Having a niche blog is a great way to make your passion into a career. But without the right design, you will have a hard time establishing yourself in your niche. Building an audience for a small niche is already challenging. What’s more challenging is finding the right design aesthetic and vibe that will help you stand out and be memorable.
Here are some tips on how you can create a perfect design for your niche blog:
1. Differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Running a successful niche blog cannot be left up to chance. You need to ensure that you’ve covered all of your bases. By differentiating your blog from immediate competitors, you will be well on your way to become memorable in the minds of your audience. Keep in mind that being different does not mean being so unconventional that your audience cannot see themselves associating with you. You need to ensure that your audience is able to benefit from your online presence. This is probably the most significant difference you and your competitors can have. People want more, they want better things, and if your website can play a role in helping people to do this, you’re in a super advantageous position. Have straightforward design and aesthetic goals in mind, and you’ll be all set.
2. Ensure speed and usability.
These might seem like they are more concerned with your hosting provider or the backend of your website, but surprisingly speed is not only demanded by your audience and search engines. It has also become a modern necessity these days. People want things to happen quickly, and your audience is probably no different. Usability is an area closely related to design. When coming up with the design for your niche blog, you need to ensure that it is highly usable. Since it’s a blog, you need to make sure that the content is front and center. Things like navigation and CTA buttons also need to be on point. Facilitate your online visitors as much as possible if you want your niche blog to be a success. Sites that ignore the needs of their users end up losing a lot of goodwill. Once you lose the trust of your audience, it will be a much harder and longer process to regain it. It may seem like a burden to improve your website’s speed and invest in improving usability. But over time, these will pay for themselves multiple times over.
3. Implement designs that improve conversions.
As mentioned earlier, usability is an essential consideration for the design of your blog. Not only does usability improve the user experience on your website, but it can also help you increase your conversions. Having a web design that encourages your online audience to make conversions is excellent for your niche blog. Designs that boost high conversions are easy to skim, not obtrusive with the user’s experience on your site, and point the user in the direction you would like them to take. If you think that your current website is not getting as many conversions as it should, you might want to look at your web design. Things that need to stand out immediately are your CTA buttons and branding elements, along with high-quality sales copy. Once you have the basics of conversion-increasing tactics done, you can then move on to more nuanced things like having chatbots and a live chat app on your website. These will make communication a possibility and help your niche blog build a loyal following relatively faster. Even if you’re not selling a product, you’re offering your audience an online experience, so make sure that they know that.
4. Ensure consistent branding throughout your website.
Branding is essential for businesses and individuals alike. It needs to be consistent, and it needs to stand out. If you would like to have a perfect design for your niche blog, you need to ensure that your branding is on point. After all, how do you expect your audience to remember you after they have left your site? Ensure that you have a singular logo that’s everywhere. You do not want to be dabbling around with multiple logos (see Slack and how their multiple logos lead to confusion among their users). Additionally, you should maintain the same color scheme and aesthetic preferences. Remember that you don’t need to go overboard with your branding. Add elements that matter at the right places, and your branding will bring out the best in your design.
5. Make yourself and the community reachable.
Being reachable is another thing that your design should put heavy emphasis on. Having prominent contact information will allow you to capitalize on any visitor who wants to get in touch with you. Also, you might want to add in a forum that would complement your website. After all, having a place for your audience to intermingle is a great way to remain on their minds. Communities that are highly engaged are a superb asset for any website owner. If you would like to launch a new product or service, having it beta tested by your community can help make or break your business. The design for your niche blog needs to convey this as well. Have contact forms placed at the right places and if you plan to list your contact no., make it accessible.
Conclusion:
Coming up with a web design that ticks every box is not the easiest thing in the world. You will need to actively identify areas that matter the most to you and work on them. If you want to give your niche blog the highest chances of success, invest a decent amount of time and resources into its design. The design of your niche blog needs to look like it was made by a professional. First impressions matter even in the online world. The design preferences you choose for your blog should be memorable and keep your tribe coming back for more.
This article was posted by the guest Hamzah Adil. Hamzah is a digital marketing executive at SwiftChat- a live chat app designed to aid your sales and customer support teams. Follow him on Twitter.