31 Days to a Better Blog - Day 2
5 August, 2007 — fmclean
Day 2: Run a First Time Reader Audit
The second day exercise is to run a first time reader audit on my blog. This means getting a friend or family member who had not read your blog, loading it up for them to navigate through while we sit quietly watching. I was to take note of how they navigated through the blog, What they clicked on, What they read and what they missed. Then when they had finished as a few questions about design of the blog, first impressions etc.
So I asked my husband if he would be my first time reader of my blog. Just as Michele and Sue mentioned my husband has not read my blog either. So after he had returned home from working a 10 hour day I made sure I fed him first then got him to go through my blog.
This is what I saw:
The first thing he did was scroll down the page to read the second post. Asked what was my blogroll and MyBlogLog. He liked the pictures and that is what had caught his attention on the second post. Mentioned that there was a lot of information and was very interesting. He then went on to ask how he would add some of the things I mentioned in the post about Firefox addins to the browser on his laptop.
Now it was my turn to ask him a few questions. His first impression was that it was a nice easy to read design, he liked the colours found it easy to get around. The things he liked best were the pictures and suggested that a picture should be placed at the top of the post rather than at the end, which is how had it on several posts. the things he remembered about the blog 10 minutes after was the design and the pictures that had been included. He also liked the idea (once I explained what MyBloglog was) of seeing who else had visited the blog. He did not know about using the categories or tags to find similar posts or even where if if he could add a comment.
And best of all he finished his tour of my blog with “You know I love you and think all of these things you do are great” So everyone’s happy.
What I learnt from my Audit
After 25 years of marriage my husband still loves me 
As I have found when developing software - just because I know what something is or what its use is don’t assume that everyone else does.
Pictures tell a thousand words.
Changes I will make
I will change the wording of myblogroll to My Other Sites
Add a list of other blogs I read
I will put pictures closer to the top of a post if appropriate.
Add more images
Think about adding more information for the first time viewer about navigating site and explain things like tags and categories and how to add comments.
All in all a good exercise that should be undertaken more than once and always good to get feedback from readers, so please keep comments coming.
Now on to the next task - Search for and Join Forums on Blogs Topic
5 August, 2007 at 10:59 pm
You missed the killer points. The visitor couldn’t work out where to comment or what a comment was. Is that important to you. Then you should tweek the nlog and change that. An simple link from the bottom of the post will do it. The form for comments is not smack you in the head obvious what it is for. He couldn’t find other information. Okay that means the menu titles or category section title is misleading.
5 August, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Thanks Gary
I did say I was going to add that sort of info about comments but have to work out where is best place to place, sometime a bit restricted when using this platform. Should it be a static home page those sorts of things I will sort through over the next couple of days.
Just means I have more work to do and not to use the widgets that come with the site as that is where the headings are for things like myblogroll and categories. Slowly getting it all changed.
6 August, 2007 at 9:21 am
It will be interesting to see the changes you make. Now that my birthday celebration is coming to an end I am going to get down to business with catching up on my ‘building a better blog’. I am having a friend come over tomorrow to celebrate her last day of her ten year hiatus from work (she starts a new teaching position on Tuesday) so…should I have her do the audit before or after the margueritas?
6 August, 2007 at 10:45 am
Hi Danielle thanks for dropping back in to see how we are going.
I have made some changes already I have changed the theme and this one places links to comments in two places for each post and I have changed the widgets on the side to hopefully make it easier for new visitors to navigate.
So are you coing to join the chocolate challenge also?
6 August, 2007 at 6:26 pm
I noticed some of your images of the blog are a bit blurry. With LiveWriter if you change setting to inherit from Weblog the image will be crisper.
Sue
6 August, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Howdy 31day challenge blogging partner!
I too discovered how much my partner loves me and is sooo not interested in my work!
I will also make similar change throughout this week. Waiting for some more comments on my latest post first though!
6 August, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Hi Alex thanks for dropping by. I wish I had taken a screenshot of blog before I made the changes, would have been good to compare.
I showed it to hubby tonight and he said it was a lot easier to understand so think I had better do a audit revisited post
8 August, 2007 at 5:12 pm
[...] have changed my theme over the past few days when working through the changes that I made after the First Time Reader Audit it was a good exercise to look at older posts and make sure that all images [...]
20 August, 2007 at 9:23 pm
[...] been constantly changing the look and functionality of my blog. I made a lot of changes after the First Time Reader Audit and have removed several widgets from my sidebar since then. I like the clean lines of this [...]