How many times have you gone onto someone's blog - and just found that it made no sense? It could be something to do with the colours, or it could be the mismatch of material. If only they'd just made their blog more cohesive - you might have stayed a little longer. It begs the question then, how cohesive does your blog flow?
A little while ago - I did a post about the reasons why you might be losing readers on your blog, and I figured this would be a good as time as any to talk about the aesthetics of your blog.
So how do you make your blog more cohesive?
This is something I'm often very aware of when writing up an article. There's a lot of different things that make up the feel of your blog. Whether this is the pictures you use, or the font, or of course the content yourself. As a lifestyle blogger, I find it a bit tricky at times to really keep what I'm posting consistent, even if it's across a different range of topics. This doesn't mean that you can't have a cohesive look, but it's something to be mindful of.
Hey heads up! Going forward, this post does contain affiliate links. I only recommend products that I've used previously, or would intend to use in the future. You are by are no means obligated to buy any of these products, however if you choose to do so, I will recieve a small commission from your sale, at no extra cost to you!
So what doesn't make a blog cohesive?
Having too many different articles
I realise this sounds counter-productive to what I just said above. You can absolutely have different themed articles, and variety can be a great thing. However, especially if you're just starting out, not having a solid voice throughout your site can be extremely distracting. I've come across some sites that just don't know what they're doing.
What is your current blog telling people when they're coming onto the site? Are they seeing a blog that focuses primarily on cooking? Fashion maybe? Something about cars? Mental health? If you are a lifestyle blog, do you have enough content in your different categories to support having those categories there on your front screen? Remember - on a general rule of thumb, your home screen should be showing the best of your work.
Your colour scheme is over the place
The photographer in me cringes whenever I see a million different clashing colours on someone's home screen. The number of times I've loaded up someone's blog, and seen this horrendous monstrosity of things that don't make sense is crazy. So let's talk a little about different colours for a moment.
Before we continue - I'm always happy to be proven wrong, and if you've got a colour we're about to talk about that features on your blog, please link it below and I'm happy to check it out and link to it if it's used AMAZINGLY.
Bright and bold colours are typically non-aesthetically pleasing to one's eyes when they're done in bulk. I was going to upload some examples I did a mock-up for using these colours, but they hurt my eyes that much that I won't subject you to them. However, there's a reason that very few companies choose to utilise yellow, red, and/or purple as their dominant colour scheme.
Can you use these colours at all? Absolutely. It's a free world, I'm not going to stop you, however. One of the things I'd be suggesting to look at is if you're going to be posting different types of images - how are they going to look against any colour your primarily focusing on? Your best bet is to find some consistency of what type of images you're posting and create a colour scheme you can repeat. Mine focuses generally on soft browns, and whites, and matte colours, although occasionally I will throw in a bright photo here or there. (It's what happens when you dye your hair red!)
If you're still stuck - you can also invest in brand boards like this or this one, which can help set out your whole social media colour plan.
You've got broken pages
How do you stop making your blog more cohesive in the matter of a click? Yep. A broken page, or a dead link. These often get looked over for a number of reasons. Namely, let's be honest. Who goes over their page every day to make sure that any slight changes have not impacted any of the internal articles they've linked to them? Or when you start a new blog and need to edit all of those original place holder links?
I know I've been caught out with this on a number of times and gotten the dreaded #404 - page not found error.
How do you fix this?
It honestly depends. Sometimes you're really lucky and there isn't anything you have to do. Sometimes, you're not so lucky. I'd recommend a few things:
- If you're using WordPress, and have just done a fresh install of a new theme, head into your pages tab, and check that each of your active pages has your blog link and not a placeholder.
- Keep an eye on what categories you're using, and if you decide that you're going to change them - that you update the posts you've already tagged them into the new one, or remove them.
- Ask a friend, family, heck, even a stranger on the internet that you kinda trust - to go through a few pages and make sure everything is linking up to where it's supposed to be.
- Check up websites like Neil Patel and Moz - they'll also do a quick site audit for you for free - and point you where you need to focus your attention
Your tone of voice isn't consistent
I'd like to thank my ex-workplace for my introduction of Tone of Voice (TOV) a couple of years back. I will actually go into this further in a later article, because I believe it deserves more than just a paragraph here. In super basic terms - are your blog posts, images, and social channels - all promoting the same concept? For example, if someone heads to your blog and sees posts about fitness and exercise, and then they head to your Instagram page and see posts about what you did with your grant-aunt Daisy, it's not telling the same story.
The other example of this is how you're communicating with your readers. Will they have the same experience whether or not they engage with you on Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram? Is your email sign up and newsletters the same vibe? If it's not - you're likely to get confused readers, and they'll promptly not return, or unsubscribe.
Powered by Creative Market
You don't have anywhere for your reader to go next
This can be a tricky one when you're first starting out with your blog. What happens when you're reading gets to the end of your article, loves it, and then ... there's nothing? There are no further posts underneath for them to engage in. There's no call to action to sign up for your email list, or to follow you on social media. You can always have something more for your reader to do, even if it is a simple as "Have you checked out my Twitter here?" or "Click here to read more about me!"
For me, there's been nothing worse than having to try and find more things to do on peoples blogs. We're all admittedly a bit lazy - and I think we can all say that this is why YouTube, Wikipedia and Buzzfeed of all places suck us in so well. Because there's always a link to click on to take us somewhere. If you don't have this - you're hitting a metaphorical dead end on your blog.
WRAP UP TIME
Was there anything in here that you've had a bit of a "Ah ha!" moment over? Or that you think you may change on your blog going forward? Or even anything that you think I may have missed? Let me know in the comments below ♥
Cover Photo by Corinne Kutz on Unsplash
thedoubtingthomas
Thank you for this, some of these tips were really helpful! I’m forever fearful of making too many changes due to “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it” but I know my blog could technically be so much better. I’ll sit down and see if I can put any of these tips into use ?
The Wanderer Pharaoh
Very useful post! Thanks for sharing. I was struggling with my blog’s theme at the beginning especially the colors, until I decided to keep it simple. Thanks for sharing
Amber
I had so many dead links a while ago and some how i have managed to fix them all! It definitely helps speed up your site!
Clarissa Cabbage
Thanks for these tips! I’m a new blogger and haven’t really come up with a logo or color scheme yet. And I feel like design definitely isn’t my strong suit. So I know that’s something I should be doing, but I’ve kind of put it off so far. I also love the point about not leaving dead ends. Thank you!
Denelia
This is a great post! I bet a lot of new bloggers can learn from this. I also like the design of your blog its very minimalistic.
Hopefully my blog is cohesive, but I’m a bit bias so I guess we’ll never know.
shortgirlwalking
I really love the layout of your blog! It’s super easy to follow. I really love that all of your post photos are the same size, I know mine aren’t which always annoys me! Thanks for stopping by!
charlotte
These are great tips!! I recently switched to a new domain and I discovered I had so many broken links that I didn’t even know I had! x
– charlotte / https://charlottesspace.com/
shortgirlwalking
It’s such a tricky one, isn’t it? I hope you managed to find them all! ♥
Rebecca Smith
These are some great tips. I’ve been working on sorting out my broken links and broken pages recently so the readers user experience is much better.
shortgirlwalking
It’s such an easy to think to look into, and such an important one to your readers too! Thanks for stopping by 🙂