to your emails.

Check out how I used Secret Pinterest Boards to design my blog here.

You need your audience to be able to recognize your brand within seconds of loading the web page or any image. This is more important to your blog’s success than web traffic or making your first affiliate sale.

Your brand and branding elements help create a continuity between all of your social media accounts, your websites, and your products. That means that branding directly impacts the success of your blog, so I highly recommend that you work hard on developing your brand before you build and design your blog.

Blog Design Problems Shouldn’t Stand In Your Way

These 12 blog design problems don’t have to stand in the way of your blog’s success. They are all correctable. Own your mistakes, learn from them, and improve. That’s what blogging is all about. You are growing as a blogger and that means making your share of mistakes.

Do you have any blog design advice for new bloggers? Please share that advice in the comments below!