Reid Furniture Blog

As part of the ongoing development work for Reid Furniture, ClarityWEB were asked to design, develop and integrate a blog.

Blog Design

As a new element outside of the constraints of the Reid Furniture website, the design for this blog could be more creative than other projects that ClarityWEB have produced for Reid in the past. However it was important to remain consistent with the branding and themes of Reid.

The most important considerations when designing the blog was the challenge of fitting the images, content, links and post details within the context and layout of new site. Most users online are constrained to a formal layout of blogs from systems such as Wordpress and Blogger, whereas ClarityWEB write all of our systems, software and websites custom to our clients needs.

The graphical layout of this blog has been created to be both visually appealing, whilst maintaining a similar conformity to that which users will be used to whilst browsing online blogs. A simple category selector and archive system allows users to review categories or months posts.

The posts themselves are displayed as expected with the newest first being clearly visible by the large date and header, with the subsequent content and imagery following underneath. Each post has a 'read more' button overlaid above the image. The slight emboss on the buttons and titles gives them an emphasis on the page. This adds impact, with the date also hovered away from the title for further emphasis.

Large images have deliberately been used to give the blog an aestheically impressive impact upon first glance that will captivate the user to follow posts.

Key Features of the Blog

The most important feature of any blog is to have clearly defined and well presented posts. ClarityWEB have created this blog taking this into consideration first and foremost.

Each blog post is categorised. By selecting the category from the menu a user can view all posts relevant to it on the index page. Additionally, a further refinement could be to select the month in the archive, showing all posts from that month. Tags for each post are also "clickable" links that refine the search data of the blog.

The blog will become a large database of entries that could stretch back for months and possibly years. A paging model has been introduced to allow six posts per page. This keeps the initial page load time low for users on slower connections speeds.

Finally there are links at both the top and bottom of the blog back to the main Reid website.

SEO Benefits and Links

The blog page also links to social media platforms that Reid Furniture actively participate in. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are very important to Reid in connecting with their customers, so these links will provide additional awareness.

Visit the Reid Furniture Blog

You can view Reid Furnitures latest blog posts by clicking on the following link:

Reid Furniture - Blog