Digital Marketing is like an open-book test in high school…
The answers are all there, you just need to know where to look. Every decision your business faces – choosing between a red or green purchase button or redesigning your website – has been encountered by hundreds of marketers before you.
Many have failed. Some have achieved massive success.
Here’s why blogs like Hubspot, SearchEngineLand, Moz, Kissmetrics, CopyBlogger, and more live in their own parallel universe of success.
11 Laws for the Best Blog Design
- Background color doesn’t matter, because after reading this you’re going to choose white (#fff) like 93% of top blogs.
- Make social share buttons readily available. 90% of the best blogs use social sharing buttons on every post. Most either offered multiple options or had fixed position social buttons (the buttons scroll with you).
- 2/3rds use social validation to encourage social sharing:
- Assuming industry-standard conversion rates on exit pop-ups, the 35% of top blogs using exit pop-ups are building massive email lists:
- We were able to trigger Slide-In CTA’s on 18% of blogs.
- Modern blogs are trending away from Serif towards Sans-Serif: 86% used San-Serif family typefaces.
- Size matters: let’s move on from that cliché to note that bigger the better. You’re currently reading 20px if you’re on desktop and 14px on mobile. The data we gathered held a strong correlation between font-size and UX rating and Inbound Rank. Neil Patel found additional positive correlation between read time and font-size.
- Put the user first: 89% of blogs scored a 95 or higher on Google’s UX test. 60% of media time spent on mobile and tablet, it’s time you prioritize responsiveness, pave a clear path for buttons, and possibly consider mobile-first design. We used Mediaqueri.es for thousands of examples of mobile-optimized sites.
- 15 blogs scored perfect on Google’s UX test.
- Page Load Speed isn’t as big of a deal as you think. Only 4% of these blogs scored above a 75 on Google’s Mobile PageInsights Speed test. 73% scored at least a 50. Desktop numbers we much higher. Check your website speed here: how do you stack up?.
- Of these sites, 30% have switched to secure servers, landing users on HTTPS-based links. Google has officially made HTTPS a ranking factor for organic search. If you’re starting from scratch, this is a no-brainer. Many blogs seem stuck in the past. That’s why we made the switch.