Blogs have come a long way since their 1990s-era debut as online personal journals. Today, ecommerce businesses use them in a number of ways: to rank for more search engine keywords, build trust with customers, publish customer stories and case studies, express brand identity and values, and more. But even the best written content can fall flat without great blog design.
If you’re starting a blog or want to give your existing business blog a makeover, read on to learn what key elements go into great blog design so you can attract more readers and improve engagement.
Why care about your blog’s design?
For ecommerce businesses, the design of your blog might seem trivial, since blog articles aren’t revenue-driving pages. However, your blog is still part of your website, and website design can influence purchase decisions. In a 2025 survey by business services platform Clutch, 84% of consumers said a website’s design affects whether or not they shop with that company.
Blog pages are also a place to build conversion intent, capture email sign-ups, and send readers to other parts of your website via calls to action (CTAs). Finally, blogs reinforce your brand identity. By incorporating your logo, color scheme, and photography style into your blog, you’ll contribute to brand recognition among your site visitors.
Here’s an example from Glog, the blog of olive oil brand Graza. The company uses the same signature green color palette in its ecommerce website design, product packaging design, and blog design.
If you’re a content creator looking to make money from your website, design is equally important. Good design can keep readers on your blog longer, which could then improve core metrics like time on page and scroll depth. The better your metrics, the more opportunity you’ll have to sell ads or incorporate affiliate marketing.
Whether you’re a brand or a blogger, make sure your blog is responsive to different screen sizes and optimized for mobile. This not only ensures your blog will be readable from a smartphone; it’s also an SEO best practice recommended by Google.
What elements go into great blog design?
Here are the components of great business blog design:
- Headers. Headers add structural integrity to the blog design with bold typography and sizes to convey hierarchy.
- Logo. A professional logo gives brand consistency to the blog. You can either use your business logo or create a unique logo for your blog.
- Navigation bar. The navigation bar—usually placed across the top of the blog—offers menus and categories for navigating the site. This can streamline the customer experience.
- Negative space. Negative space (also known as white space) is the use of generous margins and gutter space around text blocks and visual design elements to let the layout breathe and shine. Themes like those in Shopify Horizon have white space built in, so you won’t need to manually add it.
- Thumbnails. Thumbnails are visual elements that accompany blog post headlines. They add visual interest to what would be an otherwise text-heavy table of contents. These are often photographs included in the blog post.
- Related posts. These links to other, similar blog posts are added to the end of blog pages, offering visitors the opportunity to explore and spend more time engaging with the blog. The more visitors explore different pages on your blog or website as a whole, the more your bounce rates improve.
Website builders like Shopify make it easy to move around blog elements without coding. Creating a website mockup can also help you conceptualize your blog design before you start building it.
Tips for great blog design
- Craft a branded header and footer
- Add a featured post
- Add compelling thumbnails
- Make navigation easy
- Make titles stand out
- Break up text with visuals
- Make posts skimmable
- Include CTAs
- Add commenting features
- Prioritize responsive design
Developing your own business blog design begins with clear goals and a sense of your target audience. The kinds of stories you will share should guide the blog’s design.
Here are some website design tips for creating a standout blog for your brand:
Craft a branded header and footer
The header of your blog should include your blog name and make it clear to visitors that they’re on your blog, not your regular ecommerce site. Try to match your blog title to your regular website branding to maintain brand consistency. This might mean using a color from your brand color palette (like Graza does above) or a title font from your brand guidelines.
At the bottom of your blog, add a footer that maintains your branding and includes links to other important sections of your site, like your Contact or About Us pages. You might also include a sign-up form for your email list.
Add a featured post
A featured post at the top of your blog homepage can help draw readers’ attention to a particular article you want to highlight. It can also break up the grid format of the rest of your homepage. Emphasize your featured post with large title text and a large image, and consider using an eyecatching background color.
Here’s an example from the healthy meat stick company Chomps:
Add compelling thumbnails
On your blog landing page, add thumbnail images for each blog post preview that grab readers’ attention while hinting at the contents of the post. For example, if you’re posting a recipe for roast chicken, you might use a photograph of the finished chicken as your thumbnail for that post.
You might also align these thumbnails with your visual identity. That might mean featuring a certain brand color in your images, using your signature photography style, or editing photos to maintain a certain color palette.
For example, beauty and wellness company CAP Beauty uses black and white thumbnails on its blog, The Thinking CAP, that align with its minimalist identity.
Make navigation easy
Make it easy for readers to switch between different sections of your blog with a navigation bar at the top of your homepage. You can also add a search bar to make it even easier for readers to find what they’re looking for.
You’ll also want to make it easy for viewers to exit your blog and enter your ecommerce site. One way to create a user-friendly interface is by adding a clickable logo at the top of your blog homepage that directs readers to your regular website. You might even include your regular ecommerce site navigation bar above the blog-specific one.
In this example from the blog of lifestyle brand Goop, a navigation bar lets readers switch between blog categories like beauty, fashion, and travel. An upper navigation bar lets readers navigate back to Goop’s ecommerce website.
Make titles stand out
On your blog homepage, make it easy for readers to discern individual blog posts with clear font styling for titles. Ensure these are easy to read by using a text color that contrasts with the background color. You can also place titles over thumbnail images, but be careful to ensure the font is still legible, especially as the image resizes on different devices.
In addition to titles, some blogs also include a brief article description or subtitle, byline, and publishing date in each article preview. While you can certainly add these elements, know that they might make your homepage look busy. You might opt instead for descriptive titles and thumbnail images that preview the post’s contents, and consider adding a description only for featured posts.
Break up posts with visuals
On your article pages, keep your written content visually appealing by adding high-quality visuals to break up text. Engaging visuals can include photographs, illustrations, charts, graphs, videos, flashy animations, and infographics. Pull quotes can also help to break up long-form content.
Aim for one image every few hundred words. Ensure they relate to and enhance what’s being discussed. When used well, visuals can prevent reader burnout, extend dwell time, and improve user engagement.
When you’re using images, make sure you have the right to publish them. This means you’ll need to find pictures with commercial use licenses. You can find these images in a stock library like Shopify’s Burst.
Make posts skimmable
Users won’t often read a blog post from start to finish. Expect visitors to skim and browse. Make it easy for readers to find what they’re looking for by avoiding tall and wide walls of text that are difficult to process. Sixty-six characters is widely considered optimal line length for readability.
It also helps to add article layout elements such as:
- Headers for important sections
- Subheaders for sections within sections
- Anchor links for navigation to particular sections
- Easy-to-read typography
- Bulleted lists to quickly convey important information
- Bold or italicized text and colors to draw the user's eyes toward important concepts
Include CTAs
For each blog article, add a call-to-action (CTA) button. This doesn’t mean you have to hard sell, although it does make sense to link to a specific page on your ecommerce site. Your CTA could be as simple as prompting the reader to explore related articles or subscribe to your newsletter.
There are a few ways to include a CTA in a blog post. You can include a CTA button at the top or bottom of the page, add one in the middle of your post, or hyperlink copy to create a more integrated CTA without the button.
Here’s an example of the latter option from sunglasses brand Crap Eyewear. The brand includes a hyperlinked CTA that reads “Shop their collection here,” which makes contextual sense with the surrounding content.
Add commenting features
Businesses use blogs to connect with existing and potential customers, so many choose to enable interactive elements like commenting on their posts. A commenting system gives readers a voice. Just be sure to moderate the comment section to keep the spammers, scammers, and trolls at bay, and try to write back to show your readers that you value their thoughts and aim to build community around your brand.
Prioritize responsive design
Adapting a blog to different devices and screen sizes will maintain a consistent user experience across desktop and mobile browsers. Choose a responsive design template to attract readers, whether they are coming from a phone, laptop, or tablet.
You can ensure responsive design by choosing to design your website with a platform like Shopify. Shopify’s new theme block, Horizon, features 10 responsive templates that ensure great user interface design across all screen sizes.
Examples of great blog design
Discover what makes a blog great by looking at this diverse range of outstanding blog design examples:
Intelligent Change
Intelligent Change sells journals, productivity tools, games, and stationery to the mindfulness lifestyle community. Thumbnail images feature cool, calming colors like blue and green, in line with Intelligent Change’s focus on wellness.
Article previews on the blog homepage are presented in a clean and minimalist layout, with each cell containing a photograph, headline, text snippet, and “Read more” links. A search bar provides another way to dig into the blog.
On the blog post pages, footers contain a CTA asking readers to subscribe to Intelligent Change’s newsletter. This provides readers with an actionable next step.
Le Puzz
Le Puzz is an ecommerce game company that sells artistic jigsaw puzzles. The company runs a blog named Le Blog that features interviews, deep-dives into how different puzzles are made, gift guides, and more.
Le Blog reflects the artsy and creative identity on display in the rest of Le Puzz’s website design. Its bright visuals feature the brand’s color palette of yellow, gray, and black, and it also highlights the company’s emphasis on unusual design shapes. A yellow and gray checkered banner at the bottom of post pages encourages viewers to read additional articles. Plus, a footer (which is consistent across all pages of the site) offers a sign-up link for the company’s newsletter.
Crap Eyewear
Sunglasses brand Crap Eyewear runs a blog titled Crappenings. It features profiles of creatives, information on events and brand collaborations, and more.
The blog’s homepage features two easy-to-use menus: At the top of the page, a navigation menu lets readers easily move to Crap’s ecommerce site. Below that, a lineup of content categories let readers navigate to the type of blog content they want to read about.
What really makes this blog stand out is its stellar photography, which is emphasized through ample white space. Not only are those high-quality images eye-catching by themselves, but they perfectly align with Crap Eyewear’s laid back, nostalgic, and California-centric identity.
Images on Crappenings look like old-school film photographs, and many include quintessentially Californian imagery (e.g., a shot of the LA cityscape, a skateboarder under palm trees, a beachscape). Other imagery—namely event posters—are fashioned in a vintage-inspired, graphic-design-oriented style.
Wonder Valley
Wonder Valley is an olive oil and lifestyle brand with a focus on sustainability and design. The company is known for its beautiful packaging, so it’s no wonder that their blog is equally aesthetically driven.
Some thumbnails feature product images, which feature the brand’s signature amber-orange hue. Others showcase visually appealing photographs with that same aesthetic and color tone. Many of these images are also aspirational, which is especially fitting for a lifestyle brand. In one example, a happy group enjoys a meal together outdoors; in another, a woman bathes in a clay pool.
Once you click on a blog post, you see a large photo, the post title, and a short description of the article to come. Below the fold, posts are filled with colorful high-quality images that break up text. At the top of each post, you’ll see related content organized in a bar, making it easy for readers to click to the next story they want to read.
Epic Gardening
Epic Gardening is a blog and YouTube channel turned ecommerce site. The blog provides educational content on how to plan and maintain healthy gardens, while the ecommerce store sells essential gardening supplies.
Near the top of its blog homepage, trending stories draw attention to popular posts in a neat grid with thumbnails and headlines (seen above).
Below that Trending section of its blog homepage, Epic Gardening has a CTA banner titled “Shop Epic Gardening,” which directs readers back to the company’s ecommerce site.
Below that CTA section, a roundup of editor’s picks draws viewers’ attention back to the blog.
Blog design FAQ
How do I design my blog?
To design your blog, choose a mobile responsive template layout from a website builder like Shopify, create a branded header, add navigation bars, and choose thumbnail images, then draft blog post titles. Aim to include white space and eye-catching images, and consider adding a rotating featured post to draw attention to a particular article. Within blog posts, break up text with images, and make copy skimmable with elements like bulleted lists and headers.
What does a blog layout look like?
A blog layout normally looks like a grid with thumbnails and titles that serve as previews for individual blog posts. Once readers click on a preview, they’re directed to a full-length article.
How do I structure my blog?
Most blogs use a simple structure consisting of the blog homepage, individual blog posts, category menus, a sidebar menu, and a footer. Each blog post features bold clean headers, short paragraphs, high-resolution visuals, CTAs, and social sharing icons.
