How To Design Your WordPress Blog

Learn how to design your WordPress blog like a pro.

Before you start creating content on our WordPress blog, the first and foremost thing you need to do is to design your WordPress blog so that your readers can have the best experience after visiting your blog. However, coming up with the best blog layout and design functionality can be a daunting process, with so many possibilities today. In this guide, we’re showing off a dozen top best practices to inspire your decisions about blog design, templates, fonts, colour schemes, and more.

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and are at no additional cost to you. I get compensated when you buy hosting using my affiliate links, which helps make this guide free for you. Please note that I only recommend products and services that I have personally used, and found to be worth it.

How to Design Your WordPress Blog?

To help you reach the right blog layout (that will attract and retain more readers), we’re going to break down the most important blog layout best practices and the 12 most influential blog layout examples from real-life websites.

Blogs and publications—so you can draw inspiration from the best when designing your blog layout. By now, you’ve probably started a blog of your own. You are here for some inspiration (and advice) to come up with the best possible blog layout that will create a great experience for your readers.

While writing great content and driving traffic are two of the top considerations for bloggers, one aspect you may not have considered much yet is the overall design and layout of your blog. People who have already started blogging may have initially chosen a WordPress theme and allowed the general format of that theme to determine the layout of their blog.

The only factor determining your blog layout. Whether you’re just starting a blog—or thinking about redesigning your site, I’m going to show you some great blog layout examples and essential blog layout best practices for designing your blog.

Why does your blog layout matter?

Why are blog layout and design so important? Why does it really matter how your blog looks or how it is designed? Well, people are selective in nature and without spending much time, most of them can make quick decisions the first time they visit your blog.

They will immediately judge your blog and decide whether or not to stick around. If your blog layout seems unprofessional, outdated or confusing, chances are they will question your credibility. Here are some important reasons why you should care about your blog layout and overall site design.

1. High Bounce Rate:

A high bounce rate is when readers come to your blog and choose to go elsewhere without giving them enough time to read your content. They don’t spend any real-time on your blog, and they don’t click on any of your internal links. While a high bounce rate is not solely dependent on your blog layout, it is certainly one of the most important factors.

Just imagine that you have reached a site with a poor visual experience. Do you think you’d prefer to spend your time navigating a site that doesn’t suit you? What do you do with these sites? Chances are, you hit the back button and try to find a better source. This is why your blog layout matters. You want your blog to welcome your visitors.

2. Low Rate of Return:

Creating good content that answers people’s questions is not enough to satisfy them. If readers don’t like your layout and design, they may not come back to your blog in the future. This is a problem because you want your visitors to keep coming back and this is only possible if you provide them with valuable content, but not at the cost of a poor visual experience.

People will start feeling loyalty only when they have a good visual experience with your valuable content. Once they become your loyal readers, chances are they will be your future customers who will continue to visit your site and share your content on their network.

3. Trouble navigating your blog:

Your blog layout should be easy to navigate so that it doesn’t take much time for your visitors to figure out who you are, what your site is about and what you are going to offer them. They should be able to locate important links with ease and develop a basic understanding of what your blog has to offer with very little effort.

Now that we’ve defined some basic and compelling reasons why you should create an attractive blog layout, let’s take a closer look and find out which blog layout elements are most important.

Common Blog Layout Best Practices

Although you may want to design your blog with your preferred layout so that you have a unique look within your niche, there are certainly some general best practices that all great blog layouts and designs should have in common and I’m sure you’ll want to take a look at them. Ready?

1. Using fonts that you can read well

Choosing the right font to use in your blog sounds relatively simple, but it is very important for your overall blog layout. Remember that the fonts on your blog may not be the reason someone stays on your blog, but they very well could be the reason a reader is leaving your site. Your font choices shouldn’t detract from your content—and should be easy for your audience to read.

What font size should you use?

Font sizes that are too small will be difficult to read and thus medium to large font sizes are better for online reading. This is even more important for people who have difficulty seeing small fonts. I’d prefer to set the font size of your main text to at least 16px, but it’s up to you to make the best decision on who your readers are, don’t be afraid to ask for some feedback from real people. No, it’s deciding.

Which Fonts Should You Use?

I recommend sticking to relatively basic fonts, at least for the body text that people will be reading the most. Simple fonts aren’t as flashy, but using a simple font will be infinitely better for your readers—and encourage them to move through your content.

A good approach is to avoid any font that seems like a novelty. Try to choose a font that is easy to read for most of your readers. I think ‘Arial’ is a very reliable font that will not disappoint you. There’s nothing really fancy about this font, but it can be an advantage when it comes to legibility in your blog layout.

Which Fonts Should You Avoid?

To make sure you don’t choose a font that scares your readers, always take the readers’ point of view and you’ll be able to better configure which pretty-looking fonts aren’t reader-friendly. Zaffino, Comic Sans MS and Papyrus are some examples you should stay away from.

Look, this is a practical approach and it is better for you to decide for yourself. Please take some time and I am sure you will come up with a font that is beautiful and user-friendly. I highly recommend trying a font that is legible to both desktop readers and mobile device users – because if readers can’t actually read your blog posts, they’ll be gone in no time.

2. Organize your blog layout

If you have already spent some time writing useful blog content, you must have realized that it is difficult to keep everything organized within an individual article let alone from the overall perspective of your blog. Plus, you may have written blog posts in different categories—and you’ll need a way to separate them.

If you’ve written some cool posts in the past, they’re now at the bottom of your blog feed, where no one will ever find them. Someone visiting your blog for the first time today might not know how to navigate to access those posts.

And that’s a shame because you don’t want readers to miss out on finding your best content. This is why the need to organize everything properly comes into play. There are many different ways to organize the content of your blog.

Let us know some of the best ways how you can easily organize your content and choose the one that best suits your niche and design.

1. Pick a well-defined niche for your blog

First things first, I always advise start-up bloggers to try and follow some clear and well-defined niche for their blogs. Because if your blog has a clear direction, it is very easy to rank your content in Google search results. Another reason to choose a well-defined niche is that you can present a clear, consistent message to your blog readers on a regular basis and make it easier for people to find your site.

If your site tries to cover multiple topics at once, it is difficult to create a blog layout that ties all the main topics of your content together. Your visitors won’t know what to expect, and you’ll struggle to come up with a viable way to direct them where they want to be.

2. Use the navigation menu

Many bloggers like to use a link in their main navigation menu like- start here, best content here or find here etc. Once clicked on it, takes the reader into more detail and usually provides clear instructions for readers on what to do next. This is a great way to introduce new visitors to your blog and share your content.

Here is a list of a few things you should consider adding to your “Get Started Here” page:

  1. Blogger or blog introduction
  2. Glossary of Common Terms Used on Blogs
  3. Links to your best and most popular content
  4. Shopping links if your blog sells digital or physical products
  5. Call to action like signing up for your blog’s newsletter

In fact, using a “start here” page can be a very useful tool to organize your content and easily direct your readers to where you want them to go.

3. Create a learning centre

If you’ve already created a decent amount of material in one type of category, a learning centre is another way to keep things organized. The Learning Center is a collection of categories arranged in a section in a drop-down menu to keep things nice and easily accessible. The idea is for readers to quickly find what they are looking for. Learning centres are often organized by videos, blog posts and podcasts.

Some important topics you can consider are- Affiliate Marketing, Digital Marketing, Business & Finance, Podcasting, E-Book Writing, Online Courses, Email Marketing, How to Get Traffic etc. All of these topics fall under online entrepreneurship, but each one is a little more specific.

A learning centre is best suited for a blog that contains a lot of information about a specific category and that wants to provide quick and easy access to the content readers are looking for. And in that context, it really adds a lot of value to your blog layout in terms of creating a more reader-friendly experience.

3. Design your blog posts to be easily scannable

Online writing is very different from most other styles of writing. This is different from the articles used in published books. When people read on the Internet, they often want blog posts to be able to access, scan and find the important points they are looking for without any problems.

It doesn’t mean that people aren’t willing to read long blog posts. Most people will read long articles if they are too busy with the topic. However, many people first scan the blog title to determine whether they want to read the article they are reading now or move on to another topic.

Some quick tips to format your blog posts are:

  • Write short sections
  • Avoid Large Blocks of Text
  • Split text with images and titles
  • Organize sections by headings and sub-headings
  • Use bullet points or numbers to split long sections of text

For longer blog posts, you can make it even easier by including a table of contents at the beginning of your blog post layout. The longer the content of your blog, the more important it is to provide source links to ensure that readers can quickly and easily find what they are looking for. The ‘Header’ or ‘Footer’ section is the best place to organize everything, such as the table of contents or the navigation keys.

4. Use high-quality images or graphics

There is no denying that the use of high-quality images and graphics lays the foundation for the layout and design of a great blog. Visiting a site with low-resolution images or poor graphics can create distrust and a kind of boredom among users.

Here are some blogging statistics that prove that quality images and graphics play an important role in the overall blog layout and design:

  1. A blog post with an image gets 94% more views.
  2. According to online marketing influencer Jeff Bullas, “In an online store, customers think that the quality of a product’s image is better than product-specific information (63%), a lengthy description (54%) and ratings and reviews (53%).
  3. When people hear information, they usually remember 10% of the information when asked three days later. If an image is combined with similar information, people are able to retain 65% of the information after three days.
  4. Only 3% of bloggers add 10+ images per article, but they are 2.5 times more likely to report “strong results” than the average blogger.

I know, statistics are hard to digest, but it is a fact that bloggers who post 10+ images per post see better results than those who include fewer images. I’m not saying that high-quality written material is pointless. In fact, search engines like Google still find content via text.

What I’m trying to say is that high-quality images and graphics will make your blog layout more engaging, more shareable, and more memorable for your readers. The higher the quality, the better the impression they will make on your blog readers.

5. Consider page load time

As we just talked about, it is extremely important to include quality visuals in your blog layout, it is also important that you keep your load times to the minimum possible. The importance of quality visuals does not relieve you of the burden of increasing site load times.

Today no one has enough patience and likes to watch their pages loading slowly. They may think that your site is not working properly, or they may not care enough to wait more than a few seconds.

Here are some statistics that show a real picture of how late site loading can affect overall performance:

53% of your visitors will leave your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load
A second delay in page response reduces conversions by 7%
Websites with load times of 1-3 seconds are much less likely to have a bounce rate than websites with higher load times

Another good reason to keep your load times under control is the overall SEO profile of your blog. Load time is one of the major factors that Google uses to determine the ranking of its search engine results. The faster your blog’s load time, the more likely it is to rank higher in organic search results. So how do you make sure your pages are loading quickly? Here are some easy steps to help you optimize your load times.

1. Test your page load speed

The first step in determining what changes really need to be made to your blog layout is figuring out your current load speed. You can use a free tool like Google’s PageSpeed ​​Insights to collect this data. You will find a list of actionable suggestions where you can test your site performance after applying the tool to troubleshoot a problem that is slowing down your page load speed.

2. Remove unnecessary plugins

Plugins are extremely important to help you do more with your blog. However, the downside is that if you install too many plugins to add additional functionality they can increase load times and affect the performance of your site.

One way to combat this is to get rid of plugins that are redundant or no longer useful for the core functions of your blog. You may have installed many plugins that do the same thing without realizing it. If there are plugins that are no longer helping you, take some time to consider which plugins you can get rid of.

3. Consider Using a Faster Hosting Plan

Your blog’s hosting plan can make a big difference when it comes to loading times. I know it’s a little tempting to pick one of the cheapest hosting plans and that’s fine if just starting out on a tight budget, but they are often not the best option as your blog has to grow over time.

And you will need to upgrade to one of these managed WordPress hosting plans once your budget allows. Don’t worry, you can consider choosing a hosting plan from the given list:

All of these recommendations perform well on speed tests, uptime, and maintenance. You can go with any of the above lists as each of these hosting companies offers affordable plans for bloggers with lots of features so that you will not regret it once you sign up, and I have used all three for years. has done.

4. Choose a Lightweight WordPress Theme

One of the reasons why keeping your own blog layout and design so simple is to reduce page load times by using a lite WordPress theme. It can make a big difference in speed and load times if you use a suitable WordPress theme.

Here are two WordPress themes that I always recommend:

Astra WordPress Theme: This is a free, lightweight and easy-to-use WordPress theme that can enhance the layout and design of your blog without compromising on speed and load times.

Elementor Website Builder: If you’ve wanted a WordPress theme with a visual page builder that I always recommend, there’s only one worth considering today. From a page load speed perspective, Elementor definitely stands out from its competitors with its Hello theme.

5. Installing the Best WordPress Performance Plugins

Even after choosing a lightweight WordPress theme to power your blog, you will still need a tool that helps you optimize your speed and site performance. You can get additional speed and customization benefits by installing the right performance plugins.

WP Rocket ($49/year): This comes in as a great caching tool that creates extremely fast load times and does a great job of optimizing and reducing the weight of HTML, CSS, and JS files. There is a free version but I would recommend you to buy a paid version because it won’t hurt your pocket if you compare the services that add to your functionality.

There’s more you can do to optimize your layout and design, but these simple best practices and tools are a great foundation for accelerating your site’s performance and ultimately reducing load times.

6. Include a compelling Call To Action

You are probably already familiar with CTA as it is commonly used in blogging-related topics. When people read your blog posts, what do you expect them to do next? Well, they may choose to sign up for your newsletter or like to see other important articles on your blog.

So how do you motivate them to accomplish what they want with your blog layout? To help them, you’ll need to employ an action called a “call to action.” If you haven’t included it in your blog post yet, many people will read it, leave your page, and pay little or no attention to it later.

It’s not because readers weren’t interested, but that they weren’t given anything concrete to do next. In other words, you have alerted them to a problem, but you have not given them a solution. CTAs are so effective on a blog because they provide readers with a clear solution to the problem they are looking for.”

It’s your job to make it easy for them to help. As a blogger, your first step should be to uncover an issue and then provide a really easy solution to solve that problem.

Here’s how you can incorporate it into your CTAs to make them more problem-solving oriented:
Solution 1: Convince them to buy your services, products, e-books or other online courses if you have.
Solution 2: If they are interested in learning the topic in detail, let them join your email list.
Solution 3: Include links to other blog posts you’ve written to address their specific problems.

7. Be creative but not cluttered

Not every blog’s layout or design is necessarily as simple as mine. There are some blog layouts that are very diverse in their design decisions showing that you can be extremely creative without cluttering your layout. what does this mean?

This means that there is a very fine line between creativity and chaos. If your blog readers can’t find your content easily or feel immediately overwhelmed by the number of things going on with your blog layout, your site is not operating at its highest potential.

Here are some specific elements that may distract your readers from consuming your content:

1. Too many ads

Well-placed ads on your blog can be a great way to increase the revenue of your blog. On the other hand, a blog that is lit up with ads blinking from every corner of your blog layout can be extremely distracting. You will be surprised to know that I have personally left many blogs without reading a single word, and this is one of the major reasons why I removed ads from my blog.

you know people mainly come to your blog to solve their problems by searching for answers in your content. If a lot of ads are spoiling your articles, you run the risk of looking like a spam site that is hiding answers from readers to get a few extra ad impressions instead of being a real reliable source of knowledge.

2. A messy sidebar

There are pros and cons when it comes to using your blog sidebar. Some recommend not having it at all, while others say it can be very helpful for navigating and promoting your blog content. However, I am in favour of not overusing the sidebar.

If you want to include a sidebar, try to keep it as clean, simple and useful as possible. Try to include only the most important information that you want your readers to know and that is necessary for them to function.

Earlier, we talked about the ways in which I use white space wisely on my blog layout. Some bloggers feel the need for text or images to cover every inch of their blog. My advice is don’t hesitate to leave some comfortable space in your blog layout, as this can often be more calming for readers than a design full of elements.

3. No use of negative space

Negative space also allows people to find important information on your blog more easily. It gives you the opportunity to highlight the most essential features or articles.

8. Encourage engagement

It is the engagement or traffic on your blog that decides how important your content is and it is up to you how you are going to use and monetize it. It is equally important for all types of online platforms like social media, blogs or websites.

There are tons of ideas on how you can better promote your blog. But in this post, we are examining it from the perspective of blog layout. Do you have any ideas on how to encourage engagement as part of your blog layout? Well, here are some tips to make your target audience feel that they are interacting with your content and a part of the journey with you.

One of the best ways to better analyze your blog’s performance in terms of engagement is when readers comment on your blog posts. It helps to keep track of the ideas that emerge in your reader’s mind after reading your content and make a connection with most of them.

It helps in analyzing the quality of your content and promoting it to your new readers. Plus, it helps establish more trust with readers who read your genuine answers in the comments section. A great way to help readers become more interested in commenting is to show a comment link at the beginning of your blog post.

The more comments people have left, the more others will want to read the comments and potentially submit their comments. I use this method on my blog and want you to implement it for yourself.

2. Display a ‘Like’ button on your post

Another way to increase engagement on your blog posts is to display the ‘Like’ button as you see on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. It’s similar to liking a post on a social media post, and it gives people a quick way to show that they like what you’ve written.

You can make it easier for your visitors to share your content by including a social media share link button in your layout. This will help them to share your content on their social media accounts which is a great way to increase engagement and collect free traffic to your blog. What this means is that in less time than it takes to snap their fingers, the reader will decide whether or not to trust your blog.

4. Put a question in your blog post

You can ask your readers if the content you are sharing has helped them. A common practice to increase engagement with your readers is to ask questions directly in your blog posts. Asking simple questions or giving them the opportunity to ask questions is a great way to start a conversation with more of your readers.

You can take it a step further and make it an integral part of your blog layout as well. You’ve probably noticed when reading content online that they include a button at the bottom asking if the article was helpful. If you choose ‘no’, they will ask you to elaborate on what was not useful about the experience.

If you’re creating a blog post designed specifically to help people answer a clear question, this can be a very smart way to get immediate feedback on your content. Ultimately, it will help to start a conversation with your readers and they can give you their opinion about what was helpful and what was lacking in your tutorial.

9. Brand your blog layout

Branding is an important part of long-term success, especially in the case of blogging. This can help set you apart from the competition and make you more recognizable to your customers and prospects. When you are designing your layout, look for opportunities to brand your site as being unique in some way.

The pages of your entire blog should be identical and each page or post should match the look and feel of the rest of your blog. Now, let’s go through some of the ways in which you can use branding to further improve your blog layout.

1. Reflect your personality

Each of us has a different personality and hence this should be reflected in the layout of your blog. Think about what parts of you need to be included as the main feature of your blog layout, and carry that idea into your site’s design. Think about what you need to include as the main feature of your blog layout, and incorporate it into the entire design of your site.

2. Choose branding colours

Combining the right colours is a solid way to brand your blog and pick a specific mood for the site. For my blog, I use dark green and some distinctive shades of blue. This colour scheme is throughout my blog and I use graphics for my blog post header images as well.

There are many colours that you can choose from to design your blog layout that best suits your personality. The uniform colour set gives a nice look to your blog layout and your readers are instantly familiar with the content you offer and they will quickly decide that the content is yours.

Some colours can make them comfortable, while others can tease them and you have to pay attention to it. You can also view a colour chart to determine what colours your readers should be comfortable with. For example, green is often associated with growth and prosperity, while red is sometimes associated with energy and passion.

What matters most is how you apply it, more than the colour you choose. Choose colours that complement each other and try to maintain a uniform colour scheme throughout your blog layout, so that your regular readers don’t get confused. This will help you develop your branding strategy and become more memorable in the long run.

A logo is an image, text, shape or a combination of all three that represents the name and purpose of a brand or business. If designed well, it can be much more than a symbol of identity. It tells the story of a company by conveying your brand message in a way that helps establish an emotional connection with your target audience.

It creates a great first impression, invites customers to interact with your brand and helps you build a brand identity. Also, it gives your company a symbol through which people can better remember you and differentiate you from your competitors and promote brand loyalty.

This is why it is extremely important to use a well-customized logo to complement your branding strategy. You can put your logo on your content and over time, readers will automatically recognize it as you.

4. Choose a suitable typography

It is legible fonts that make your blog layout uniform and convenient for your readers. Once you have chosen your typography, be sure to use it consistently in your blog layout. This is another way to ensure that you are building a brand and personality in your blog. There is also a strategy for linking fonts that work well together. For example- If you use different fonts for your navigation menus, you want them to look good with the typography in the body text of your blog posts.

You can visit Google’s front page for an introduction to font pairing. Each time you select a font, it shows you all the styles the font comes in—plus the font it pairs best with. This is what it looks like:

10. Make your blog layout relevant to your audience

The best practice for designing a branding blog layout is to make layout decisions with your readers in mind—as what appeals to one group of people may not be appealing to another group. For example- while the style and feel of your text are important, the primary reason most people visit a fashion blog is to look for fashion and they will not focus on typography as their usual test.

That’s why it makes sense that fashion blogs are very image-intensive. In the case of a financial site—they often rely heavily on using large high-quality images on top of their feature stories—giving it a very magazine-type look.

Which Blog Layout Style Should You Use?

If you are completely new to blogging, you might not be familiar with the likes and dislikes of your audience. You might not even know who your ideal audience is and thus you will be left completely blank as to which blog layout style you should use and that is okay. A good way to find out is to look at other blogs in your niche.

Check out a dozen or so sites in your niche and note what’s special about their blog.

  • What colour scheme do they have?
  • What about their graphics or imagery?
  • How do they create navigation menus?
  • What is the design and appearance of their blog layout?

That way you’ll have an idea of ​​how you can match their design system or customize your own blog layout. Let me remind you that this is not a one-size-fits-all recommendation, as there are many different ways to create a successful blog layout, depending on who your audience is. So, be patient and work on it continuously and you will surely reach the conclusion to solve this puzzle.