You can have high quality content with great images on your blog, but if it’s not designed for the optimum user experience, you’ll be in trouble.

The idea of good website design varies to some degree based on the designer’s preferences, but ultimately, good design will clearly covey visual information to the reader. It will also offer a flawless user experience.

Bad design, on the other hand, will ruin that communication and impede the visitor’s comprehension to the point where they don’t want to stay on your webpage. As you work on designing a blog, whether you’re using WordPress, another web design platform, or your custom-made design, avoid these all-too-common mistakes.

1. Leaving Out the Email Newsletter

The success of your blog depends on support from outside social sources, which makes email newsletter support a must. Profits only come when your blog is interconnected with your readers, and the best way to find readers is through your newsletter email list.

The Fix: Build up your email address list and include a regular newsletter to help promote your blog and content.

2. Too Many Widgets

Many companies or individuals don’t feel they have the time to update their blog posts as often as they should. Some even go weeks without a new post. Their solution for this problem is to include a clump of widgets in the sidebars and footers to help promote their old content. This is a great strategy for boosting traffic on your blog, but only if you’re consistently putting out new content.

The Fix: It might be just fine that the blog owner isn’t creating a lot of content. If that’s the case, simply give the blog a one-page design to make the content look more impressive and abundant.

3. Cluttering Up the Space

Ads, widgets, graphics, images, and fonts can all be extremely useful for adding visual interest to your blog, but too many of them on one page can obstruct the content and leave your readers feeling like they’ve entered chaos. It will be difficult to read your content, and you’ll lose readership as a result.

The Fix: Streamline ads and widgets on your blog so that they appear in a neat column to the side rather than interrupting the flow of your content.

4. Allowing Pop Up Ads

Pop-up ads prompting your newsletter or special promotions from you are okay, providing that you don’t use too many. Pop-up ads from other companies are just annoying to readers. It will decrease readership and interfere with your blog’s message.

The Fix: Minimize the use of pop-up ads, particularly those from other companies. It’s okay for one to pop up when a reader first enters your page, but only use it once per visit. Besides that, include tracking with your pop-ups so that you can limit the number of pop-ups each reader views.

5. Too Many Colors

A well-designed color scheme can do incredible things for branding and creating a pleasant user-experience, but too many or inconsistent use of colors can undo all of that. It takes away from both the usability of the blog and the professionalism.

The Fix: Simply choose one color palette that you want to associate with your brand, and don’t stray.

6. Incompatible for Images

Every blog should be made compatible for images. Human beings are very visual, and the brain craves graphics and media to help them process content. Without it, your blog becomes boring, and it can’t compete with other blogs of its kind.

The Fix: Make sure the template you’re using or the custom-design you’re creating is optimized for images and other media, and be sure to use media to enhance a blog post whenever appropriate.

7. Using an Illegible Typeface

The purpose of a blog is to have people read your content. Some typography makes that very difficult for readers. It might look cool, but if it doesn’t offer a clean flow for your readers to follow, it won’t have nearly the effect you want it to.

The Fix: Study up on typography to discover what types of fonts perform best for blogs. In most cases, you’ll want to use a sans serif font, such as Arial, for blogs since it facilitates easier reading on the screen.

8. Fearing White Space

It’s true that too much white space can make your text feel strange and distant. However, a little white space is nothing to be afraid of. It actually makes it easier to comprehend your post’s message. When your content is crammed together and cluttered, it’s hard to read and comprehend.

The Fix: Adjust your current white space to find the perfect balance between distant and crammed. The result will make your content easier to read and comprehend.

9. Poor Navigation

Great navigation is actually one of the most important features for readers of blogs. They want to understand how to move from one section to another and be able to move freely around your blog without hindrance. Otherwise, your traffic will significantly diminish and the bounce rate will increase.

The Fix: Integrate several ways to move around the blog, whether through top bar navigation or arrows that navigate to the next page. Also, include links and widgets into your blog that make it easy to move to other relevant blog posts on your blog.

10. Hiding the Search Box

Google has spoiled most internet users to the point that if they type something into a search bar, it will bring them exactly what they want every time. If your search box is difficult to find, or worse, difficult to get good results, it will only frustrate visitors who want to find additional content without leaving your page.

The Fix: Web design best practices dictate that the search bar should be clearly visible in the top right corner of your blog so that newcomers can easily find it. Run several tests on the search bar to see if it’s delivering useful content in its results. If not, make the necessary upgrades.

11. Forgoing Credibility

Every blog needs to establish some kind of credibility to make readers feel like they’re getting advice from the experts. With no information about why you’re qualified to write about something, readers may begin to doubt the validity of your claims.

The Fix: Include an “About Us” page to explain your credibility. Show off your personality and include photographs to show who’s the one writing the blog.

12. No Subscription Feature

Just like you need a good newsletter to support your blog, you need a subscription feature to keep readers coming back for more. A subscription feature will enable readers to receive your blog via email, creating more traffic on your page.

The Fix: Use a pop-up feature and a widget to remind readers to subscribe to your email. Keep subscribers consistently updated with what’s going on with your blog and company to make them feel like an important part of your purposes.

13. Ignoring the Push for Responsive Design

There are slowly becoming more mobile users than desktop users, which makes responsive design absolutely necessary for your blog. You posts will be able to reach more readers when they can access them on any device.

The Fix: Work with your current web template or custom design to make your website responsive. This is simpler than building a separate design for mobile friendliness in most cases.

14. Not Configuring Each Post for Print

Contrary to popular belief, print is not dead, nor will it be in the near future, and optimizing your posts for print is a great way to increase brand attention. However, many blog posts aren’t designed to print easily.

The Fix: Configure a print setting on your blog that will print the content on a certain blog post without compromising or distorting the content. You’ll also want to include any copyright details, the URL, contact information, and your brand.

15. Failing to Add Social Media

Blogs without social sharing buttons and widgets are missing out on a great opportunity to further their audience reach and boost conversions. It’s also bad to have social media integration, but to not keep it updated.

The Fix: Encourage readers to share your content through social sharing buttons. Include multiple buttons so that readers can use their platform of choice to share your content. You’ll also want to remove outdated widgets and make a sincere effort to keep future widgets entirely up to date.

16. Spacing Content Poorly

In many blogs, the text is either too close together or too far apart. Some also choose to use unevenly aligned content and content that’s aligned in the center. All of these options are difficult to read and detract from the comprehension.

The Fix: Align all blog posts to the left side, and adjust the kerning and leading so that they facilitate easy readability and enhance understanding.

17. Leaving Out the Headers and Footers

Headers and footers are a sign of good navigation that many readers look for. Leaving these out reduces usability for readers.

The Fix: Include adequate headers and footers that will help your readers move from one section of your blog to another. Site maps are also a great addition to help visitors find what they’re looking for within both your website and your blog.

18. Bad Branding

Without proper branding, your blog will lack professionalism and memorability. It should contain dominant, consistent elements that are entirely associated with your specific brand in order to increase brand recognition.

The Fix: Design your website to revolve around your brand with a consistent color palette and a strong logo. It might be a good idea to invest in a professional designer or web design firm to deliver the exact look you need to accomplish this.

19. Unscannable Blocks of Text

One of the best ways to make your content feel unapproachable and too daunting to read is formatting your blog posts into long blocks of text. On a screen, this blocky text appears daunting and makes it difficult to both scan and understand your text, two things that readers want very much from a post.

The Fix: Make your content easy to scan with short paragraphs, pull out quotes, bullet points, and other techniques that help to break up the monotony of blocky paragraphs.

20. Designing Below the Fold

If all of your important content, images, advertisements, widgets, and graphics are below the fold, there’s a problem with your design. Web design best practices mandate that the most important and visually gripping items should always come above the fold.

The Fix: Alter your design to bring the graphics and important information to the top of the page, within the first third of the space. Test your blog’s appearance on multiple screens and machines to see how the “above the fold” changes with each device. Make the necessary changes so that it appears the same on all devices.

21. Neglecting Contact Information

For most blogs, the whole purpose is to get consumers to contact the owner about a specific product, service, job opportunity, advertisement or any other offer. Yet, too many blogs are published without any contact information in sight.

The Fix: Create a specific page devoted to multiple forms of contact information, including email, phone, contact forms, social media, and even live chat if possible. It’s also a good idea to include a call to action at the end of each blog post.

Your blog only offers you a limited amount of time to pull readers into your world and get them interested enough to come back for more. The design you use is one of the best ways to do that, and by avoiding these major blog design mistakes, you can reach that goal with ease.