21 December 2022 |

Blog designs to inspire for 2023

By Tracey Wallace

We’re in the process of redesigning the Klaviyo blog right now (should launch in Q1, woohoo!). That means that over the last several months, I’ve pulled together some examples of other sites that I think are doing content really well, especially from a design and UX angle. 

Now, I always go into blog redesigns with a list of requirements known beforehand. I actually built that out back in May, and covered it in an earlier newsletter you can find in the archive here. 

Still, it’s helpful for designers and creatives to see some of this stuff in action. So, below, some of the blogs I admire, and why. 

1. Alloy.

Alloy does so much so well, and it makes me want to work at an early stage startup again just so you can set things up in this kind of way! 

What I like:

  • Alloy’s guides page works just as hard as any one its individual guides. Then, they have variants of guide pages––here is one and here is another for their downloadables, and then this beautiful design for a multi-chaptered ungated guide (similar to the one I love so much from Hotjar!). 
  • Their blog is the only one listed in this newsletter that has a built-in table of contents, which is so clutch! 
  • They also have this book template––which reminds me of A16Z’s template here in a weird way, even though these are both very, very different.
  • Their case study homepage does a great job of getting customer testimonials and logos in your face, before you ever dive into any individual case study. This is crucial, because most of your bigger name brands won’t give you case studies––but they will give you permission to use their logo. So, use it!! Also, people scan––and seeing a ton of testimonials, especially from folks or brands they know and trust can remove the need for anyone to even read a case study, or get them to a case study in an already accepting frame of mind. 
  • Now, the case study template is doing a lot of work above the fold. It’s a bit hard to know where to look––but still, I love that they include the tech stack of each of their case study customers (this is so cool! I haven’t seen anyone else do this well). I love the length on these as well, and that they use the white space on the side to drop in a big, hard to miss CTA to the product. 

All around, well done! 

2. Recharge.

Recharge is comin’ in hot with a good content download landing page, blog template page and resources page in general. Most companies struggle to get one of things right—much less all of them! 

What I like:

It’s clean. It’s branded. It’s clean (i.e. not cluttered). You can read the text (sooo much text on content sites is too small, y’all, have mercy). 

  • The landing page, in particular, looks big and important, even though it’s really just the UX of the page doing the heavy lifting here. I’m a sucker for “trusted by” sections on landing pages––and theirs is nice! 
  • On the blog, I love that the hero image and the headline are both above the fold––so I can have visual interest and a teaser into the copy. The sticky CTA on the side is a great use of what is on media websites “ad space.” 
  • The resources page is just clean, and I love that there is a break in the page to push to a content download. Also, there is filtering! There is almost *never* filtering, y’all! 

They could use a table of contents on their blog, but overall, the content is engaging and professional, the CTAs clear, and social proof evident. Well done! 

3. Zendesk.

Zendesk’s text could be bigger, I will say that before anything else, but in general, their blog homepage, their various blog templates (one for guides, and two for articles––this one and this one), and their case studies homepage and template are all very well done. 

What I like:

  • Variants of templates for blogs have been a dream of mine––and I’ll say this, I won’t be getting it at Klaviyo. It just wasn’t as big of a priority as other items, and you always have to compromise! But small details like this matter because you can customize the look & feel of the page for the reader based on the topic––and different topics suggest different looks and feels! 
  • They are treating their blog homepage as a blog homepage and a resources page. Now, most companies separate these out (and there’s SEO benefits behind this), and I’d recommend that they do that eventually if I worked there, but hey! I love that guides are begging promoted right alongside blog content because just as much work goes into those guides and they should get the editorial treatment. 
  • I’ve mentioned Shopify Plus’ case study homepage as one of my favorites before—it’s just so simple and functions exactly as you’d expect it, too. The best design is often the simplest. But this case study homepage takes the concept of Shopify’s and adds some editorialization to the top, where the editors can choose which case studies to feature in the featured section. I wonder if they customize this based on who is visiting this page? Would be smart if they did! 
  • On the case study template page itself, I love so much: The fact they are using the customer’s logo rather than just writing their name (Shopify Plus does this, too. Klaviyo will soon, too), their little tearaway sheet top section which includes the best quotes, important company information and their success stats, and the length!! So many case studies are soooo short, which removes the ability to cover nuance, which is more necessary the bigger and bigger a customer gets. Their tearaway sheet at the top gets them to short version they need for scanners (and for sales), but the longer length allows for nuance and storytelling, without getting all blog-y on you. 

Also, I’m a part of the SuperPath community (highly recommend you all join it on Slack if you haven’t already) and Klaviyo got mentioned as a website with a great resources landing page (woohoo!). We just redesigned this and have a lot more coming for y’all soon!

In the meantime, here are the other folks who got named alongside us that I thought deserved a bit of a shoutout:

Now, I’d love to know what some of your favorites are! Email them back to me, or feel free to tag me on anything on LinkedIn or Twitter. I’d love to find more great sites and resources, and know what y’all think make for great content sites!