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I’m a writer, so I should know better, but I still judge books by their covers. I’ve picked up books simply because of their bright colorful covers. I’ll read a weird looking book, but only if it’s highly recommended.

The same is true for blogs. If I click over to someone’s blog and it looks boring, I assume that it is. If it looks unprofessional, I assume that they are. It’s not fair, but it’s true – people will judge your blog based solely on its appearance, so put a little effort into your looks.

The internet should always be considered SAST – Short Attention Span Theater. Simply put, you have seconds to grab someone’s attention before they move on. It doesn’t matter how good your content is, if you don’t have something to make people pause (such as the name Karen Kingsbury), they won’t.

You don’t have to spend a ton of money or hundreds of hours trying to design the perfect blog. There are some simple tips, however, for making your blog work best for you:

– Consider your audience: what would they expect to see from someone in your genre?
– Consider your writing: what images do you associate with your genre?
– Give it a day: don’t just start a blog and go with the first template you find. Spend some time looking at other blogs, figure out what you like/don’t like, and play around with your design.
– JUST give it a day: don’t spend all week tweaking your appearance. You want to look nice, but don’t compromise your work time trying to get the perfect shade of green.
– Give it a year: understand that your first blog design won’t be your last. If it’s not perfect, that’s okay. Set up the blog, then give yourself time to work on the content (that is, after all, why you started the blog). Re-evaluate the design in a year.