Weblog Usability – Design Problems in the Blogosphere

What is usability? Not-so-simply stated, usability is the effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which users can achieve tasks in a particular environment of a product. High usability means a system is: easy to learn and remember; efficient, visually pleasing and fun to use; and quick to recover from errors (Dictionary.com).How does this fit in with strategy for launching a successful blog?Jakob Nielsen has taken the time to answer this question with an article entitled Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes. Blogging, Nielson says, is a “special genre of website”. That is a given in my opinion, but is a blog not in essence still just a website? Nielson answers with

One of a weblog’s great benefits is that it essentially frees you from “Web design”. You write a paragraph, click a button, and it’s posted on the Internet. No need for visual design, page design, interaction design, information architecture, or any programming or server maintenance.Weblogs’ second benefit is that they’re a Web-native content genre: they rely on links, and short postings prevail. You don’t have to write a full article or conduct original research or reporting. You can simply find something interesting on another site and link to it, possibly with commentary or additional examples.As a third benefit, weblogs are part of an ecosystem (often called the Blogosphere) that serves as a positive feedback loop: Whatever good postings exist are promoted through links from other sites.

Even with these benefits, bloggers must be sure to understand that usability issues can still arise with the blogging medium, and therefore design accordingly. Below are 10 (ten) design mistakes, Nielson believes, are major problems in the blogosphere today related to usability. Through his article on Weblog Usability he confronts these problems as a simple test for your own weblog.

• No Author Biography: Simply put, trust is key, and readers prefer to know whom they are “dealing with”.
• No Author Photo: Everyone, Nielson feels, likes to link a name to a face.
• Nondescript Posting Titles: Explain what you are posting about. Remember, with the explosion of RSS and feeds many of your readers may only ever see the title to a specific post.
• Links Don’t Say Where They Go: User like to know where you are sending them … the unknown is not bliss in my opinion (especially when it concerns the web).
• Classic Hits are Buried: Link often to your most popular posts, so new readers know your history.
• The Calendar is the Only Navigation: Use categories to help readers find more on a specific topic you often talk about, but beware, do not create categories that you may only ever post once about.
• Irregular Publishing Frequency: This point has been mentioned before on Bloggers For Hire.
• Mixing Topics: Stay on point, stay on point, stay on point. It would really be silly for me to post on Bloggers For Hire about my Olympic experience.
• Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss: Remember, once you post, your words are out there for the world to see for years to come.
• Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service: Own your own destiny and your own domain – Gosh, it only costs $9 a year.

Why is this usability thing so important? In two-words: Repeat Business. I want my readers coming back, time and time again.Written by Scott Goldblatt AKA: “The Parental Olympian”Technorati Tags: Weblog Usability