11 Web Design Principles To Increase Affiliate Sales For Your Blog

11 Web Design Principles To Increase Affiliate Sales For Your Blog

Affiliate marketing has become one of the most popular tools that can let you earn money online even when you are taking a nap. Basically, it's a process where you promote products or services offered by others through a network and earn a commission every time your readers buy those products or take desired actions for that particular advertiser such as giving an email address or filling the sign-up forms.

The majority of affiliate marketers use blogging to increase sales conversions for the brand they're promoting. As per businessinsider, affiliate marketing has become one of the four major driving forces of maximizing e-commerce sales, leaving conventional methods like display advertising and social commerce behind.

But the process of creating a blog that can be used for affiliate marketing is extremely challenging. You have to master the knack of writing influential posts, placing precise links, and encashing customers who got inspired by your writing and purchased the products or services which you are promoting.

Hiring an experienced web development agency who can build a custom blog with the right user experience to boost your affiliate sales is a smart choice. Their experienced development and design team can make all the difference. But in spite of working with a professional, you must have a basic idea of the key web design principles that you must implement in order to turn your blog into a magnet.

1. Cherry-Pick The Best Style Guide For Your Blog

It's essential for your blog to reflect the essence of your business which makes it important to pick a relevant style guide. Ideally, the guide should provide your readers with a consistent experience. Also, it should enhance your reliability.

In order to pick the most appropriate style guide, you must carefully choose the relevant tone and writing style, fonts, logos, images, brief history, etc. Make sure to include a header image to each of your posts in order to grab more readers but stay away from using stock or free pictures as it can give a generic look to your blog.

2. Begin With Optimizing The Landing/Home Page

Users have a very short attention span and the internet is brimming with a plethora of content. In such a case, it's difficult to grab their attention without making a great first impression on their mind. This is why you have to optimize the landing page of your blog to draw maximum visitors and encouraging them to take desired actions to increase website conversions.

Let's have a look at a few web design tips to make the landing page look reliable and visually pleasing:

• Include an attractive graphic header image and eye-catchy tagline to keep your visitors well-informed and win their trust.
• Incorporate precise call-to-action buttons (CTAs) to capture visitors' attention and showcase your personality with the help of your pictures, expressing your values and objectives.
• Don't forget to include testimonials from past clients to enhance your credibility.
• Make sure to build a "Getting Started" page to guide new visitors from where to begin and what to do next.
• If your main blog page serves as the landing page for your site, make sure to showcase a preview of your blog posts through snippets. It allows your visitors to easily read your content and trims down the chances of duplication of the content. Also, it reduces the bounce rate for your main page as you are encouraging them to click and read a post through snippets.

For instance, Smart Passive Income blog is designed with a human-centric approach with adequate social proof and proper guidance on how to proceed further with catchy headlines as well as professional looking images. This kind of landing page automatically attract more visitors and hence providing you with more chances to lead them to the businesses you are promoting and take a buying decision.

3. Make Sure To Keep The Blog Layout Clean & Easily Navigable

Your blog should be easy to understand and the design should be easily navigable so that the visitors can easily explore the entire site. Also, try to keep your blog design as simple as possible and avoid messing it up with too many elements. Consider the following tips when designing the navigation architecture of your blog:

• Carefully pick the key categories for your blog in order to simplify the visitors' journey.
• Make sure to add relevant internal links, CTAs, and associated post links in your sidebar and at the end of every blog post. This will make your visitors excited to explore further and retain their interest in your blog.
• Create a Start Here page and minimize clutter in your top menu to guide the visitors in the right manner.
• Use white space smartly so that visitors can easily scan the entire page and consume information in a hassle-free manner.
• Never forget to optimize your blog design and font for seamless readability by using tactics such as highlighting background, dividing posts into headings and subheadings, and making the headline easily noticeable.

Minimalistic layout helps to build your sales pipeline and grab quality leads that have higher chances to buy into the affiliate brands you are promoting and moving down through their sales funnel to get converted in the end.

4. Don't Ignore The Design Of The "About Us" Page

This page is one of the most visited ones on your blog and hence you should make it picture-perfect so that to motivate visitors to explore your affiliate associates and their web presence. Don't make it complex with jargons but showcase your real side and communicate clearly. Make sure to express what's your USP with the help of an impressive tagline.

In addition, you can use a bit of humour and include social proof to establish your reliability. Moreover, make it visually appealing and incorporate the right CTAs to let visitors take the call you want them to. Also, you can integrate engaging and informational videos on important pages such as landing page and About Us page of your blog. It can provide readers with lots of information quickly and in an interesting manner.

5. Incorporate Clear CTAs On Every Page & Remove All The Dead Ends

CTAs are the only driving force that encourages visitors to take actions that you want them to. Therefore make sure to use these tools efficiently at the bottom of your blog posts and in-text. Also, you can place precise CTAs in your top banner, right sidebar, slide-ins, social sharing, etc.

These CTAs include internal or external links, sign-up forms, affiliate links, email subscription, product offering, encouraging readers to download an e-book or cheat sheet and comment on a post. You can always have your development team build mockups either manually or by using prototyping tools that let you experiment with different ideas and identify the CTAs can work the best.

Along with proper placing of CTAs, you should also pay attention to eliminating all the dead ends such as links that serve no purpose or take visitors to a wrong page or on pages with 404 error. This can annoy your visitors and they can abandon your blog. So, stay away from placing such links.

6. Don’t Test The Patience Of Users With A Complex Interface

Your affiliate blog should have a consistent design which is easy to comprehend and straightforward for the readers. At any stage making them think about what they should do next can easily encourage them to abandon your blog forever. Also, design with keeping their comfort in mind so that all the elements such as CTAs, text, colours, background all are clearly visible.

7. Practice Effective Writing, Formatting In Your Blogs

If you will write randomly no one will be interested in reading your stuff. But make sure to tweak your writing style in accordance with the specific interests and preferences of your target audience. Also, when publishing a new blog ensure that there are no spelling or grammatical mistakes and it’s formatted properly.

This will enhance the visual appeal of your blog and motivate readers to explore more and follow the brand which you are promoting. Stay relevant to your blog niche and stay away from using too much flowery language.

8. Personalize Your Blog & Make It Mobile-Friendly To Connect With A Diverse Reader Base

People tend to connect better when they feel a personal connection with a particular platform. Therefore, you should use elements like images of you and your team, showcasing all the comments as well as social shares, and include author bios for contributors. It will let you engage better with your audience and connect with more readers.

Similarly, considering the increased mobile adoption it's mandatory for you to make your blog mobile-friendly so that it can provide a seamless experience to smartphone users. Also, if possible make it capable to function smoothly on other platforms such as laptops, desktops, tablets, etc.

9. Allow Readers To Comment On & Share Your Content Easily

Comments can be the best asset for showcasing your engagement with the targeted audience. So, enable comment option and let readers express their thoughts freely. Moreover, allow them to add a link back to their own web portal and include total comments a post has received so that it can be visible for the readers also. Disqus is a famous commenting system that you can use.

Only commenting won't help you in increasing the online visibility and reach of your affiliate blog. But make sure to use plug-ins for seamless social sharing so that readers can easily share your content on their own social media profiles. Also, display your Twitter and Facebook feed and wrap your text by adding Click-to-Tweet boxes. Don't forget to incorporate ‘Connect on Social Media’ links in order to make your blog responsive to social media platforms.

10. Optimize Your Right Sidebar & Blog Loading Time

You can use your right sidebar to showcase different information in an appealing manner. For example, you can showcase social proof such as client testimonials on your sidebar. Also, you can incorporate the most important CTAs, place links like ‘Categories’ and 'Recent Posts', or display the social media feed on the sidebar to make it even more noticeable.

In addition to the right sidebar, make sure to optimize your blog for maximum speed as maximum visitors will abandon a slow loading portal. Also, keep your blog updated at regular intervals of time so that to make it relevant and fresh forever.

11. Use Visual Cues & Avoid Experimenting Too Much

To grab readers' attention, you should build a blog design which is clear and consistent. No element should be ambiguous or confusing. Also, highlight the important sections properly so that readers can easily notice them.

Moreover, you should stick with traditional development practices and not try to experiment with basic design principles. This will let you gain trust and establish your credibility among readers.

There is no such tool to crack an ideal design for your blog. But these tips can let you create a professional and impressive blog design that can definitely help in increasing affiliate sales and hence increasing your commissions.