If somebody knows you well, they don’t care about your looks that much. If they see you for the first time, looks matter a lot.The content of your blog is always more important than the design, but you need to woo people with your design first. You draw them in with design, and keep with content.

You should never do a blog post without an image. A visual communicates your ideas much faster than any text.The best images follow the rule of thirds: an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections.

Normal image

The more fields people have to fill, the less people do it. Email personalization by name is not working as well anymore anyway, so might as well not ask for it.

The One Question, a site helping people find their life purpose, has 30% of new visitors sign up via this form every day:Why is it so effective? The form offers the exact thing people search for on Google to come to the site. If you offer people what they want, they are happy to sign up.

Your website design is more important for conversions than you think. You can implement every conversion-boosting tactic in the world, but if your web design looks like crap, it won’t do you much good.Design is not just something designers do. Design is marketing. Design is your product and how it works. The more I’ve learned about the principles of web design, the better results I’ve gotten.

The biggest eye-catcher is the huge piece of meat (make me want it), followed by the headline (say what it is), and a call to action (get it).

Fourth place goes to a paragraph of text under the headline; the fifth is the free shipping banner, and the top navigation is last.

This is visual hierarchy—a timeless principle of web design—well done.

Surf the web and consciously rank the elements in the visual hierarchy. Then go look at your site. Is something important (i.e. key information that visitors seek) too far down in the hierarchy? Make it more prominent.