Discussion: How Important is my Blog Design?

Okay, so you find a new blog and you like the content. The writer has a really good style and sense of humour. They post regularly about interesting things and they always respond to their comments. Perfect right? Except their blog design is giving you a headache. They have blue text on a green background and their sidebar is cramped with badges and widgets and links (oh my!) that seem to go on for miles down the page. Not only that but it takes five minutes to load one page.

Now tell me, if my content is really good, does it matter if my design is really bad? Maybe my design isn’t bad exactly. Maybe it’s just a little bland. Maybe it doesn’t run completely perfectly but it works efficiently enough to not give you a migraine.  Is that better?

Personally, I wouldn’t normally follow a blog for its fancy design. I’ll admit that when a blog is well built it will make me more inclined to check it out. The main thing for me is that the homepage is clean and easy to navigate. Obviously it would also help if the pages loaded quickly and if the text was easy to read. The most important thing is the content of course. That’s the reason I keep coming back. That said, my first impression is based on what I see. If I can’t find your other articles easily or if your posts are hard to read, then I probably won’t return unless your content is ah-mazing.

Does anyone feel (a little bit) influenced by a blog’s interface?