Blog Credibility and Blog Design

This post is part of a series of posts on building blog credibility

I know that there is a variety of opinions on the value of blog design within ProBlogger’s readership so this might generate some interesting discussion but in my opinion blog design does matter. It is not the only or even best way to establish credibility as a blogger but it can definitely help.

First impressions count and in a world where there are millions of people pitching themselves on virtually any topic you can think of you need to seriously consider how you’ll stand out from the crowd and present yourself in a way that will draw readers into your blog.

Experience, Expertise, Longevity (and every other principle that I’ll talk about in this series) are great at building credibility once a reader makes a decision to actually explore your blog but there are a few crucial seconds that happen before this decision is made and blog design can play a big part and communicate a lot.

Ask yourself:

• What does my blog communicate about me?
• Do the messages I’m trying to convey get lost in the clutter or are they just not there at all?
• Can people tell within a second or two what my blog is about at a first glance?
• Does my design fit with the message that I want to convey?

I am not saying that every blog needs a professional design or that we should all spend loads of money and/or time getting our blogs looking right (in fact some bloggers get terribly distracted from the core business of writing quality content by constantly ‘tweaking’ their design) – all I’m arguing is that whether you like it or not people are making judgments about you and your blog every day based on many levels simply based upon how it looks.