We all know how important first impressions are! Your visitors do not even have to read a word to make a decision to either stay or escape your blog. In this post we will talk about efficient ways to customize your blog’s appearance and avoid the big escape.
It all starts with your logo. Why? Because your logo is a crucial part of your branding and chances are that you’re going to want to use a web design heavily inspired by your logo. Your web design will probably use colors from your logo, it will probably use certain visual cues and this will help to create a consistent design language for your entire site. It’s a great starting point and it will make coming up with your design that much easier.
So, how do you come up with the perfect logo?
The first stage is to recognize what makes a good logo. Critical criteria here then are:
- Versatility
- Simplicity
- Originality
- Suitability
It needs to be versatile and simple because you’re going to be using this in various different places throughout your online presence. Your logo will go right at the top of your website but it’s also going to be used on all your Social Media Accounts and everywhere your business will find itself. Even offline. It is all about creating brand visibility and loyalty.
In terms of originality, you need to avoid obvious clichés that are present in too many logos. Also, don’t go for something so creative that it doesn’t communicate your message at all. Your logo should entirely on its own tell visitors what your site and blog is about.
Understanding the Process
A great process to go through when creating your logo is to create a mood board. This is essentially a collage where you will place everything that you can think of that you like, that relates to your business and niche and that you might consider. This can be other logos, it can be photos of color palettes or it can be random sketches you’ve made.
Create a big enough collection and eventually you should find that some themes and patterns begin to emerge. This way you can then start sketching some ideas, combining elements and trying out different approaches.
Likewise, it can help to look at the name of your website and brand and to try incorporating that too. Are there any letters that could be morphed into one of your related items? What should the font look like?
For text, it’s important to use an interesting font that looks professional. Ideally, you’ll also want to use a font that is unique to you. Finally, take whatever you have designed and then simplify it and scale it back. Note that when you create your logo, you should use proper software that produces PNG and JPG images, especially if you want to add the image over another color and need the logo background to be transparent.
Choosing the Theme
Now you have your logo, you should have some ideas for your color palette and you should be ready to start thinking about the artistic direction of your website. Creating a theme means applying a new layout and look that has been predefined by you. This can then instantly change the visual impact your website makes, as well as the way your visitors will navigate around it. You can create different themes for your Blog inside of the Cheetah Builder.
When choosing a theme, try to keep a few things in mind. For starters, you need to pick a theme that will be well suited to the type of website you’re going to create. Some themes are very image-heavy for instance with lots of large crisp images linking to each of the posts you upload. This is a great way to make your blog look more modern and more visually compelling but at the same time, it’s also important that you consider the work that goes into this and the requirements. Will your content lend itself to being image heavy? Will you have the means and resources to acquire lots of large graphics that you have the rights to use legally?
You should also look for some specific requirements for your theme:
- Is the theme responsive, meaning it looks good on any sized display.
- Is the theme optimized for mobile in other ways – for instance, the buttons should be large enough to be pressed with a finger instead of a mouse click
- The theme is quick to load so that people don’t get bored and leave and so that Google doesn’t penalize you
- The theme looks good and professional and is easy to navigate
Customizing Your Theme
The Builderall Blog Element is highly customizable and this is another one of its huge advantages. We’ve already created a website theme but now we can go one step further by tweaking that theme to be just the way we want it.
Cheetah allows you to do this under the elements tab where you can change things like the colors, headings, fonts, social media, what will be shown, what will be hidden etc.
One thing you should do right away is to match elements of your website and blog to your logo’s precise color code. This will create a strong sense of consistency throughout your web design and will ensure that everything matches neatly. It’s not enough to feature ‘almost the same’ green – it needs to be 100% identical green; and you can use Chrome Browsers extensions such as Colorpicker to achieve this.
Customizing Your Cheetah Blog Feed / Page
The Cheetah Builder makes it easy to create and design an awesome Blog Feed and Blog Post Page. You can add a custom background, widgets, affiliate links, Google Adsense and advertising slots to really monetize your blog and offer your readers the best go to resource.
If you would like to learn more about Blogging, please visit the Builderall Challenges Web Site. You will find in depth Blog Training that includes all the how to’s as well as the strategy you will need to Blog successfully.
Happy Blogging.