This post is an excerpt from the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook
New readers to your blog are making decisions within seconds of arriving at your blog that will determine how (and if) they’ll use your blog.
In the same way that first impressions can be vital in real life interactions – online they are just as important.
Today’s task in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge is to do some analysis of what first impressions people have of your blog by doing a First Time Reader Audit on your blog. Here’s how to do it:
What you’ll need:
1. A friend, family member, work colleague or even a blogger that you’ve not had much to do with before. The key is that the person has not seen your blog before. The person will need 10 or so minutes with you so bribe them with a coffee or something else to get their time.
2. A computer in front of your friend. Ideally you’ll be in the same room with the person but you can adapt this and still have a valuable time by doing it ‘virtually’ with someone.
The Process
Load your blog up and let your friend surf it. Get them to spend 4-5 minutes just wondering around your blog.
Don’t talk to them as they do – but watch carefully how they use your blog.
- How do they navigate?
- Where do they click?
- What do they pause to read?
- What do they skip over?
- What areas of the blog do they seem most drawn to
Once they’ve surfed your blog ask them some questions about the experience.
- What were their first impressions?
- What did they first think your blog was about when they arrived at it?
- Did they find it easy to read/navigate/understand?
- What did they ‘feel’ when they first arrived at your blog?
- What suggestions do they have on how you could improve your blog?
- What questions do they have having surfed your blog?
- What words would they use to describe the design?
- What are the main things that they remember about your blog 10 minutes later?
- What suggestions do they have from a user perspective?
It’s amazing to see what you’ll learn by watching someone use your blog.
Once you’ve done your First Time Reader Audit come back to this post and let us know what you learned.
PS: Last time I went through this process I actually got 4 people to do it for me. I chose people of different web savviness (ie from someone who doesn’t use the web much at all through to another experienced blogger). I found getting feedback from across a small group of people to be very valuable.
Update – There are lots of people who joined the challenge that are working together on this 31 DBBB Daily Task over at the forum, you should check it out! Day 17 – First Time Reader Audit
Want More?This task is a sample of one of the tasks in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook – a downloadable resource designed to reinvigorate and revitalize blogs. Join over 14,000 other bloggers and Get your Copy Today. |
I LOVE doing this!
I think it’s useful to get people of different IT skill levels to try it out. For example I get IT competent friends to try my website out for technical issues whereas I get my Mother to test out my website for navigation and ‘knowing what to do’ on the site. :)
Great article,
Sam
As another useful link for readers, there is a website called ‘Userfly’ (http://www.userfly.com) that records a video of your ACTUAL visitors that you can watch back to see what they clicked on and how long they spent on each page in real time. I haven’t extensively tested it but it looks very useful for seeing what your actual visitors do on your blog.
Hope it is useful for some of you. :)
Sam
Great post as usual, Darren! It made me also think of how I try to navigate other people’s sites. Will try to look for someone to audit my site.
Wow! That is a brilliant idea! As obvious as it should be, we never really give that much thought to our end user – the reader.
All right – why didn’t I think of that?
Once again Darren, thank you for your insights, guidance and above all, generosity.
Be well,
Fred
Great tip as always. Few days back I attended a bloggers meet organized by one of the top blogger in my country . He asked us to sit with your granny, or someone who has little idea about Internet. let him navigate your blog.
another 2 cents which I would like to add here is understand the F theory. Usually people start reading your first 2 lines, then middle and then comments or either they go away.
Idea here is give them the best shot using F theory and keep them rotating around your blog.
Regards
Harsh
there are a lot of good books around about usability testing it can be quite funny to see what people think or your ideas and if they even get what you are blogging about!
i recently tried this with my gran and it was really funny some of the suggestions she came up with that were really good ideas that i probably never would have thought of!
i would definitely recommend giving this a spin…..
Hah, I’ll have to brace myself for this one. But it will be an interesting experience for sure.
It is important to get first time readers to come back again and become regular readers of your blog. I will try it out and if i get any interesting feedback i will comment again about it.
Nice!
Using the 31DBBB forums I’ll have to try to find some other bloggers online who might want to do this for me. As long as they haven’t visited the blog this might still be able to work.
Well, at least the questions and such.
Thanks so much!
Great idea – just off to the forum now to see who’ll help me with this task.
Now to find somebody to do it..
cheers
This never came to my mind, but I’ll definitely use this strategy as soon as possible.
Thanx.
great post…..
In usability testing in the SA Gov i use a similar technique and find that 4 or 5 users is plenty to build a usability report that is almost the same as if you use 10+ testers.
Hey Darren,
Nice tips,
Its in case of direct contact but what if we have to ask to the first visitor we dont know via e-mail?
Most of the times they dont reply…..So what to do in that case?
As I’m currently rebuilding my Latvian blog ( http://www.rolandinsh.lv/blog/ ), this is exactly what I’m doing.
Experimenting with layout and “plugins” firs imresions were not so good as I expected even if first reviews were good.
Experimental layout: http://rolandinsh.lv/micro/165/black-label-secret-new-wordpress-theme/
We offer drive-by shooting site critiques that do just this. As first-time visitors to people’s sites, we offer that objective opinion, and we also provide suggestions and recommendations based on our design and usability knowledge to help people make changes and improve.
It’s very, very important to know exactly how your site is perceived and used by someone else beyond you and people who love you that won’t tell you the truth!
Anyone want to do a ‘first time reader’ virtual exchange? I’ve got a food and travel blog and would be happy to do an exchange analysis if someone emails me with their link. [email protected]
again really great post dareen, this is to good.
so plese visit my blog and tell me. That what i have to change and tell me in comments. I am vating for Your all sugestions.
So plese do that.
Thankr ,take care
A magnificent tip which has to be applied by each and every blogger. We will really get Real-Time experience from this great idea.
Thanks a lot Darren, God has gifted you with a bloggy brain.
This sounds like a perfect collaboration exercise for the 31DBBB Forum!
I’ve already done this. Ha!
Great idea though. Thanks
Hi Darren,
This is great advice but one thing I could ad is that when people are being watched they lie. Not on purpose but as a general rule, people lie to usability testers so to avoid this I like to sit people down in front of a laptop screen with a video camera to the side but actually record their eye movements using the built in web cam instead.
Simply tasking them with common requests, recording mouse times etc. will provide you with excellent data for how (and where) they go.
oh I see.. yeah.. so we could know what is the strength & weakness of our site.
great idea! thanks! =D
There is an excellent description about this method on a book called Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug. Recommended reading :)
An interesting idea but where to find someone like that and actually be able to look over their shoulder. Most people in my IRL either don’t care for blogs or already know about my blog..
Oh well, the search continues.
That’s great advice. It runs along the same lines as having someone read through a story or article you’re working on. Having a fresh set of eyes can point out things that you might take for granted
I don’t normally allow friends and family to view my blogs so this is going to be interesting!
This is certainly very interesting. Will head over to the forums to see if I can get any one to give me a blog analysis.
First impression counts.
Darren, I followed all your suggestion till now and I am slowly getting the hang out of it.
Looking forward to your next ideas.
Michael
I always wanted to do something like this but couldn’t figure out exactly what to do. This should be interesting.
What a great idea! I need to figure out who to ask.
You found someone that hasn’t read your blog Darren? Wow impressive!
What your visitors think about your site ist the ONLY really important thing to consider.
That’s a great idea never though of it ,I will try this with my friends and I will post that here.
I haven’t tried it yet but sounds very interesting !!
A really interesting exercise. I managed to find three people to do it. The first two were all regular web users and it went very well. The third was a very occasional web user and she really struggled. Ended up having no idea where to go, or what the site was all about.
I need to make some changes for sure, but it’s not a total rethink, as my target market is savvy web users.
Hi All,
I need some one to help me by having a walk through over my blog http://www.catdumps.blogspot.com.
You can mail me your blog url to [email protected]
Thanks in advance.
I’m on to do the test as soon as possible!
If anyone is interested in sharing views, like review my blog and I review yours upon the suggestions of Darren, don’t hesitate to contact me [email protected]
Maybe I need to conduct a little “focus group” in order to do this. :D
I would love to swap some feedback with a fellow blogger, or anyone else for that matter! No hard feelings, just raw data for raw data. Peel back your thick skin, and swap along, look under my names’ link, or copy and paste the type…
http://WWW.AllThingsAboutPhotography.blogspot.com
I actually completed this very exercise last week – with my mum – and it was demoralising. This was the first blog she had ever seen and she did not seem impressed.
I will repeat the exercise with greater rigour over a cross-section of friends, family & work colleagues. I will also go back to my mum and ask her some of the tough questions I should have posed in the first place.
Thanks again for a challenging exercise, Darren!
H :)
Excellent idea, we all too often become too blind to our own blogs.
What do you mean, you cannot find my call to action it’s right the in tiny text under the adsense, next to the email subscribe, to the right of the tweet button, but don’t click on the RSS, I know it looks the same but it’s the one next to it.
A fantastic idea. I often watch over my wife’s shoulder to get an idea about how other people navigate through web pages or even programs. It’s very interesting what you can learn and makes you realize that much of what we take for granted we shouldn’t. Sometimes we aren’t as clever as we think we are!
What a good idea …. i shall go grab my co-workers tomorrow. ^^
Very good idea, I’m just not sure who I’ll get to do it. I can see how beneficial it can be though.
I think your tips is useful for my blog.I think conmunicate with reader is a good way to make them stay reading your blog .
Great tip as usually.
Dear dareen i am confiused to selection of them for my blog so plese tell me that wich is best for my blog .
Any reader ples sujest me
my blogs url
http://www.Bollywood2masti.Blogspot.Com
I did this the other day with an experienced blogger. She gave me some great advice.
Wrap text around images.
result: The reader can see the image and text at the same time. Better layout. post take up less space.