What is usability?
Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object. The object of use can be a software application, website, … or anything a human interacts with.
(Definition of usability at Wikipedia)
What does it mean for your blog?
Blog Usability
When readers visit your blog and browse your posts, they are interacting with a website.
If this interaction is very easy to do, readers don’t have to think about finding their way around your blog, and can just concentrate on consuming the content.
If it is difficult for readers to find their way around, to find the posts that interest them, or to read your posts without being distracted by popups or ads in your sidebar, the ease of use decreases.
Understanding Conversion Funnels
If you want people to do something when they visit your blog, it helps to think of this task as occurring at the end of a conversion funnel.
First, choose just one call to action. Next, when you’re writing a post, decide how you’re going to get people to convert. If you want people to comment, you could ask a question at the end of your post to encourage a comment.
The conversion funnel is a process with a call to action at the end, along with a conversion.
Where Blog Usability Comes In
Interrupting the conversion funnel with a different call to action or an unexpected distraction is going to risk derailing the conversions you were looking for in the first place. It also confuses and annoys visitors.
For instance, let’s say you’re encouraging readers to comment on your blog post. Your post starts by putting forward your arguments, then justifying those arguments, before leaving readers with a statement that makes them want to have their say.
Just as the reader reaches the end of the post, they’re thinking about leaving a comment. But wait – a popup immediately appears, asking them to subscribe to your newsletter.
That’s a split focus – and it could lose you a conversion on your original goal. In contrast, if your original goal was to get newsletter subscribers, why not put the newsletter form below the blog post and do away with the popup?
Stats Don’t Tell You Everything
In the case of newsletter subscribers, a popup may very well increase your subcribers. But how do you know it’s not also pissing off a lot of your other readers, such as those who may have already subscribed to your newsletter, or who might have done without the popup?
Sure, you can’t please everyone. If you want to know what people really think of the approach you’re using, give readers a very simple poll to ask “Did you find this box useful?” That in itself might detract from the purpose of the popup. But without a clear way to give feedback, you may find that if you annoy people, they won’t actually tell you so.
Stats will only tell you the ones who did subscribe, not the ones who were put off by the popup.
How to Make People Love You and Your Blog
Give them a predictable, enjoyable, happy experience every time they visit your blog.
Define a single call to action.
Gently and naturally push people towards this goal. Don’t get impatient and throw a popup in their face.
Don’t mix messages and try to push people into more than one conversion funnel at the same time.
Discussion
Do you care about blog usability? How are you making your blog as usable as possible?
This post is the first in QBT Season 2, which continues every Monday at 5pm GMT / 12pm EST / 9am PST.
Great point Ben about the pop up there at the end of a post. I really can’t stand those pop ups. I always end my posts with a question for readers to respond to.
I know pop ups can be effective for some but they are so annoying to me.
Recent post: Triberr Quick Tips to Get Your Blog Traffic Going
Hi Lisa
Thanks for adding your thoughts. I’m not keen on popups either. I think they can serve a purpose in some cases, but usually when I click something – not as something to suddenly appear without me doing anything. It’s like trying to watch a TV show and having someone change the channel every few minutes.
I love that analogy Ben of watching a TV show and having the channel changed
That’s right on!
Recent post: Triberr Quick Tips to Get Your Blog Traffic Going
This is a question that is always on my mind and the reason I try to test any changes extensively before I go ahead. I’ve taken a risk just now with moving to a new commenting system but for the most part, I absorb and apply information like this. I agree that pop ups can be a very bad idea. There is a Facebook WordPress plugin that actually freezes iPhone users and I’ve had to tell 3 bloggers about it. Many people are just going to turn away at that point and not come back.
I think we should keep usability in mind. I always ask myself not whether my other tech-friendly blogger friends will be able to use it, but whether my mum and dad would find their way around.
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Hi Emm
I like your new commenting system – much better than the default Blogger system. I like the default WordPress comments for my own blog, but don’t mind finding other systems elsewhere so long as I can login with a social account. Some of them allow that, but handle it really badly, burying it behind a tab and then throwing up a popup.
Lately I’ve noticed that Chrome is hanging a lot. I open a site and it sits there, entire browser frozen, for 3-7 seconds. Highly frustrating and happens on quite a few sites. I believe it’s a Flash problem.
At work we sometimes use the “grandma test” – and always aim to keep things super simple. It makes life easier for everyone
Hi Ben
I hate those pop ups too! they are so annoying, I do not have them on my site, I think if they annoy me so much I do not want them to do the same for my readers. I read that they work well but they are not for me.
I like to end my post with a question for my readers to encourage interaction, I often ask questions in my reply to comments too.
Thanks for sharing, have a great week.
Pauline
Recent post: Why You Need An Autoresponder To Help Build A List
Hi Pauline
Questions are a great idea – they really do encourage readers to jump in. I used to hate any and all popups, but I work with some designers who have convinced me that in a small number of cases, they can actually improve usability. There’s a fine line though, and I think a lot of blogs abuse popups unfortunately. The subscription “nag” popup that flashes up the instant I reach the bottom of a post, along with the immediate “like us on Facebook” popup that comes up before the rest of the site has even loaded, are two of my least favourites at the moment.
We’re having a hard time converting blog readership into actual customers.
What do you think of sticking that call to action on every page of the blog? Like for us, we need users to read our blog and come over to get some food delivered, should we add a link that says –> Search for local restaurants to get food delivered from using this box <– on every page?
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Hi Karthik – thanks for stopping by
As long as you stick to just one call to action, it would be worthwhile to experiment with putting that message at the end of your posts. I haven’t covered it in any detail at QBT, but I’d suggest trying some A/B testing with a couple of options to see what works and what doesn’t – you can use a tool such as Optimizely – I believe they do a free trial so that might be of interest.
I can’t tell you exactly what will or won’t work for you, but I can say that with a little experimentation, you stand a good chance of zeroing in on the good stuff
Let me know how you get on…