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the usability of blogs

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Usability pundit Jakob Nielsen wrote a pretty good article about the usability of blogs: top ten design mistakes of weblogs. I've had a bookmark to that sitting around for awhile, and always meant to do something about it. Today, I had a bit of extra time between usability tests, so let's talk about it.

Here are Nielsen's design mistakes, and some commentary from your favourite MacBU user experience blogger:

  1. No Author Biographies -- I don't think that this is absolutely essential. There are some anonymous blogs out there that are quite effective. That said, I think that they do have to work harder to establish their creditability and readership. This reminded me to finally get off my lazy duff and add some content to my own about this blog link.
  2. No Author Photo -- Another item that I don't think is absolutely essential, but does help. I haven't put one up yet, but perhaps I'll get around to it someday. Attendees of WWDC will probably still be able to pick me out of a crowd, since there aren't that many other women at most geek events like this.
  3. Nondescript Posting Titles -- I can't disagree with this. The title of a post tells me whether I want to read it.
  4. Links Don't Say Where They Go -- I agree with the point that he makes about this one, but the title of this mistake is actually quite misleading. In the body of this one, he complains about people who give ambiguous links (you know, 'click here').
  5. Classic Hits are Buried -- Blogs are set up to read the latest content, but that's not necessarily giving new readers a good overview of your best content. Link back to your old posts, too. As RSS readers become more popular, I think that linking back to your old posts is much more important than a best-of list on your blog.
  6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation -- Use categories, but don't abuse them. I added categories the minute they became available here.
  7. Irregular Publishing Frequency -- You don't have to post every day, but at least post regularly. You'll lose readers if you're too erratic.
  8. Mixing Topics -- The more topics that you post about, the less likely you are to have an audience that is interested in all of them.
  9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss -- Don't forget that your bits persist, even if you think you’ve deleted your blog. This strikes me as a no-brainer.
  10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service – This is another idea that I question him about. As a corporate blogger, I wonder whether some readers get some value out of being able to access a central list of Microsoft bloggers. I’m undecided on this one.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 07, 2006
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    July 08, 2006
    #2 is untrue. There are many women at WWDC. They may have been born male, but they're all women now.

    Secondly, it sounds like he's giving reasons why "real" journalists are superior to bloggers.