Usability and Blogs – Common Sense Goes a long way

Some of the stories surrounding blogs and bloggers over the last few months have attracted a lot of media attention (possibly hype). Just because a blog is a blog does not mean that it should not be usable or professional.

There was a very interesting discussion over on Tom Raftery’s blog a few weeks ago about RSS feeds on blogs and syndication from a user perspective.
I should raise my hand and say that I too have sinned. If you have visited this blog in the past you may have been slightly overwhelmed with the array of “subscribe” buttons for all the various RSS readers and services.
As Tom et al pointed out blogs need to be more usable.
Why am I mentioning this?
Well, like a lot of people I know in the “tech” community, I subscribe to a lot of feeds, but that doesn’t mean I actually get to read them all when they are updated.
A number of people commented on Jakob Nielsen’s alert on blogs, but I only got a chance to read the full text this evening (I’d read other peoples comments previously).
Nielsen is not exactly renowned for his diplomacy when it comes to usability, but when you practically invented the notion you can afford to be blunt 🙂
So let’s look at the his list of 10 mistakes:

1. No Author Biographies – agreed. You don’t need to provide your full CV, but it’s a lot more interesting to know who you are reading. Would you read a novel if you didn’t know who the author was? More importantly, would you go out an get a second one by the same writer?
2. No Author Photo – Not 100% sure about this one. I do provide one on my main page and on the “about me” page, but maybe some people like to keep their distance. I suppose it depends on why you blog.
3. Nondescript Posting Titles – this is a tricky one. While I agree that you need to provide an indication of what the entry is about I generally try to put a twist on the content via the title. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t 🙂
4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go – a very basic rule which I’ve probably broken and will continue to break.
5. Classic Hits are Buried – Highlighting your more popular or best posts in some way. I use an automatic method for doing this, but maybe I’ll revisit that
6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation – a common and really annoying mistake. Categories are useful. Use them.
7. Irregular Publishing Frequency – another problem for some bloggers. If you don’t post on a regular enough basis you won’t get much of a readership. If your blog is highly personal this probably doesn’t matter as much
8. Mixing Topics – this is a touchy one for me. I tend to mix topics to a certain degree. I did try to spinoff some stuff to other blogs, but I don’t have the energy to maintain them all 🙁
9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss – a very valid point. I’ve seen some people’s blogs and I really would have doubts about giving them a job after reading them! Personally this doesn’t affect me as much as it might potential employees (for the moment at least 🙂 )
10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service – Jakob’s comments on this echo my own:
    

    Letting somebody else own your name means that they own your destiny on the Internet. They can degrade the service quality as much as they want. They can increase the price as much as they want. They can add atop your content as many pop-ups, blinking banners, or other user-repelling advertising techniques as they want. They can promote your competitor’s offers on your pages. Yes, you can walk, but at the cost of your loyal readers, links you’ve attracted from other sites, and your search engine ranking.

    (We recently launched a hosting plan for bloggers due to this)

Other things that Jakob Nielsen didn’t mention:

1. Choice of template – loads of graphics or weird colours can be really painful experience for the user
2. Language – Coherent language with proper use of language is a lot more pleasant to read – Your usage of ROFL, LMAO and l33t hax0r speek (sic) is not going to render your mutterings anymore intelligible or interesting than clear coherent English (or whichever language you blog in)
3. Expletives – maybe it’s just me, but I really don’t find the usage of expletives on blogs or websites to be “cool”. Don’t get me wrong, I do use expletives on a regular basis (possibly too regular), however there is a time and a place.

In reality a bit of common sense goes a very long way.
As one of my lecturers in UL hammered into us in our first year of politics, don’t forget the reader!