{"id":8540,"date":"2005-10-17T12:51:35","date_gmt":"2005-10-17T19:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2005\/10\/17\/blog-usability-tips.html"},"modified":"2005-10-17T12:51:35","modified_gmt":"2005-10-17T19:51:35","slug":"blog_usability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/10\/17\/blog_usability.html","title":{"rendered":"Blog usability tips"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jakob Nielsen does all sorts of consulting on web page design and the like. His work usually focuses on commercial sites, but he’s turned his view onto weblog design mistakes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An initial caveat — a lot of his advice depends upon a shared vision of what one is after with in one’s own weblog. Is it something you want to become famous and cited and popular outside of one’s circle of friends and family? Then these are the tips for you. To the extent that’s not true, the advice becomes more problematic. Or, as Nielsen puts it:<\/p>\n

Some weblogs are really just private diaries intended only for a handful of family members and close friends. Usability guidelines generally don’t apply to such sites, because the readers’ prior knowledge and motivation are incomparably greater than those of third-party users. When you want to reach new readers who aren’t your mother, however, usability becomes important.<\/p>\n

His identified mistakes (and my comments on each):<\/p>\n

1. No Author Biographies<\/strong><\/p>\n

Agreed. I have an “About Me” biography here that I try to keep up to date. It’s not majorly prominent, but it should be visible to anyone who looks for it.<\/p>\n

As for other folks’ blogs I read, I like having at least some biog info, including, at least, a first name. <\/p>\n

2. No Author Photo<\/strong><\/p>\n

*cough*<\/p>\n

I don’t require this, but Nielsen’s point is a good one — folks remember and identify with faces better than names (as a hardwired talent). Memorability is useful.<\/p>\n

3. Nondescript Posting Titles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Okay, this one I’m weak on. I just love wordplay too much, and word\/phrase associations. Indeed, one of the titles I use all too frequently — “Hey, Kids! Comics!” — is one Nielsen particularly dislikes as too vague.<\/p>\n

I dunno. I occasionally think I should do a more than that, though I don’t necessarily think that<\/p>\n

My back hurts today
\nI got a Premier Mileage Plus card!
\nWe bought lots of swag at the auction<\/b><\/p>\n

are any more interesting than<\/p>\n

Creaky
\nHoity, and, occasionally, toity
\nSold!<\/b><\/p>\n

Nielsen, of course, would argue that interesting <\/em>should take a back seat to informative.<\/em> <\/p>\n

On the other hand, when I go skimming through my RSS aggregator, I often (unless someone is always an entertaining read) use titles to determine if I want to read something. And sometimes informative trumps interesting, and sometimes vice-versa. I’m still uncertain on this.<\/p>\n

4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nielsen is a big believer in links being informative, rather than generic. So, rather than<\/p>\n

Go here<\/a> for information about me.<\/em><\/p>\n

he’d suggest <\/p>\n

I’ve posted information about me<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

In other words, link text should be informative of what is linked, both to visually scan the page and to make intelligent choices in clicking through. I agree completely, though I’m as guilty as the next person of doing the former. I sometimes resist redoing my text in order to create intelligible links, but it’s something for me to keep in mind.<\/p>\n

5. Classic Hits are Buried<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nielsen suggests including links to some of your “biggest hits” in the sidebar, so that folks who are visiting can learn more about you. Doing something based on hits (or on comments) would function as a secondary choice here; you probably want to do an explicit choice.<\/p>\n

Nielsen also suggests crosslinks within posts — if you reference something you did last year, link to the post that you made about it then, don’t just assume that folks read about it or remember it. I’ve been trying to do more of that.<\/p>\n

6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Use categories, Nielsen suggests, rather than just dates (or monthly archives). Categories should be narrow enough to be useful, but not so narrow that the reader has to flip through too many of them. He also suggests (less easy) highlighting in each category some major posts.<\/p>\n

Good ideas, certainly. A lot of folks are bigger believers these days in “tags” and other ad hoc categorization, but I think a good set of categories is the best organization. To be honest, I rarely use monthly archives, and almost never use the “calendar” links that some folks have on their blogs.<\/p>\n

7. Irregular Publishing Frequency<\/strong><\/p>\n

Expectations are essential for a strong readership. Exceptions should be exceptions. If you post too infrequently, or go from daily to weekly, you will lose some readers. This is less important, perhaps, with RSS feeds, since they’ll get pinged when you post something new, but it’s still key to a regular readership, if that’s your goal.<\/p>\n

8. Mixing Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Specialized sites rule the web,” Nielsen asserts, and that’s true to some degree. That said, some of my favorite, regular sites are personal ones, which touch on individuals and their busy, complicated, unspecialized lives. YMMV.<\/p>\n

DDtB will never be a specialized site. I’m not specialized enough for that. Folks who come here just to read comics reviews, or gaming stuff, or politics, or whatever, will, indeed, be disappointed.<\/p>\n

9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not only do you need to worry about people today looking up what you’ve written, but for as long as Google (etc.) exists, anything you write will <\/em>be out there. I try to keep that in mind to some degree in terms of being discreet about stuff that needs discretion, but I will never get a job in the Bush Administration (or an Administration that is sympathetic toward it, or, heck, probably any Administration), due to some impolitic stuff I’ve written at times. I am aware of that, and have accepted that. <\/p>\n

On the other hand, might some future boss object to something I’ve written here on some subject or another? Maybe. I try to be very circumlocutious with anything about my job, and I try to keep barriers up between job folks and my home domain, but I do know that I’m running some level of risk here about someone being more sensitive about things than I am.<\/p>\n

10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service<\/strong><\/p>\n

Domain names are cheap, Nielsen notes. Many blogging packages (and services) will post to your own domain (or even host it). If you’re going to blog, get your own domain and just do it. You can move it to another provider, you can do anything you want, but you’ll be at a persisitent, expected address forever. That’s important.<\/p>\n

And, obviously, I agree. And while I don’t necessarily stigmatize blogspot.com addresses, etc., I do get annoyed with folks changing from them to something else, or suffering from provider outages — and it does seem like more of a placeholder than a “serious” effort. So, maybe, I do actually stigmatize them.<\/p>\n

Things (for me) to think about.<\/p>\n

(via BoingBoing<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jakob Nielsen does all sorts of consulting on web page design and the like. His work usually focuses on commercial sites, but he’s turned his view onto weblog design mistakes….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6370,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/09\/14\/look_and_feel.html","url_meta":{"origin":8540,"position":0},"title":"Look and feel","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 14-Sep-04 2:25pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Creativity within expectations. That seems to be the the point behind this article, which puts forward the case for web design standards. The basis for it is named after the...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":26329,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/11\/feeling-blue-over-the-new-52.html","url_meta":{"origin":8540,"position":1},"title":"Feeling Blue over the New 52","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 11-Feb-12 12:40am","format":false,"excerpt":"DC commissioned Nielsen to survey comics readers to see how the DC New Universe \/ New 52 thang was working out. The goal had been, of course, to bring in lots of new readers by tossing out stodgy continuity, and reinventing the DC heroes in new, fresh, Jim-Lee-costume-bedecked versions.Results? Very\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3943,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/07\/oughtas.html","url_meta":{"origin":8540,"position":2},"title":"Oughtas","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 7-Mar-03 9:57am","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been making some changes to the blogroll at the right, letting some places I was just never going back to quietly slip away, adding some others who I've gone...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":49373,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/26\/spam-spam-spam-spam-spam-template-edition.html","url_meta":{"origin":8540,"position":3},"title":"Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam (Template Edition)","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 26-Jan-15 10:35pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Dear Spammer: When you try to bilk me of money or phish for my real identity, you're supposed to run this as a template, not as the actual content you send me.(It is kind of a fascinating glimpse into the mechanics of spamming software.)------------------------------{{I have|I\u2019ve} been {surfing|browsing} online more than\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Tom%2Band%2BJerry%2Bmoney.gifimgmax%3D660.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":43472,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/10\/wil-wheaton-and-schrodingers-nielsen-box.html","url_meta":{"origin":8540,"position":4},"title":"Wil Wheaton and\u00a0Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s Nielsen Box","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 10-Jul-14 2:04pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been enjoying The Wil Wheaton Project.\u00a0It's loosened up quite a bit since the first episode as Wheaton has relaxed, which is all to the good, and the routines and segments have gotten a decent measure funnier and less forced. \u00a0It's still a hightly idiosyncratic offering, and plenty of misses\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2567,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/06\/04\/a_blogger_surve.html","url_meta":{"origin":8540,"position":5},"title":"A blogger survey","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 4-Jun-02 9:01am","format":false,"excerpt":"I look on my Blog as a number of things: A way of communicating to my friends and family how things are in my life. A way of communicating to...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}