3 Handy UX Design Tips for Bloggers in 2020

Mimi Sarwar, Writer
@uxconnections

A guide for bloggers to maximise their impact and wow readers

Blogging is a very popular marketing tool used by both individuals and businesses to maximise their traffic, leads, and sales. Most websites have an area dedicated to a handy blog section to draw in visitors and attract interest. 

Writing consistent and compelling blogs of real value will benefit your audience’s knowledge. Alongside this, your website needs to be visually appealing to wow your readers and keep them coming back for more content. An aesthetically pleasing user experience (UX) design is also the key to gaining and keeping your visitors. 

Don Norman, inventor of the term “User Experience,” explains that UX is, “…a cohesive, integrated set of experiences…make them all work together seamlessly.”

So, if you have the perfect UX strategy in place, this will encourage your readers to take action (which will hopefully lead to profit) such as: 

• Signing up for email updates
• Purchasing a product or service 
• Recommending your website to others

Let’s get your 2020 UX design journey started with our 3 handy tips for all you budding bloggers out there!

1. Navigation should be seamless

In order for your readers to have a great experience reading your blogs, they will need to have easy accessibility to your work. 

Will your audience be able to search and view your posts that have made it on the website under a particular topic or from a specific date? Or will it be a painstaking experience to access what they’re on the hunt for? 

It’s important to bear in mind that most readers don’t have the time to sieve through volumes of text, so you want your blogs to be as accessible as possible. Readers want information fast so make sure that you can provide a speedy service.

Think and plan ahead 

This sounds pretty simple but predicting what your audience will be searching for and arranging the layout accordingly is a good start. Beneficial questions to ask yourself are:

Do you feel that a feature such as a drop-down list should be included to make your design seamless?

Are your existing features working in harmony and presenting your blogs in an efficient manner?

Are your most popular blogs listed on the main blog page and placed on other pages where they will be viewed the most?

You can rely on some must-have features to help your readers navigate through your blogs smoothly. They include the following:

• Menu
• About page
• Search box
• Archives page
• Contact page

2. Colours are powerful!

Having a colourful blog that presents your content well and is easy on the eyes is also another point to take into account. Any colour patterns and schemes should remain consistent throughout your blogs which should also invoke the right responses.

It makes sense for your blogs to be matched with colours that work. Choosing a monochromatic colour scheme such as black and white wouldn’t work so well with a blog about beach holidays and travelling. The bottom line: choose a colour scheme that ties in well with your subject in order to build a fluid UX design for your blogs.

3. Inspect your typography 

A major element of constructing a great UX design experience for showcasing your work is to check your typography. Typography focuses on the way in which written language is visually arranged. Your aim will be for readers to stay engaged with your blogs, so check that these three major areas have been considered:

• Font size
• Line spacing
• Text colour

Font size

Using the right font size is very important as readers may find it difficult to view your blogs. The default font size for monitors is 16 pixels so this is the minimum you should consider when compiling your blogs. 

Line spacing

When presenting your blogs to the world, the height between each text line and the width of each line is another area to bear in mind. Preferably, stick to line spacing of around 150% and line widths that are no longer than 75 characters.

Text colour

Not only is the colour of your background important, so is your text’s colour. Using a dark tone over a light background will help your blog to stand out and look eye-catching. This will hopefully remove any strain or burden on your reader’s eyes. 

The takeaway

Having a UX design that works perfectly when presenting your blogs will help new readers come back for more valuable content. If you’re an up-and-coming blogger and you want to get ahead of the blogging competition, you should keep these top three UX design tips in mind for your 2020 experience.