Believe it or not, your current template can be pushing
people away, decreasing traffic and reducing your chances of reaching the
largest possible audience. Templates don't need to be complicated to navigate,
or to use and it's a good idea to choose a template through testing and paying
attention to users comments.
One of the most important factors in choosing a blog template is to completely
understand what your intention is. This means making sure that you are clear on
what you want to accomplish with your blog, whether it be to provide
information or simply to express yourself. Your purpose should dictate how your
blog is laid out. A blog made to showcase products will therefore have a much
different layout than one that is featuring your poetry.
Another important factor to consider is how comfortable you are making edits to
your blog. If you're a relative novice with computers and the Internet, you may
want to stick with templates that are premade and easy to use, like those
created for the Wordpress or Joomla platforms. These each have user friendly
interfaces that don't require you to be a genius to get started blogging. If
you'll be adding images or other objects, using a pre-made Wordpress or Joomla
theme can make it easy to configure and upload them.
When choosing a theme for your personal blog, you also want to keep it as
simple as possible. Bells and whistles are nice, but they don't increase
traffic and they can, in fact, frustrate visitors, making them avoid your blog.
Sound can annoy people too, especially if you've chosen for it to play
automatically when a visitors lands on your home page. Allow visitors to have
control over whether they want to experience bells and whistles like music or
snazzy graphics.
Most important when creating or changing your blog template is to test the
template regularly. Don't wait for user interest and visits to drop like a
rock, act like a user and see how easy your blog template is to load and
navigate. Make changes and monitor user comments and traffic in response. You
won't be left to guess which template is most suitable for your personal blog.