My Number One Blog Design Lesson of All Time

I know little about blog design.

 

But I know one thing.

 

Function matters. Form does not matter much because readers want content not complex packaging. Blogging window shoppers judge a book by its cover. Here today, gone five seconds from now. See ya’s later!

 

Referral business builders – the ones you attract to become a professional blogger – want easy to consume content. That’s it.

 

Simplicity matters. Delivering content to readers matters. Helping people through the easiest means matters. This is how to drive organic blog traffic. Everyone knows organic blog traffic is blogging manna from heaven.

 

OK.

 

Now the tough part.

 

My Theme Lesson

 

Remember this blog post?

 

Where Is the Blogging Problem?

 

Fast forward 12 hours from the post publish date. I received messages from readers. My theme looked wonky. I tested it on my phone. Everything looked OK at first. But it broke after further probing.

 

Yep; this was the difficult part. I suffered a form issue. My blog looked awkward because the formatting was way off. My blogging function became irrelevant because of a form issue. Every blogger tends to learn this painful issue. At least, every blogger who becomes a little too superficial,

 

After testing, tweaking and patiently working through options I finally discovered the problem at nearly 11 PM.

 

I Effed up. I consciously put form over function.

 

My intuition told me to deactivate a caching plug-in. My theme worked perfectly after trashing that sucker.

 

Caching speeds things up but at a cost. The cost was not worth it today. I deleted my old theme. Yet elements of my old theme wonky-ed my blog. How? Caching. That’s how. I purged my cache. No dice. I purged it five more times. My theme still looked weird. I deactivated the plug-in. Voila! Relief. We are up and running again.

 

I became too obsessed with speed and not with functionality. Who cares how fast a blog is if no one can properly read the site? I focused too much on how my site looked and not enough on how easily bloggers consumed blogging tips at Blogging From Paradise Dot Com. That’s over though. I promise.

 

We are all bare bones, all the time, going forward. My new theme is sleek, simple and to the point. Minus a few header items, my search bar and an icon pointing to my online blogging store you get blogging tips via hundreds of posts.

 

How About Yourself?

 

Do you focus on form over function?

 

Be honest with yourself. Most bloggers go through this stage. Design beats the user experience in the minds of struggling bloggers. Bloggers want pretty blogs with bells and whistles. Readers just want to get helpful content as easily as possible without distractions mucking up the content consuming process.

 

Think more like a reader. Think less like a blogger.

 

Form Design Flaws

 

• heavy advertising
• extraneous widgets
• image bloat (dizzying array of images pulling reader attention away from practical content)
• heavy plug in usage adversely affecting performance

 

Look closely at the form of ads, widgets, images and those dreaded extra plug-ins. Or those dastardly caching plug ins breaking your blog left and right.

 

No joke; I thought about deactivating the caching plug-in after saying a little prayer. Mind you this was not a desperate plea but an appeal to my intuition to guide me. I asked how I’d solved some of the bigger blogging obstacles I’d faced in the past.

 

I heard one clear sentence: Address caching issues.

 

Oh crap. I’d run into caching issues multiple times over the year. Confusing as hell because I figured coding was the problem. Nope. Caching has been a recurring issue during my blogging career.

 

But I had deactivated all plug-ins earlier today? Right? Wrong. I forget to test my caching plug-in.

 

Two minutes later my problem was solved.

 

Function over form wins again. Readers can enjoy Blogging From Paradise Dot Com without any distractions influenced by the form errors I’d made in the past.

 

Make Your Blog as Simple as Possible

 

I drove the highest volume of Google traffic using the simplest themes in the past. My boring themes performed best. I made the most money during my Plain Jane blog design days.

 

Things slowed down as I prioritized form over function. I owned this error. I officially vow to never make it again. Everything will be streamlined on Blogging From Paradise Dot Com going forward. Function over form. Service over snazzy design. Content over the latest collection of eye-popping themes.

 

I doubled down yesterday by activating the barest of bones theme. Simple. Easy. Lightweight. No distractions. All content, all the time. Make the readers happy!

 

Design Matters If it Makes Content Easy to Consume

 

Google any search term.

 

What do you see?

 

Lots of links with a little snippet. Nothing else. No images. Link. Snippets. People Also Search For. Boom. Function over form.

 

Think like Google. Gazillion dollar companies leave some clues for every blogger to follow. Skip the razzle dazzle. Focus on the utilitarian. Readers will love you for it. Google will love you for it.

 

Form Can Become a Can of Worms

 

Have you ever looked for the perfect sidebar image? How about the perfect blog header banner? What about the perfect-looking opt-in box? Yeah; the one yielding the highest sign up rate! Have you found it yet?

 

Have you tested, tweaked and debated what to do with that opt-in form for three hours today?

 

Do you see why obsessing over form pulls you away from what matters: publishing helpful content that readers easily consume through a no frills blog?

 

After activating my new theme, I tried fiddling with multiple sidebar widgets, images, popular posts embeds and latest post embeds before settling on:

 

• a search bar
• the image pointing to my online store

 

I may change things but doubt it. I learned my design lesson of lessons.

 

Make things simple so you have less things to break.

 

Doesn’t that make sense?

 

Prioritizing form over function is a can of worms, a ticking time bomb, a real blogging problem for your readers and you.

 

Take it from a guy who spent twelve hours today learning my most valuable blogging design lesson the hard way.

 

Conclusion

 

Choose function over form.

 

Flawless blog design offers readers pure functionality.