How Web Design Can Affect Your Blog Branding: A Live Web Revamp Tutorial
Posted on November 11, 2007 - Filed Under Branding
In case you are wondering if you arrived at the wrong site, you didn’t. My site needed a revamp in image and branding, and I thought rebranding my blog over several steps as a demonstration and tutorial to readers would be a great idea. You don’t need to know PHP coding, though some HTML and CSS knowledge will be important. In this branding exercise, you will see that some very simple steps can change the look, tone and emotion of your blog entirely, which creates a unique experience for the reader when he arrives at your site. While content is key to the quality of a site, there is no harm making visits enjoyable and memorable. After all, “user experience” is what branding is all about.
Previously, on Ivy Online…
My blog was initially created for some friends after a backpacking trip to Tibet. It was a hobby site that I planned to host photos of all the adventure and trips and travels I had taken. I chose to put up a black and white template with an overexposed black and white photo myself to mimic the effects of looking at a film. Not much was done to tweak the CSS stylesheet and I simply focused on user functionality.
As I started blogging more professionally and traffic started to build up slowly but surely, I realized that it was time to revamp my site. It wasn’t until after a few stumbles created a number of waves from StumbleUpon, that I knew it had to be done.
A Strong Blog Header Does Wonders for Your Brand
I started with my blog banner. It is the first thing that visitors see, and in the three seconds when they decide if they want to stay or move on, the blog header / banner plays the important role of persuading him to spend some time reading an article or two before moving on. If you have a strong visual that can create an impression in the minds of visitors, and the purpose of your blog is clearly seen, visitors don’t mind spending some time finding out more about you, sometimes even if they are not really interested in your focus area. That is the power of branding your blog.
I want to make a quick note that while an impacting graphic banner is recommended for text-rich sites, blogs that are heavy on visuals and videos should do the opposite and stick with a simple header containing a light background print and the name of your blog in an interesting typeface. What you want is for your header to stand out, and not compete with the rest of the elements in the page. Remember: an impacting or unusual header will stick in the readers’ minds, and the next time he searches for information relevant to your blog, he will remember you. Read my previous post about stages of building brand.
Activate the About Me Plugin
The About Me plugin is an important one, as first time visitors will not visit your About page unless their interest has been sufficiently piqued. By providing a short blurb about yourself, you allow the them to know you informally and form a connection with you while reading your blog.
The About Me plugin was already activated for my old blog, but my picture sorely needed updating. The overexposed photo might have been ok as an artistic element in a blog on travel photography with friends as your target audience. However, it was not appropriate for a site that is now receiving 76% of referred traffic from social networks and other reputed blogs. So I went out and got a decent photo of myself taken, and replaced it over the existing one.
As you can see, simply changing a couple of visuals can almost totally transform your blog. I like it now as it conveys energy, creativity, warmth, and gives a clearer sense of who I am and what my blog is about. In the next stage of the revamp, I will be working on tweaking the CSS stylesheet to match font colors with strong colors in the banner graphic for a more complete uniform look.
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