And I’m working on my verbosity :)

I have come to realise that all my nudging and pushing the reader isn’t going to do my blog much good. I do not much care for SEO any more. So my primary concern is to get the content to the reader.

If they subscribe via feed readers, they get the full text. If they come to the post page, they get the full text. If they come to the main page, they get the full text. Most of my traffic comes from my Twitter feed, so I do not consider it wise to make them click more links to get to the content.

Also, I am not a verbose writer like you. My posts hardly ever exceed 500 words. That much, to be sure, is an easy enough read on the main page.

Also, what latest feature are you talking about in the fourth paragraph? Is it in Firefox or WordPress?

I’ll definitely share what I learn about traffic data after this new design was implemented. As of now, the traffic hasn’t decline; in fact for obvious reasons has inched up a little.

Surprisingly I find all visitors landing on my blog through image search actually landing on the main blog url instead of landing on the post whose image they clicked through as one might’ve expected. And this is amounting to a substantial portion of the traffic. However, with text searches they land on the relevant page like you said.

Yup, the related posts and the ‘prev’ and ‘next’ do show up. You are correct about side-bar links being rarely clicked, typically less than 1%.

With the latest feature to become available which will allow the user to check any one single page for past instances of data on it by using a drop-down in a browser to specify date and time might actually do away with archives to an extent too.

It would be interesting to learn of what the traffic data from your new design throws up in terms of user reading patterns.

It’s fascinating really, this user experience business.

Also, I think new readers rarely arrive at the home page unless it is from someone’s blogroll (a rarity these days). They come to a single post from either a search engine or referral from another blog. In that case, the bounce rate would be measured TO the homepage. But I rather have them browse through my archives or the colophon. I even use a WWSGD plugin and if you want to see it in action, clear your cookies and see any single post. The Related Posts in addition to the Previous and Next post links provide ample chances for discovery and keep them hooked.

The extensive links provided in the sidebar in terms of category archives, recent comments, recent posts, and other link widgets are rarely clicked in my experience so why add to the clutter.

Summaries for me. It’s like turning the book and reading the blurb, then continuing to read the opening paragraph before thumbing through its pages.

Personally I do not base my decision to read further on opening lines alone for, far too many times it can lead to someone deliberately writing something fancy to catch one’s attention while offering nothing interesting beyond it, and at other times when one can risk missing out on interesting pieces just because one relied on the opening lines alone to avoid reading further.

I feel minimalism is fine but upto a point. It might work for those who read your blog regularly, but am not so sure about new readers coming upon headlines. Moreover there’s no way of knowing which headline will serve appropriately for what kind of reader. A grey area.

Laying out posts one below the other allows a reader to scan through several before either reading one of them or reading all, or none at all. But a reader who will click on a title to read a post may not return to the menu because it might be lost to him unless of course the links are provided alongside as a sub-menu of sorts. If not the reader will need to find a way to return to the home page or click on archives. The ‘Previous’, ‘Next’ links do not help much, more for the reason that a reader might prefer to be able to make a choice on what to read by what is laid out to them as in ‘several at once’ rather than ‘discover’ with a ‘Previous’, ‘Next’ button.

Typically sites register a bounce rate (from the home page) between 55-75 %, one reason why it might help to have summaries.

Actually no harm in trying out the minimalist theme for, it might be a learning in reader behaviour as well. Would be interesting to see what you blog analyticfs tells you. Maybe it could be a post by itself :-)

Anyway, thanks for the “only” titles vote :)

That said, lesser the better for me! Heck I want the “only” titles look on my blog (though I dont even blog anymore hehe!)

S