You may spend a few hours or more writing and researching your amazing blog posts, but do you consider how readable the page you post them on is. The layout of your post massively affects the success of your post, you may have great content but if the readability is low then readers will give up.
We all take the easy route; it is ingrained within us as a survival technique but applies to everything in our lives.
So how can you make sure your blog is easy to read…
Keep it simple and clean.
To keep a blog simple and clean we need to give the content whitespace to breath, the right font and font size, so what is right?
When looking at printed layouts the general rules are San-serifs such as Arial for headers and Serifs such as Times for body copy as it helps our eyes follow the line. But on the web this is actually reversed, or better still use a san-serif for everything.
Font size needs to be bigger then the recommended printed fonts, I recommend a minimum of 14px and if you are use to styling fonts make sure your line-height is at least 3pxs bigger then the font size.
So that is the font but what about the design, white or almost white backgrounds are a must and you are better with a dark grey font colour than a black as it comes across friendlier.
Also think about how your content is divided: headings, sub headings, bullet points or numbers, images and short paragraphs are all tools we can use to break up the block of text and make it easier for our readers.
Finally think about what else is on the page?? Are there widgets, adverts, or videos and are they needed? If there is too much going on then everything will compete with your content, only but what you really need.
I find most people I talk to read blogs on the go or in between tasks; our lives are getting busier so make sure your blog is easy to read.
