I started thinking about RSS accessibility after I had a really negative encounter with the RSS feed from USA Today’s Today in the Sky blog. Basically, they make you click through three sites just to get to the feed. What’s even more annoying is that you can’t access the feed directly from an RSS-enabled browser like Safari or Firefox. It made me wonder how many would-be readers were so put off by the RSS hunt that they browsed on without subscribing to the feed.
RSS is still catching on. Even outside the context of my job, I find myself explaining “Really Simple Syndication” to at least three or four people each week. Jakob Neilsen’s response to this was to encourage new, more accessible terminology. If we rename RSS as “news feeds,” he reasoned, perhaps more people will catch on to what they’re for and how to use them.
But for a usability guru, Nielsen sure misses a critical point. In order to make use of RSS feeds, people need to be able to find them easily! Accessible terminology will get us nowhere without accessible placement.
That’s why I made the “Feeds” listing more prominent in our sidebar. I’m also going to issue a challenge to our readers: take a good look at your blog from the user’s standpoint and figure out a way to make your RSS feed easier to find. Then reach out to three blogs that you read and recommend that they do the same.
Let’s pay it forward, people!
Update: We’ll be talking about this and many other design issues at our upcoming conference.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
vaspers the grate 08.01.06 at 6:35 pm
I still fail to be impressed with site syndication. Color me underwhelmed. I prefer to visit sites via browser, not the dumpy RSS/Atom feed readers.
I think many who subscribe to my blog feed eventually cancel out of the feed, because the feed does not feature comments, nor can you get the podcasts and video player embeds I post.
Dave Winer recently defined site syndication as news updates. If it’s important to receive each new update from a site, then RSS is for you. If it’s not that vital, RSS has no value to you as a reader.
I like the Awasu feed reader/scraper that makes a feed URL out of any site’s HTML data.
But I rarely use it. As Evan Williams once said, blogrolls are the new feed readers. I use my blogroll to visit sites, or, in your case, your email updates, which are good.
vaspers the grate 08.01.06 at 6:38 pm
P.S. You forgot to mention this: include your feed URL. Many feed readers ask subscribers to “enter the feed URL” of a site.
Most blogs have feed syndication URLs, even if they don’t display a Feedburner or Blogline or MSN Alert type widget.
Every Blogger blog has an Atom feed URL.
I display my actual feed URL in my sidebar, along with the widgets that ppl can click to subscribe to a feed.