A Matter Of Style: Why Design Matters More Than Content

Picture the following: you have two plates of food in front of you, both containing cheeseburgers. One plate contains a large but rather greasy fast-food chain burger and a side of stale fries. The second contains a micro-burger: a small, pesto and truffle oil infused patty in a small brioche bun with a side of four thick cut appetizing Belgian fries and a small decorative carrot carving. Which one would you choose?

Odds are you said the latter (unless you were really, really hungry…). That’s because while content is one of the most important things to take into account when trying to attract traffic to your site and rank better it is not the most important thing. The design, layout and ease of use are far more important.

Think of it this way: you might have Pulitzer-worthy content on your page but if the layout is awkward or simply unappealing, very few people will actually make it to your content. Good can help you get potential customers or readers to your page but their efforts will be squandered if the customers just click back after taking a look at your site design.

The Age Of Skimming

The age of use.net has come and gone a long time ago and studies have shown that modern Internet browsers actually read rather than skimming content in less than 20% of the cases. This means that if you don’t have some way of visually enticing and directing browsers to the content that you want them to see it’s not going to get seen at all.

A good example of blending good content and great design is MailChimp’s resources page. Many sites offer white papers and how to guides for download as part of their content but the way the mailing list website has organized its resources and the fact that they went the extra mile to create cool and attractive covers for each of their white papers and guides instantly makes visiting traffic linger on long enough to read the titles and possibly choose to download them. Imagine the same site with a bunch of bold script on white background PDFs.

 Not as eye-catching, is it?

Outside Your Blog

Design is important and you shouldn’t limit yourself to having an attractive webpage or blog. Your social media should be equally attractive to passers by. A custom, original background for your Twitter page, an eye-catching Facebook Timeline photo, these are all essential to get the most bang for your social media buck. After all, if someone took the time to check out your social media pages, odds are that they’ll take a look at your main page as well, particularly if you have a handy link.

Design matters. Regardless of your field, regardless of whether you run a commercial site or a blog, design matters. A good-looking site with average content with have more people browsing than a terrible looking site with great content. So re-vamp your site today !

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Display Post Author, Date And Labels With Icons Below Blogger Post Titles

Become a guest author on Create the Blogger.

The icons and details RedCherii asked about can be seen below the title of this and every post on Create the Blogger.So for Redcherri and anyone else who likes them, in this post i will show you how to add them to your blog.What we are adding is the default Author Name, Post Date And Labels from the post with 16x16 icons to the left of each.I also have a pipe character splitting each, the code will be placed in your template to display this directly below the post titles.

Add Author, Date And Labels With Icons Below Posts Titles

Step 1. In Your (New Design) Blogger Dashboard Click The Drop Down Menu For Your Blog > Choose Template > Then Edit Html > Now Proceed > Tick The Expand Widget Templates Box 

Step 2. Find the following piece of code in your blogs Html : (Click Ctrl and F for a search bar to help find the code):

<div class='post-header-line-1'>

Step 3. Copy and paste the following code Directly Below <div class='post-header-line-1'>

<font style='background:transparent url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzRFOxmqe7L52NECIUF2zxMXDBC9MchDMdCs27tYMp6h3njd6lkflOSjUtt6Nj5TdrxQi6ZwZQodozfQNdyLX-T0L-fWz_yUg03oQFFL6xpimhLzXAwyOgGwZjfPkHwH6xLNrEYmaBy6U/s1600/author.png) no-repeat scroll top left;padding-left:25px;font-size:11px;'><data:post.author/></font> | <font style='background:transparent url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4Agv7u_iv783wwd5BTD-vt4gEMOsJf3HYh2fe3AIlyzPGG9lt6DEVh466snd_ucFOcCq7uMas2AN-OyvaIS2RaBe2f_MQkPJTp6R8F-C5hLPLopM4PkeiN-ywKHSNBQnrHZOlBEXTW5s/s1600/calendar.gif) no-repeat scroll top left;padding-left:25px;font-size:11px;'><data:post.timestamp/></font> | <font style='background:transparent url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM3bJ8BjkrnrAjmpd8Lpz34zt0v42qpNUInijCXsbMkuf4s8tYNaOOPT9TWDewF0DCx4BDqXBGG2umipabu5WFe1453OSqyGXgu1SvHxxN1u4sL8C86G_SSkKsDeqj5h77cC9dxxsGkcw/s1600/icon_tags.png) no-repeat scroll top left;padding-left:25px;font-size:11px;'><b:if cond='data:post.labels'>
<b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>
<a expr:href='data:label.url + &quot;?max-results=8&quot;' rel='tag'><data:label.name/></a>
<b:if cond='data:label.isLast != &quot;true&quot;'>|</b:if>
</b:loop>
</b:if></font><a href='http://www.spiceupyourblog.com'><img alt='Best Blogger Tips' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAH6CBD-AUjFNI-vLZwNgx-R5oKymOEbxMpRKUDY_tGPIrjCQB_Y-NuBAIq44oWLLOhs0GqbQlrMI1QBj64vvS8fxl5Uj85_hYSYszmiDx3fKku6yvgZNrOTluqeT5VAq6YH7BjhwbZ6sV/s1600/best+blogger+tips.png'/></a>

Yellow - Author Icon
Red - Calender Icon
Blue - Labels Icon

Optional Change The Icons - The icons are highlighted in the code and you can change these by replacing the image URL.The icon you replace them with should be 16x16 pixels.

Step 4. Save your template, how easy was that.

Drop Your Comments And Questions Below.

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