Blog and Website Designing: Why Simple Design Still is the Best

Website designing has come of age and now simplicity is the mantra that drives website designers. A trend started by Google, the concept of simplicity is followed by almost all well known online entities. Compare present ebay.com home page to that of three years ago. Also have a look at Yahoo.com homepage or MSN.com. The best trafficked sites today have a simple design.

Now bloggers, the new breed of publishers want to get bombastic templates for their blogs. Though it may appear nice to the Blogger, readers find it hard to stay longer at the blog. The main problems are web-unfriendly font, almost similar background and font color, the quest for a three column design and thin post column width that gives the blog post the feel that it takes forever to finish reading the post.

The simplicity of design is aimed at selling the product important to the customers. In Google's case it is search. A visitor to the homepage of Google feels like doing only one thing - Google (verb - search).
Get the thing you want as quickly as you can from our site. This is the only thing a website has to tell its visitors. A simple design caters best to this demand. If people don't what they were seeking, they use the power of click - bingo that visitor is lost for ever.

This doesn't mean your website must look like Craigslist.org. In fact you can bring in use great visual elements to your advantage. Take a look at Problogger.net; it is very pleasant without any visual gimmicks. The visual elements should be complementary to the one product you look to sell in the page. What is the point if the images and flash elements actually hide the real product from the eyes of your customers?

Very simple concept, but the tug between SEO professionals and website designers never seems to end. It is better website designers get some web marketing training and SEO professionals getting website designing skills.
Now, website owners and bloggers - go for simple designs. It is best way to ensure visitors like to stay at your page.

New Year Resolution of a Blogger

I am blog writer, or more clearly an aspiring successful blogger. If you like to know about my plans to success in 2007, you can read on.

This year I will draft a post everyday. Whether I post or not is not relevant, but I will write at least one article per day. It translates into a minimum of 365 articles in 2007. I plan to do more is another thing.

My inspiration comes mainly from a few humans. One among them is Lance Winslow, an expert author at EzineArticles.com, who has wrote 10,000 articles in 20 months. I don’t think I will write as much articles in five or six years.

Others that I derive inspiration from include Tenzing Norge, Mahatma Gandhi and Wilma Rudolph in general and Lance Armstrong in special. These are people that redefined ‘possible’ and the ‘impossible’.

My second goal is to increase traffic to my blog. I find links to my blog does me good. Every week I will write at least seven posts for my blog. At the same time I will write another article, which I will submit to five article directories.

I will immediately have five links to my blog. I will do this every week. Thus at the end of 2007, I will have 250 links from article directories.

Declaring my intentions loudly to the wide world and getting some feedback for the declaration will be a great boost to my sure march to the status of successful blogger and article writer in 2007.

I don’t plan to use any affiliate programs as of now. But don’t brush off the idea either. If ever I use an affiliate link, I will let my readers know by clearly marking it so.

There is a major challenge before me to be successful as a blogger. It is not the 40kbps connection or English being my second language. The biggest challenge is to turn these resolutions to solid action. In simpler words, retaining the attitude for a year is the biggest challenge before me.

I will break 2007 into 12 months. Analyze my progress every month. I also will put monthly and weekly targets of minimum blog postings and article submissions. Seven blog postings and an article submission a week is my goal. By the end of 2007 I will have a minimum of 350 useful posts and 50 articles giving me 250 links.

Very moderate minimalist goal, I think it is. I think it still is a big challenge.

Blog Networking by Bloggers

Blogging is akin to networking. Bloggers of similar interests regularly link to one another, opening up possibilities of large scale traffic exchange. It is a good thing because all the bloggers very much like part of a vibrant community. Others regularly updating their own blogs also give them the inspiration to regularly update their blogs.


Another benefit of blogger networking
Search engines quickly find the links and can reach your blog through different channels.

Getting links to latest posts helps a lot. Search engines know what you have written lately.

The primary aim of networking is to establish a quick vibrant relationship between bloggers. The new idea one has will get quick publicity in the blogosphere and that is it. Someone with original ideas always take the lead and gets recognition.

The nature of Blog Networks

It is common to find blogs of similar kinds form a large network. This is quite beneficial for anyone to quickly find a group of blogs that is of interest to him or her.

The bad thing about blog networking

Creating hundreds of thousands of blogs simply for the purpose of link exchange can't be said to be a blog network. There should be a community of blog writers and readers engagement to correctly address a blog network as a real blog network.