Case study: How blog design contributed to Blogsolid's success

Blogging seems to be all about content. It’s about what you write, how you write it, who you link to, etc. So how does design come into play? Most people say that design is important, and that you should have a professional design that is easy on the eyes, and simple to navigate. It is generally agreed that a bad blog design may have a negative impact on your blog readership.

But I’ve rarely heard people say that a fantastic blog design will be the key to blogging success. Well, Blogsolid is a good case study of how a unique and beautiful design can bring in torrents of readers.

Blogsolid officially launched on July 31st. The content on the site is pretty good, but not anything out of the ordinary. By August 9, the blog was picked up by a bunch of web design galleries. The onslaught of visitors crashed the poor guy’s servers for 12 hours.

Blogsolid’s design and architecture are brilliant. The blog has three categories, which appear on the home page as options for entering the blog. You can also enter the general blog by clicking on the header (this should probably be made clearer somehow – I think there should be four options for entering the blog, i.e. the three categories plus the blog with everything).

Of course, the guy/gal behind Blogsolid is a graphic designer, and it shows. As we’re not all graphic designers, we can theoretically pay someone for a unique design. However, blogging is not always the most profitable of activities, so this is often not viable. But this case study just goes to show how significant design can be in the success of your blog. So try to make sure your blog is presentable and professional, either by creating your own design, or carefully selecting and customizing an existing theme.

(I am working on customizing a new theme for WordPressGarage as we speak – even I can’t stand the way this blog looks anymore!)

Imar

Hi
thanks for linking to blogsolid.
Blog design certainly is a very relevant topic!
Some extra info for your case study:
Blogsolid received over 16000 unique visitors in the first month. Over 80% of the visits were generated by referring sites such as design galleries. I had to increase my bandwidth to 10Gigs to accommodate the traffic. Visits are down a lot in my second month but i did manage to gain some subscribers during the boom. Oh, and I am a guy 🙂
Miriam

Hi Imar,

I once referred to someone as a he and “he” turned out to be a “she,” so now I’m really careful about that!

I had a similar with experience with another site that we launched. It reached digg’s home page on the first day of launch, bringing in 30,000 visitors in 24 hours!! Needless to say, the servers all crashed, so who knows how many visitors we would have gotten had we stayed up! But like your site, even though the number of visitors has gone down, the onslaught from digg helped raise the daily visits on a consistent basis.

Good luck with your blog!
Ryan

That’s an interesting site you’ve linked to there. I love blogs with interesting designs, I view so many of them that anything slightly out of the norm is a nice change of scenery. It also looks a lot more professional when they’re not just a knock off template. I’m not a design expert though so am unlikely to create something that beautiful 🙁

I love the WordPressGarage.com design though, it just needs a new header. Your current header looks a little naff IMO.
Ryan

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that my own site is NOT a good example of design 😛 It’s just a template I plucked off the web.
Miriam

Ryan – you love the WPG design (besides the header)? Really? REALLY?

Maybe I’m just sick of looking at it all the time. I feel like it’s time for a change. I’m customizing another theme with “fall” colors for the new season. I feel like the Gap or something – “check out our new fall line…”
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Scott Frangos

Hi Imar –

I agree that BlogSolid’s design is somewhat unique and great to look at. But it’s hard to read. In fact, all studies show that “reverse type” (light type on a dark background), slows down reading by 30% or more. See this article:
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200608/light_text_on_dark_background_vs_readability/

And a blog has reading as a primary goal. So I’m not sure why the designer chose to go that route. Otherwise, I think it’s a nice design, and wish him/her more success.

Yours, Scott
Miriam

Hi Scott – I know what you’re saying about the visibility of white on dark, but I think he did manage to get away with it, especially since he’s a designer and the design is a crucial part of the blog.

Case study: How blog design contributed to Blogsolid’s success

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