Tip: remove design as a blog post dependency

Last week I launched a new blog post template for Relevance AI.

It looks like this:

or you can check the post: https://relevance.ai/state-of-the-art-e-commerce-search-the-taobao-case-study/

Notice that it has no big "feature" image at the top, like so many blog templates have?

This is because that image very rarely adds value to your post. It's usually just a meaningless stock photo, or an illustration that looks weirdly giant at the top of your page, with text overlayed.

If anything, this often detracts from your post as it clutters above the fold, where you should be optimizing for hooking the reader in. It might even look unprofessional and make your content less credible.

But the most important reason why I have removed feature images from my blog posts is this: now we don't have to think about them when churning out content!

Our writers don't need to waste time trawling stock photos, or even worse, waste our design team's time on something more bespoke. They can just create good content, and hit publish.

Maybe in the future when we have more hands on deck, we can create a more bespoke illustration process for every post. But for now, let's remove the dependency!