Thursday is such a versatile day of the week. It’s the day after Yahtzee day, for those that follow the fast talking game reviewer. It’s the day before Friday, and right before the weekend begins. Thursday is also now design day here at Blogtrepreneur, although we won’t be sending any American Idols, Survivors or Apprentices home, we will be exploring the world of web design and how it fits in with entrepreneurship.
Introduction to the Column
Every Thursday afternoon you’ll be greeted by some discussion on web design trends, the science of it all and how it all works out in relation to you (yes, you). In the past there has been little involvement with the world of design on behalf of Blogtrepreneur. This could be due to focussing more on the blogging and business element that is so important to this website, but I believe design is important to every website.
I know there must be a good bunch of freelance designers out there, as well as like minded young entrepreneurs, so hopefully on Thursdays we can start some good discussion on the aforementioned topics.
As Blogtrepreneur’s resident designer, me and Adnan have something great in the works. You’ve already read about the new design coming in the upcoming weeks, but this one is separating boys from men. Big to huge. Blog to authority. That’s the power a design can have.
The Relationship: Entrepreneur and Designer
The marriage between an entrepreneur and a designer is very important. While an idea can be great, it must come to life. You’ll notice that many of the great freelance and business blogs have great designs. Always have, and always will. Here are some examples:
FreelanceSwitch
The obvious choice. From day one not only have these guys pushed out huge amounts of great content, but the site has looked great for every minute.
Problogger
Problogger has become more of a general blog and has reached a greater audience since its redesign. Coincidence?
Copyblogger
Same deal as Problogger, where a popular site reaches new heights with a new and improved look.
Those sites all come from some pretty big names in web design. Collis Ta’eed, Ben Bleikamp and Chris Pearson respectively.Whether the designer is a partner, a gun for hire or the go to guy (one of each there), the relationship is important.
Your designer will influence your ideas, as an entrepreneur.
It’s the collective creative process and the creation of idea to website that makes the whole package great. That’s where me and Adnan aim to go with Blogtrepreneur. Taking it from a niche on the Internet to the place to be for designers, entrepreneurs and bloggers alike.
The Ultimate Design
In the end, we all want the best possible design for our site. But what is your goal? Why do you want a great design?
- Influence others. Every designer has a few other designers they are inspired by. Now imagine yourself on the other end of that for a second- people are inspired by your design.
- Give your content an advantage. Great content only goes so far on a bad design. Give your content a chance to be seen for what it is, not the design its on (in a negative way, of course).
- Bring traffic. If not from the “CSS” galleries of the web, a great new design will at least warrant attention from other blogs.
- Hold traffic. Might as well look around if it looks good, right? I’ve always found (especially on a release day) that pageviews are much higher on a better design.
If you can reach those goals, whose to say you haven’t reached the holy grail of web design? From there you have to let your content take over. A great design can only make you so popular.
By the way, I’m Connor Wilson. I write my own blog on the issues concerning web development and am a freelance web designer and full time student.
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11 responses so far ↓
1 Caroline Middlebrook // Mar 6, 2008 at 1:14 pm
There’s another couple of reasons I would add for having a good design and these were my priorities when looking for a new theme for my blog:
1) Be able to highlight the best content - I wanted sections where I could promote my ebook and forthcoming newsletter.
2) Support advertising. Not a necessesity for every blog of course but many are ad-supported these days. My old theme just wasn’t setup for ads at all.
2 adnan // Mar 6, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Thanks for the great article Connor - I definitely think you’re right in that the relationship between designer and entrepreneur is key.
Whilst the “entrepreneur” can have all the brainwaves, a designer in the end is needed to sequence these brainwaves and to make them viewable to other visitors in the best possible light. In some ideal situations, the entrepreneur is a designer too…but unfortunately I’m not the creative type!
@ Caroline - thanks for your comment! I agree with you, because those are the 2 things that I also wanted to emphasise on my redesign. The best content obviously in the form of the blog, but also (as you mentioned), a newsletter, or an eBook.
There’s a line with advertising - you want to make it prominent so that advertisers will purchase space, but at the same time, you don’t want your readers to be put off my “in your face ads”. Again, having a designer can really help you achieve the perfect equilibrium.
3 Tom Beaton // Mar 7, 2008 at 2:22 am
That relationship between designer and entrepreneur is so important. You need to work with people who understand you and who you can communicate with quickly and effectively. A good designer can take a brief, and run with it, using a certain amount of initiative and flair to really make something special.
4 Stefanie // Mar 7, 2008 at 1:26 pm
About the ads, just use adsense and you wont have to adjust your blog at all. Their simple textlinks always work for me!
5 Connor Wilson // Mar 8, 2008 at 3:25 am
Adsense is one of the more ugly of ad formats in my opinion, despite their efforts to add rounded corners and things like that. Different corners don’t change that fact that it’s a big block of rarely clicked text.
I prefer as a blogger and a design text links that you have total CSS control over and image advertisements that you can create the environment around.
6 Robert Irizarry // Mar 8, 2008 at 3:48 pm
@Stefanie - Adsense is certainly easy to implement but as Connor points out, its not particularly attractive and tends to be disruptive.
I had many of the reasons listed by Connor as goals in my recent theme change but I was also looking for a way to provide for clean ad space.
Personally, I’d like to move away from the Adsense ads and have begun by using the plugin Who Sees Ads. This way, I’m only showing these to search engine traffic (the most likely to click on the ads anyway) and the casual reader. Regular readers are “rewarded” by the much cleaner sans Adsense site.
7 Make Youself Stand Out: Styling Author Comments in WordPress — Connor Wilson // Mar 10, 2008 at 2:40 am
[...] the comment’s number with rotating colors. I did this at Blogtrepreneur by request (that design will soon be gone, [...]
8 Flimjo // Mar 11, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I agree that Adsense is problematic in many ways. Total CSS control is preferred. This seems to be a growing movement, and I wonder how Google will respond.
9 Eva White // Mar 12, 2008 at 9:25 am
That should be very good and helpful. Discussions always help in learning new things and getting views from different people on the same topic.
10 Andrew Pavelski // Mar 17, 2008 at 5:48 am
The designer should definitely have a good relationship and work well with the webmaster. I liked the blogs you featured and wrote about. Nice article… I also like the fact that you mentioned that the 3 blogs featured had great content to go along w/ their designs. Content > than a design, but a design can definitely play a crucial role in making people want to return.
11 D Web Design // Mar 24, 2008 at 7:29 am
I’m looking forward for another Thursday to make a change to my design.
Never seen it as such a great day before.
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