The cost-benefit equation for theme customisation
By AndrewBoyd • Dec 27th, 2007 • Category: Blogging tipsConventional wisdom says that you should always customise your blog’s theme to help differentiate it from others in the same niche. Differentiation (that is, standing out from the crowd) is important. But how important is it?
In response to a comment from Cerebralmum on a post about advertising, I wrote the following:
There is a chicken-and-egg question in themes - if I leave customising the theme until I can afford to pay for the customisation, my blogs may never get popular enough to fund that customisation. For now that is a chance I may have to take.
So here are the questions that would need to be answered to follow this particular rabbit hole:
- All other things being equal, do blogs with fully-customised themes always do better than their uncustomised cousins (where “better” means more readers, more exposure, more advertising revenue)?
- If they do perform better, how much better?
- Does the quantifiable difference between fully- and minimally-customised justify the cost (in development time that I would need to find or pay for)? That is, does the benefit outshine the cost of providing the benefit?
This question is of great interest to me - because I run a suite of minimally customised blogs. I use the K2 theme for WordPress because it takes a bit of the hand-coding away from me. I could do the hand-coding every time I wanted to change widget code/placement or header graphic, but it would just take more time - time that I don’t have a lot of at the moment (or will have in the foreseeable future).
I know people that have spent four-figure sums on theme customisation for their blogs - and the result is great - so I am wondering if I should be doing the same.
What do you think? Is it always better to have a distinct theme? Would you pay to change your current theme? If so, how much?
AndrewBoyd is a consultant by day and blogger by night. He loves good food, good wine, and discussing faceted classification schemes with friends.
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Andrew - interesting question. At the end of the day for me it’s about the content, but if you arrive at the most unappealing blog then it could well put you off subscribing altogether…
Unless you have a really serious earning potential, I don’t think it would pay off. I don’t think your average blog consumer is that aesthetically motivated - but then again, your less sophisticated visitor might be…. Hmmm.
I don’t think that it’s overly necessary. I agree with Meg that it’s all about the content. Content is the only thing that will guarantee you success. The most important thing for me with people’s designs is that it has a clean layout and good navigation.
Having said that, sometimes a really generic theme can do a disservice to a blog. If it lacks an identity, what is it that draws me in once I’ve scanned the post I went there to read? In some cases, that one post is enough to keep me looking, but sometimes people will enter a blog via one of it’s less enticing posts. I think at a minimum, having a header which provides a visual clue as to what can be found is needed. Even better if I see other post titles which grab my attention so that I dig deeper and make a real connection with the blog.
Then again, sometimes I have to “bump into” a blog a couple of times before I realise the value of it.
I think having a fully customise theme, even for the most successful blog, is simply a treat. First and foremost, blogs simply need to “work” for the content.
Hi Meg,
thank you for your comment. It is a hard question to ask and you’ve made a good answer - unless the blog theme is completely revolting, it will be about the content rather than the theme as such. I think you are right.
Best regards, Andrew
Hi Cerebralmum,
thank you for your comment.
I agree - I think that it is entirely possible to have a theme that is not only ugly, but gets in the way of reading the content. There are a number of ways to not screw up - I covered some of them in three user-centered ways to make your blog rock (apart from anything else, an early attempt at a linkbait post)
You are right - the blog has to work as a blog first, last, and always - the content must be incredibly accessible, and the wrong theme can get in the way of this.
Best regards, Andrew
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