Optimizing Your Blog Design Layout (Part-2)
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In part-1 of Optimizing Your Blog Design, we saw why 3-column blog themes aren’t good for click through rates. And why you should go with 2-column blog themes.
In part-2, we will delve further into creating the perfect column layouts for your blog theme.
Question: Do you know why offline newspapers divide their pages into 4-6 columns?
Newspapers have been doing readability research since the past 120 years! And the research results have been unanimous.
1. Longer line lengths decrease the speed of reading.
2. They decrease readers’ comprehension as well.
3. And worst of all, the decrease readers’ enjoy-ability factor too.
Newspapers have found that any line that is longer than 3.6 inches in length reduces reader performance.
But why do longer lines reduce performance?
“The ideal line length for text layout is based on the the physiology of the human eye… At normal reading distance the arc of the visual field is only a few inches - about the width of a well-designed column of text, or about 12 words per line. Research shows that reading slows and retention rates fall as line length begins to exceed the ideal width, because the reader then needs to use the muscles of the eye and neck to track from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line. If the eye must traverse great distances on the page, the reader is easily lost and must hunt for the beginning of the next line. Quantitative studies show that moderate line lengths significantly increase the legibility of text.”
- Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton
The optimal line length for newspapers is between 2 to 3 inches (depending on the font style and size.) But what about the length of text lines online?
Optimal Line Length For Blogs
In 2001, Dyson and Haselgrove conducted a research to determine which line length was the most effective for reading from screen. They gathered a bunch of students and tested them while they read comprehension and news paragraphs on the computer. And they found that
The best line length is 55 characters long!
Depending on the font style and size you use, your blog post column should fall between 50-70 characters in length. That is roughly 400-500 pixels in width.
Saying No To Fluid Column Width Themes
Many blog themes come with fluid width columns. Where the column width depends on the screen resolution and size. Designers like fluid column widths because they don’t leave a lot of white space at the sides.
But these fluid width themes aren’t a good idea because someone with high screen resolution will see very long text line lengths. Which reduces their comprehension as well as reading speed on your blog. So stick with fixed width themes. And improve your readers experience on your blog.
“Optimizing Your Blog Design” to be continued…
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One thing I hate about fluid-width layouts is that anyone with a high resolution, such as myself with 1600×1200, may not see your articles as they were intended to look. On my blog I have a lot of images that are aligned to the right of the paragraphs in my posts. If those paragraphs were stretched out to be only a line or two, my whole post layout would be ruined.
Posted 26 Jun 2007 #
Ah yes. Thanks Jared for adding to the conversation. Fluid columns are bad not only from readability point of view. But also from the aesthetic point of view. All round poor designing. Yet so many designers and bloggers still use these fluid column themes!
Posted 27 Jun 2007 #
Google has fluid columns too!!!!
Posted 27 Jun 2007 #
Hmm… Yes Google has a fluid theme - but they don’t have a lot of content on their pages. They just have links. A fluid theme doesn’t affect them much because we don’t go to read on Google.
If your blog focuses a lot on video and images - you could try out a fluid theme too. But if its a lot of text, its best to go with fixed width.
Posted 27 Jun 2007 #