We’ve all been there. You pull out one of your old favourite nail polishes only to find it’s gone thick, lumpy and completely unusable. Taking proper care of your nail polish collection can delay the process, but sometimes, no matter how much you coddle and love it, it will still end up gloopy. And for that, there’s one holy grail product that will bring your polishes back from the brink of doom.
The way your blog looks is just as, if not more, important than the content you’re putting there. A good looking blog that functions well plays a huge part in keeping your audience engaged. The last thing you want to do is turn people off with illegible fonts and crazy colours as they will simply leave at the click of a button, never to be seen again.
This blog has been through its fair share of awful design, but over the years I’ve learned more about what visitors expect to see when they find themselves landing on a blog. On top of that, there are ever-evolving trends to keep up with too but since blogging has taken a turn for the mainstream, it’s easier than ever to make your blog look good on a budget. Here are 5 quick and easy things you can do to make your blog look better…
I’m sure you’ve heard it said before that your blog needs ‘Branding’. All this means is consistency running through the content you’re putting online, from your writing style to the quality of your photos.
When it comes to the look of your blog, choose a colour scheme, a few fonts that work well together and an all-over visual style for your blog and stick to it. You might also consider creating a logo or having a designer create one for you.
Once you’ve got everything sorted on your blog, carry it across your social media too – everything should be recognisable as YOU!
Unless you can design and code a blog yourself, you’ll need to make use of the services of a designer at some point. Best to get it out of the way early by biting the bullet and investing in a template for your blog. There’s no need to spend hundreds on a custom design at first (or ever, if you don’t want to) as you can pick up beautiful premade templates for anything from £10-£50.
Whatever blogging platform you’re using, there’s a template out there for you. Some of my favourite places for browsing templates are pipdig, Blog Milk and Etsy but there are quite literally hundreds of places online where you can buy a good template.
When it comes to formatting posts and tweaking the design of your blog, HTML knowledge is a huge advantage no matter your skill level – a little goes a very long way.
I learnt basic HTML as a teen when I started customising my MySpace profile (back then, you could customise your social media profiles in a BIG way!) and it’s paid off both in terms of my personal blog and my career, even though I only know the very basics. I can’t code a whole site from scratch, but I can go in to the code and tweak things without worrying about completely breaking my blog!
For me, the main advantage of knowing a little about HTML is that I don’t have to consult (or pay!) someone else every time I want to make a small change to the way my blog looks or functions. I can decide this font needs to be a bit bigger or that share function needs changing and go straight in and do something about it.
I know it’s very intimidating when you look at 2000 lines of code and don’t know where to start, but you can learn it all online! I find reading help articles is the easiest way I learn but if you’re more of a visual learner, there are plenty of YouTube tutorials to help as well. Although nothing compares to using these skills in practice, seeing the results of your work and learning as you go.
Now I’m not talking about overhauling everything on your blog, but basic design skills are invaluable for any blogger. If you own and/or can use Photoshop and other design programs, that’s awesome and you can probably ignore this point! I personally use Adobe Photoshop for all of my photo editing and design but if you’re not so savvy with the software, there are plenty of free services out there to make graphic design easy for beginners.
Tools like Gimp, PicMonkey and new kid on the block Canva are at least partially free to use for editing and creating stunning imagery. They can be used to create everything from banners to pinnable images for your blog posts. Even though I am technically capable when it comes to design, I’m not the most creative when it comes to creating graphics so I frequent sites like Canva, Creative Bloq and Pinterest for inspiration and to keep up with current design trends.
There are a few exceptions but generally speaking, anything that doesn’t add to the reader experience probably doesn’t need to be there so it’s important to regularly clear any clutter from your blog. When there’s too much to look at, visitors can get overwhelmed or confused and may not stick around for very long. This is especially true for first time visitors.
In order to clean the clutter, slowly scroll through the front page of your blog and take a look at each individual element that makes up your blog. Decide whether it’s necessary or useful to the reader and if its not, get rid of it. I’ve made it sound quick and easy but I know that it’s not because I’ve been through it myself! I culled a lot of ‘stuff’ from my sidebar this year and at the time, it’s always a hard decision to make but I don’t miss any of it now! It really helps if you can be objective about it. I always try to think about it like I’m viewing someone else’s blog, not my own.
Now I’m going to leave you with a challenge! One thing that you can do right now, in 10 minutes… clean up any clutter on your site and take that first step to a better looking blog.
One day, in 2010, after a few months spent reading every post on every nail blog I could find, I made the decision to start my own and I was up and running within a few days. I can still remember when I pressed publish on my first blog post. It was incredibly exciting but scary at the same time and now that I look back at what seemed like just another normal day, I wish I’d spent a bit more time taking it all in.
Blogger is a Google service which is completely free to use. You can customise the look and functionality of your blog with templates and basic knowledge of HTML (thank you MySpace circa 2005!). Blogger integrates nicely with most other Google Services and I’ve always found it very easy to use.
If you want to be a great blogger, social media comes with the territory. Not only is it a great way to network, make friends and interact with your audience, it’s one of the best ways to get your content out there in front of as many eyes as possible.
Down the line, if and when you start working with brands, they will look at your social media presence as an indication of your online influence so get to work on it straight away. Be genuine and avoid asking people to follow you – it’s a real turnoff and quite annoying for the other person.
As well as sharing links to the content you post on your blog, make sure you offer extra value to your followers. Found a nail polish to add to your wishlist? Tell us about it! Got an amazing new haircut? Yeah, we wanna see that! Think about the kind of posts you enjoy seeing from your favourite bloggers and take inspiration from them.
Start by making sure you’re using post titles that describe what’s actually going on in the post, like ‘Gradient Nail Art with Sally Hansen Pacific Blue’ or ‘Cult Nails Wicked Fast Review’ and so on. You don’t have to do this for every post, but if it’s one you think people will be looking for, it’s best to get a jump on things. Also try to make sure the URL of the post matches the title (i.e. www.myblog.com/url-with-relevant-keywords). Most platforms will let you customise the URL of each post: in Blogger, this option is to the right of where you write your post and in WordPress, it’s just under where you input the post title.
As long as you’re regularly putting out good quality content and following the basics, you’ll be okay!
Above all, make sure you blog because you enjoy it. There will be some aspects of blogging that you don’t like as much as others but it’s a surprisingly immersive experience and it can truly change your life. You’ll make new friends, learn new skills and maybe one day, even build a career from your blog.
If you got this far, thank you so much for reading my essay. I ended up going in to a little more detail than I had planned but I didn’t want to skimp on the specifics.
Please keep in mind that this isn’t intended to be a definitive guide to nail blogging. Hopefully, this is a good starting point for anyone who’s new to blogging or thinking of starting a nail blog. Everyone has a different way of doing things and if there are any experienced bloggers reading with tips to share from your own time blogging, please feel free to contribute in the comments.
More useful resources:
Will Paint Nails For Food: Beginner Blogger’s Bootcamp
SEO for Idiots: The 10 Basics of Blogging Search Engine Optimization
For a long time I deprived myself of the joy of wearing glitter nail polish altogether because I simply couldn’t deal with the aggravation of trying to remove it! Of course, there was the foil method which was my saving grace for a while but let’s be honest, it’s not much of a time saver. The first peel off base coat I remember reading about was Essence‘s offering way back in 2012 and around that time, I was also reading a lot of stuff about PVA/Elmer’s glue being a cheap and easy alternative. With nothing to lose, I decided to give it a try and haven’t looked back since.
