Increase RSS Feed Subscribers - Part I of Fine Tuning Your Blog
No blog is perfect.
There’s always room for improvement, and you can continually improve your blog through research, testing and validation. Research doesn’t involve years of study with control groups, lab animals and six thousand page thesis papers. It can be anecdotal and trend-watching.
Recently, I’ve made some changes to Instigator Blog. Most are quite subtle, but I’m trying some things out to try and improve what I’ve got to offer. A few things I’m on-the-fence about; hopefully you’ll kick my arse to either side with your feedback!
I’m going to tackle one or two of these things per post to avoid overwhelming all of us, and hopefully to generate some focused dialogue…(hint, hint - please comment!)
Subscribing to Instigator Blog
This is done via the fairly prominent orange icon in the top right-hand corner (feel free to click it and subscribe!)
THE RESEARCH
The top right-hand corner just isn’t prime real estate on a web page (neither is the right sidebar.) Take a look at some heatmap studies, where they track people’s attention on a web page to determine what people look at the most. Here’s another example of a heatmap showing less-than-optimal placements for Google ads.
But, with the design I’ve got, the orange icon does stand out, so that’s where I’ve left it.
And the top right-hand corner is quite a common spot for subscription icons. Just take a look at some popular and well-designed blogs like copyblogger and Techcrunch.
So I’m fairly comfortable with the location of the subscribe icon, but what I’m not sure about is whether the pulldown that appears when you mouseover the icon is useful or effective. Try it and tell me.
Why did I put all those options? Again, I’m leaning on some anecdotal evidence and trend-watching. Quite a few popular blogs (see: Seth’s Blog and Steve Pavlina’s blog) are displaying multiple subscription icons/options. Plenty of less popular blogs are doing it as well, most probably experimenting like I am.
I also didn’t want a laundry list sucking up sidebar space. “Above the fold” is an important concept for all bloggers to understand. Simply put - your most important content needs to be visible without forcing a user to scroll. Plenty of people talk about this online, even spa operators (yes, there’s a blog about online marketing for spas, salons and massage therapists!)
THE TESTING
So to avoid using up my entire sidebar with subscription options I found a script that created the pulldown. I like it because it gives people lots of options, but I don’t like it because it gives people lots of options. Make sense?
I’ve never liked it because it requires 3 steps to subscribe - mouseover the icon, look at the pulldown, and click on the one of your choice. If I only had one option, it’d take 2 actions - mouseover and click. So am I making it harder for people to subscribe?
It’s hard to test. There are simply too many variables on the blog that dictate whether people subscribe or not (quality of content, whether a post gets voted up on a social media site, etc.)
I can look at some subscription data and see if that helps:
- 26% of subscribers use Bloglines
- 15% use Rojo
- 9% use NewsGator Online, and 8% use Firefox Live Bookmarks
- 41% use other readers (which includes well over 15 options)
Going with this, I might consider showing Bloglines, Rojo and NewsGator Online options (Firefox Live Bookmarks is a Firefox extension in the browser.) Some will be surprised by the % for Rojo which has never been as popular as other services.
The most recent change I’ve made is to add a “help” page related to subscribing. I’ve read a few times (I wish I remembered where!) that adding a bit of helpful information on what subscribing is all about and how someone might do it does encourage people to subscribe. So you’ll see a link directly underneath the orange button up top titled, Learn How To Subscribe.
THE VALIDATION
At this point it’s up to you. I can’t run ultra-controlled, scientifically sound experiments to validate my blog fine tuning, but I can go to you and ask for help:
- Do you like the pulldown list of options? Do you find it easy to use?
- Do you think providing many subscribe options is necessary, or should people stick with the orange icon?
- Do you think the Learn How To Subscribe option will encourage people to subscribe?
- Do you think the placement of the subscribe button makes sense? Does it catch your eye when you visit the page?
If you have any other suggestions, ideas or questions about RSS subscriptions, please comment!
Ultimately, I hope to get some discussion going and start to formulate some ideas on best practices when it comes to providing subscription options on your blog. By participating you can help the greater community of bloggers learn something and improve their own blogs!
Ben,
I like this article. I have toyed with modifications for my subscription system (big orange icon, w/ email option below). I’m curious what the “best practices” are as well.
Personally, I feel that regular blog readers probably have bookmarklets or other simple ways to subscribe to blogs they like. Thus, is any subscribe icon necessary?
Other users, who may not be familiar w/ RSS, probably would benefit from the icon & subscription invitation. Thus, how can we make it easiest for these people? Your solution seems pretty good. You educate people w/ your link & make it easy to subscribe to the user’s reader of choice. I don’t know what would be better.
Take care,
Andrew
Andrew - you bring up some good points.
1. Experienced RSS readers/users won’t really care where the icon is, as long as it’s reasonably obvious. Heck, most people probably just copy & paste the URL into their feed reader (that’s what I do) and it auto-locates the feed.
2. But RSS adoption is small right now; so it’s a question of getting new readers hooked into the RSS movement by making it as easy, obvious and clear as possible.
My concern is that newer/less experienced readers may be overwhelmed by all the options I provide up there.
And for more experienced folk they may just find it tedious and messy to see so much.
3. Your point about “is any subscribe icon necessary” is something I’ve thought about too. Or more specifically - does it REALLY matter where you put the darn thing at all?
Ben,
I really think you’re onto something about overwhelming new readers with too many options. If you’re really new to RSS, you’ll probably end up using a mainstream aggregator. Thus, perhaps you could just provide the top 3 aggregators as options.
Such dilemmas…
I’ve gone down the path of getting rid of all the chicklets and using just the regular “subscribe to RSS” type button. I use this along with Feedburner’s Smart Feed function that will recognise most people’s feed reader and deliver it in a fashion that works for that reader. When I subscribe to someone’s feed that uses Smart Feed it automatically recognises that I use FeedDemon/NewsGator and opens the subscription in that.
My thoughts are the people that know about RSS will sort it out no matter what. THe ones that have no idea about RSS probably also have no idea what reader they are using and which chicklet to click as well. So in my book simple is best.
And if all else fails they can subscribe to an emailed version of the post/feed.
IMHO - I strongly dislike (read can’t stand) all those chicklets … looks messy.
[...] I recently removed the Google ads from the top of posts on the front page of the blog. If you view a specific post the ads are still there (but will probably disappear soon.) In the past I was embedding ads near the bottom of posts but I’ve also stopped doing that (for the most part.) It just wasn’t generating any worthwhile results. [...]
Hey Leah - thanks for the feedback.
I didn’t use the FeedBurner Replacement Plugin but what I did do was change all the feeds to the Feedburner one, so even when my feed is auto-discovered it goes there.
That makes me think maybe I should just take out the chicklets altogether.
I’m not sure I can install the FeedBurner Replacement plugin now without mucking something up…and I’m not sure it’s necessary anyway (but for new blogs I setup I do use it!)
[...] This is the fourth and final part of a multi-part series on fine tuning your blog through research, testing and validation. The first part was Increasing RSS Feed Subscribers. The second part was Making Money From Your Blog. The third part was Why an ABOUT Page Is So Important. [...]
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