Blog design for Pros

When looking for a perfect WordPress theme, I did some research and I discovered worlds most sucessful blog designs have lots of things in common.

Blogs analyzed

www.shoemoney.com
www.johnchow.com
www.problogger.com
www.lifehack.org
www.smashingmagazine.com
www.doshdosh.com
www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

These are all established blogs and high earners also.

Header

• Nice and memorable logo with slogan.
• Horizontal navigation with key elements.
• Banner ad placement (468×60 or 728×90 – Shoemoney).
• Search box (internal or Google custom search).

Sidebar

• Subscribe/Follow buttons: They provide several options:
  • built in RSS Subscribe button via email
  • Feedburner button
  • TwitterCounter button
• Ad placements often called “Sponsors” with 125×125 ads (Shoemoney also has a 120×600 ad block.)
• “What`s hot” zone is what it actually tells it is. Popular are:
  • Recent posts
  • Top posts  /Best of
  • Top commentators
  • Tag cloud
  • Twitter updates
• Own products – sidebar can be also used for promoting own products and services.
• Categories – simple list of categories.

Main Content

This is where these blogs get a bit creative.

Johnchow.com uses featured articles (5 of them are changing ) on top, recent posts on left and featured video in the middle of front page.

Darren Rowse from problogger.net uses similar layout with one featured post at top, recent posts on left and weekly video post in the middle.

Lifehack.org also uses featured articles concept, while others (Shoemoney , Entrepreneurs Journey, Dosh Dosh, Smashing magazine ) have latest article on very top of the page followed by others below.

It looks this is more of a personal preference, since both ways seem to work.

Number of posts and their length

First goes blog, number of posts and length (intro means you have to click to read more and full post means…you know what):

• Shoemoney, 10, full post
• John Chow:,on frontpage: 9, intro, on blog page: 5, full post
• Problogger, on frontpage: 8, intro, on blog page: 10, full post
• Lifehack, 2 featured, 15 latest, all intro
• Smashing Magazine, 8, intro
• Dosh Dosh, 9, intro
• Enterpreneurs Journey, 5, intro.

It looks the average of my observed blogs would be probably 8 or 9 intro posts.

Post structure:

• Title=H1, there was no exception for this one, however WordPress  out of the box puts titles in H2 tags, which is not ok for seo! So make sure you have all titles in H1!
• Date (time of day is not obligatory since people come from different time zones)
• Category
• Number of comments
• Author
• Links to social networks
• Tags (Smashing Magazine)
• Comments

Footer:

• Secondary “What`s hot” zone
• Latest/Top
• Contact / Add to social networks buttons
• Copyright
• Bottom navigation
• Link to Blog Designer
• Categories, Archives
• Resources, Recommendations, Featured Sites

Conclusion

It looks there are some no-brainers that apply for most of the blog designs and follow the usability that produces results. I changed my theme from WordPress default, to one that is quite in line with above sites.

51 Grand Before and After