I decided yesterday that I would go around and check out some other websites. I’ve been commenting my visitors and following links from their sites to other sites I haven’t seen before. A couple of times I followed links from some amazing sites and ended up in a dark alley. One site in particular was so messy I could barely read it and it took me about 5 seconds (the time the site took to load) to close it. It was ugly.

I know we all have something to say, we all want to blog. And I know we don’t all have design skill or talent, but that’s no excuse for what I saw on this site. There are a lot of free designs out there, or you can buy designs from a site like Prime View.

Prime View is a leading Arizona web design company that has been around for 11 years. The ‘WWW’ only came about in 1995, so that puts this company right up and out there in the beginning. They specialize in design, e-commerce, and marketing (such as search engine optimization). They have some pretty big names under their client list, like Nissan and The Univeristy of Phoenix. You can take a look at the kind of work they do with their cool before and after gallery.

Building websites is not just about the content anymore. You need to put the effort on both ends to earn your readers and to get them to return. Your design doesn’t have to be cutting edge, but it does need to have functionality and appeal.

Please take the time to look at your own blog’s design today and tweak just one thing you think could make your visitors leave into something that will make them want to stay. And leave me a note to let me know. If you’re feeling up to it, and you need something to blog about, let everyone else know, too. I would live to see some before and after screen caps.