Surfing the web, you’ve probably come across blogs with beautiful, inspiring designs. I’m talking about the blogs that compel you to stay on their sites longer and—in the back of your mind—make you think about your own theme and how you can improve on it.

Before you can design your dream theme, your blog must be functional. Focus on the basics. No matter how attractive your home page looks, if it doesn’t have a menu bar, search function, or subscription sign-up, what good will it be for you brand?

When you next head to your favorite site, take note of how its layout guides you. Does the flow of the page seem logical? Does the email subscription offer look particularly attractive? Is the placement of the ads effective? Study blogs that you enjoy, and you’ll learn what works in your niche and for you.

5 Basic Design Elements Your Theme Needs

1. Navigation

A blog with unintuitive navigation is like a house that looks gorgeous from the outside, but doesn’t have any windows or doors—troublesome both to those inside and outside. Make sure your visitors can find their way around by including:

• a menu bar, featuring:
  • a Start Here tab
  • an About tab
  • a Contact tab
  • a Blog tab, if your blog isn’t your home page.
• a search bar, for better access to your archives.
• a place to subscribe to your email list/receive your free opt-in gift.

2. Social Media Icons

Social bookmarking not only adds value to your visitors, it also helps boost your traffic and brand awareness. Through WordPress plugins like Shareaholic or sites like Digg, Delicious, or even Reddit, visitors can bookmark and share your content as they please.

Just remember that when it comes to social media, it’s not enough to robotically set up channels and post photos or blog post links. You have to actively get readers to interact with you and your brand. Consider making it even easier for your readers by embedding your Twitter timeline in your blog’s sidebar with the header, “Follow me on Twitter.”

Find all these tips and more in Blog Design Basics: Your Must-Know Visual Branding and Style Tips.

3. Good Typography

One of your top priorities as a blogger is to have your readers read more. And what will they be reading most of all? Your posts! That’s why it’s incredibly important to choose simple, legible typefaces that still match your personality, style, and flair for uniqueness.

4. Archives & Blog Categories

Since blogs are updated daily and arrange posts chronologically from newest to oldest, older posts become harder to find. You should already have a search function, but including archives allows for even faster, more efficient recovery.

Organize your archive with categories and tags. A list of your categories should be visible somewhere on your blog for easy access. We list our categories both on our front page and in our sidebar.

Tags generally describe posts in more detail than categories. For example, a food blogger may have a smoothie category, but the major fruits used in recipes could be tags. Now if you need to finish your bananas before they spoil, you can quickly check the banana tag for all your options. Be wary of over-tagging—that’s a major sign of amateur blogging.

 5. Mobile Design

Finally, Heidi and I have mentioned this before, but as technology marches on, it only becomes increasingly relevant!

Responsive design is when a web design adjusts to whatever size screen the site is being displayed on. Responsive websites look and function well regardless of whether you read them on a phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer. Whether you choose mobile responsiveness or a mobile template for your blog design, your theme needs to accommodate mobile users in one way or another. Otherwise, you directly inconvenience the over 67% of smartphone owners who use their phones to browse the web every day. Definitely a blog design no-no.

Stay tuned for a post about finding yourself an optimal designer! Can’t wait that long? You can get a head-start with our complete guide for Kindle and related apps.

So how does your design measure up? Do you have a dream theme?

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