Who’s Number One? How About the Blog Reader!
If in business, the customer is king…then for blogging, the reader is king. Unless you simply don’t give a damn about who reads your blog or if anyone ever visits, then making the reader king is a must strategy. One way to recognize this principle and make it real on your blog is to create a contract with your users.
I recently found just this thing while visiting Bruce Lawson’s blog. Bruce has been working as a web developer in the United Kingdom for a large business for the past several years. While working on a new website, Bruce decided to put into words his own contract with the website users. He called his agreement A Constitution for a New Website. In Bruce’s own words, “websites designed by committee serve nobody’s interests, especially not the users’.” His Constitution lays out exactly what’s important in developing any website. The Constitution is simply written and clear in it’s message; websites are all about the user, not the owner, not the designer, and not the programmer.
Bruce has already extended an invitation to readers to amend the Constitution for use on their own websites. It’s a great way to keep focus when developing or writing for your blog. Create your own constitution or adapt Bruce’s (with linked credit, of course). And start viewing all you do from the user’s perspective.
[PhotoCredit:Laszlo]
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Comments
I could actually relate to this when I tweak the design of my blog theme. Many a time, I change something to satisfy my preference to only realize it later that my visitors think otherwise.
Absolutely good point! The readers are the ones who ‘rule the castle’, no doubt about it.
PS: I’m just thinking if you would consider installing ‘Subscribe to Comment’ so that it would be easier for us to keep updated with any new response to the comment.
Yes Jim, you are right about customer being king. Unfortunately with all our advancements many companies are still not customer friendly in UI and keep their sites as per whims and fancy of designers. Another area still neglected is Web Analytics. Hoping for the best for the trend to change.
This is some good advice Jim. I think web developers generally get this concept but it can be hard convincing your boss of this principle sometimes depending on their background and perceptions of the web.