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Okay, I Need Your Opinion
By JLP | October 11, 2006
At the suggestion of BOTH Ramit at I Will Teach You to be Rich and J.D. at GetRichSlowly, I have stopped requiring readers to “click” to continue reading posts. Instead, I have mostly been posting full articles on the front page of the blog. Here’s my question:
Do you like it?
Personally, I like the old way because the articles were more like summaries and it seemed easier to scroll through and if someone found something that they wanted to read they could click through to finish the article. But, both Ramit and J.D. told me that readers don’t like to click through and since they both get WAY MORE TRAFFIC than I get, I thought maybe I would heed their advice. But,… I don’t read my blog. You do! So, here is your chance to weigh in on the matter.
Topics: Blogging | 34 Comments »
October 11th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
I say put FULL rss feeds. I refuse to visit a site unless they do.
October 11th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Dooley,
I won’t do full feeds. I got tired of people ripping off my content.
October 11th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
I liked the old way too. I could scan more of your current content and decide for myself how much I wanted to read. Now I have to do a lot of scrolling just to see everything on the front page, especially if you have lenghty entries. Being lazy, I’m not likely to scroll very far.
October 11th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Steve,
Must we see eye-to-eye on EVERYTHING? LOL! Seriously though, that’s what I was thinking. Maybe I’ll reserve the click through feature for really long posts.
October 11th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
I like the old way – BTW, Wretchard at The Belmont Club also uses “summary-detail” type posts, after using long in-line posts in the past. Since he writes relatively long posts, it works well.
October 11th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Ideally, the user would be able to choose which way they prefer to view it by setting a cookie or a preference. I wonder if someone has programmed some personalization features like that into your blogging platform.
October 11th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
I like it the old way. I think much depends on your writing style. If you like to write longer, in depth posts, which you do frequently, then summary-style is best. That way, I can scan quickly. Also, keeps topics on the front page longer, which is helpful for posts where you are getting a dialogue that may go on for a day or two.
October 11th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
full rss for me please too!
ok, you won’t do it, fair enough.hicks design & john oxten get their css/designs ripped off continusously, 100% of their site, but they still remain atop the web dev circle . . .
Maybe a page scraper is the way foward to get my full rss feed, but its gonna be yucky
October 11th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
From reading the comments, I’m getting the feeling that I should stick with my old way of doing things. Maybe I’ll just reserve the summaries for my longer posts.
I do appreciate the feedback!
October 11th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
Full RSS feeds please.
October 11th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Let me rephrase that…
I appreciate the feedback pertaining to the question.
My question had nothing to do with RSS feeds.
October 11th, 2006 at 4:06 pm
I don’t mind the click throughs, I would stick with no click through for short articles, and still do it for longer ones. Otherwise your whole front page could be taken up by a single article!
October 11th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
put the full posts on the main page. i hate having to click through to read the full post. also, keep your posts to a readable length… not too big.
October 11th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
I don’t mind the length if that’s what you need to complete your thought. I actually prefer the ‘click’ on longer posts. It makes your front page cleaner and displays more articles for your readers to view at once.
October 11th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
I prefer the full posts, I hate having to click through to read the whole article.
October 11th, 2006 at 7:09 pm
I’m a bigger fan of full articles myself. Even though the summary makes it a little cleaner, I like to scan over the whole article first then read it in depth.
October 11th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
The only time I don’t like the “click for more” is when it comes in the middle of a sentence or thought. I’ll usually skip over any post that does that on principle. Personally, I use the “click for more” on long entries, but I try to give a decent-sized lead-in paragraph before the click instead of a “teaser,” unless i think the readers know what’s coming, like my monthly reports…. i don’t want a huge table/report breaking up the main index flow, so I’ll always put a “more” break before one of those.
(Normally, I read using pfblogs.org, so by the time I click on a website, I’m looking at the full entry, so I don’t know where the page break is.)
October 11th, 2006 at 8:12 pm
I like the new way better!
October 11th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
I prefer the full articles too. I use google reader to read the blogs, and I prefer to have the whole article on the page.
October 11th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
The old way. I stopped reading Ramit, because he rambled &
droned on about useless drivel.
I check “GetRichSlowly” only when someone links to it, so
I can’t say abt his.
October 12th, 2006 at 2:29 am
The less barriers that are created for people, the more likely they are to stay, buy, come back, etc.
October 12th, 2006 at 4:24 am
Since only interested vieweers come to blogs, it is beter to give the full version
October 12th, 2006 at 8:02 am
I vote the old way for long articles over one screen length.
October 12th, 2006 at 9:01 am
There should be a good way to use a combination. Like chwood suggested, most articles are probably short enough to be shown as a full post. Anything longer than some predetermined length should use a click-through.
October 12th, 2006 at 9:41 am
You haven’t started publishing full RSS feeds yet, have you? I am always annoyed by having to click through – and yet, as you’ll note if you go through your comment records, I have clicked through to comment quite a few times. Usually, I comment on most of the articles I read on your site. I just don’t read most of them because you don’t publish full feeds!
October 12th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
I like the new version – I don’t like to have to click a link to read the rest of the article.
October 12th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
I apologize for beating a dead and off-topic horse, but I agree on the full-content feed deal. I read both Get Rich Slowly and I Will Teach You To Be Rich in my news reader, opening an article in the browser only if it links to several other things that I’d like to open in tabs. I make only a couple of exceptions to this general rule, usually for aesthetic reasons.
October 12th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
I subscribe to your RSS feed and keep track of it through Bloglines, if I’m enticed to click from that summary, I want to read the full entry, not make a second click to get to the content.
Same for if I read a summary of any blog entry off pfblogs.org. I want to make one click and get to the full entry, especially if I have to wait for the page to load, because often the entries load after the advertisements.
October 12th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
udandi,
If you click on an entry in a RSS reader, it should take you to the page for that entry, which would be the full entry with comments and all.
What I’m referring to is when you land on the home page of my blog, with all the current postings. And, since there really isn’t a consensus, I’m going to stick to my old way of doing it with the exception of saving the the “read more” feature for long posts.
I think this will make my front page cleaner-looking.
October 12th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
I like the summaries and will open the entire article in a new window if it interests me. Just my 2 cents…
October 13th, 2006 at 12:38 am
Oh, THIS is what your blog looks like!
But seriously, try it for a while. If you get down to 23 readers, you’ll know it was a mistake.
I usually visit links based on title in bloglines. But my readers get the whole article, so they really don’t have to visit my site if they don’t want to.
October 13th, 2006 at 6:38 am
I’m fine with using the ‘more’ tag to keep the front page clean. However, I’m with Flexo… If someone breaks in the middle of a sentence or thought, I pass on by. In those cases it’s pretty obvious that people are just doing it to artificially increase their pageviews for some reason.
I generally try not to use it unless I have three or more paragraphs in an article. In such cases, I put it after the first one. Granted, when I write blog articles, I tend keep the paragraphs intentionally short to increase scannability.
October 13th, 2006 at 9:31 am
Unless the articles are hugely long, I prefer not having to click to read more. So my vote is that I like it this way. (Clicking is especially annoying for short articles, because you think there’s going to be more and sometimes you click and there’s a sentence or two.)
October 13th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
I like your old way of using summary. It’s just better for scanning.