Making Your Site RSS User Friendly

Some important solutions for making site RSS user friendly :

1. Don’t just place the orange RSS button on your site. Always include a link ‘What is This?’ beside it. Have this link leading to a page explaining what RSS is and how your visitors can access and use it. This has a two-fold benefit; visitors who are familiar with RSS will know how to use the button, visitors who are in the dark can get a quick education in RSS 101!

2. As mentioned before some browsers can Automatically discover or Access your RSS feed. The Firefox Browser is a prime example. To facilitate or aid in this AutoDiscovery process place a simple code in the HEAD section of your webpage’s HTML code:
(link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”RSS” xhref=”http://www.bizwaremagic.com/blog/atom.xml” mce_href=”http://www.bizwaremagic.com/blog/atom.xml” /)

3. Of course, many webmasters use many RSS buttons on their site to guide their visitors in the right direction. For example, placing a ‘MyYahoo’ button will make it easier for visitors using that program to access your RSS feeds. Bloglines and MyMSN buttons are other examples. Some webmasters even design their OWN RSS button for their sites. Just remember to place your ‘What is This?’ link beside it.

4. However, if your visitor is not using an aggregator or RSS equipped browser, they will still get the jumbled code that will be puzzling to them. One way around this problem is to use a free service from Feedburner.com and have your RSS Feed transformed or presented so that if can be read in your visitor’s browser. Instead of linking your orange button directly to your RSS feed, use the Free link from Feedburner in its place. Your web site visitors will then be able to read your feeds but they will also still be able to subscribe to your RSS feed.

RSS is the wave of the future. It will play an ever increasing role in how information is exchanged on the web. Make sure your site is RSS User-Friendly so that you can take full advantage this new technology. Make sure your site is a pleasant RSS experience for all your visitors, it will not only put your site in a more favorable light, but it will also make your site more competitive in a very competitive world.

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RSS Feeds Benefits

RSS provides headlines and summaries of information in a concise and standardized way.

Benefits for Publishers

1.) Avoid Spam Filters
Statisticians estimate that 70% of the emails transferred each day are spam. With that statistic, even opt-in users risk losing valuable messages in the clutter of spam. RSS feeds effectively nullify spam as an issue. Requesting feeds allow users to maintain complete control over the content they view. Users can easily opt-in and out of feeds that provide content of interest or importance.

2.) Expanded Reach
RSS allows publishers to reach a number of new and different markets that typically are less crowded with competition. Many small businesses are often slow to adopt or learn new technologies, giving businesses that lead the way a competitive advantage.

3.) Content Syndication
Syndication of feeds increases exposure.

4.) Repeat Visitors
RSS is all about repeat visitors. Users who have previously visited a site often have a stronger connection to the site and are more likely to purchase or trust the information on the site.

5.) Free web traffic
As the internet has evolved, many webmasters have found that what was once free traffic must now be paid for in order to sustain decent visitor statistics. RSS is in a unique position to bring free traffic because they are content-driven, and if they include interesting or valuable information, will pique the curiosity of web-surfers and entice them to visit a particular site.

6.) Less Effort
Newsletters and E-zines undeniably bring visitors, but the effort involved in creating, distributing and maintaining a newsletter can be a burden. Maintaining the list, ensuring the list is clean, growing the subscriber base, updating and removing bad e-mail addresses, all take time. RSS feeds are not burdened with those issues. There are easy-to-use RSS feed creation tools that require little effort, allowing publishers to recycle content, often simply cutting and pasting into RSS feed creation software.
RSS has potential to help companies develop strong relationships with consumers and creating brand loyalty with customers.

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What Are RSS Feeds?

RSS Feeds

RSS also known as rich site summary or real simply syndication, arrived on the scene a number of years ago, now embraced by webmasters as a means to effectively syndicate content. RSS Feeds provide webmasters and content providers an avenue to provide concise summaries to prospective readers.

Thousands of commercial web sites and blogs now publish content summaries in an RSS feed. Each item in the feed typically contains a headline; article summary and link back to the online article.

Benefits to the Webmaster

As the web has become more crowded webmasters have been striving to provide fresh and up to date content for their website visitors. Many webmasters have discovered they can easily utilize the information in RSS feeds to provide fresh web content.

RSS feeds are composed in XML, which is a very simple markup language. Similar to HTML, XML uses tags to identify fields. Webmasters can easily parse the RSS feed and dynamically create web pages that contain headlines and summaries. The feeds will continuously update, supplying a steady stream of automatically generated fresh content.

RSS allows webmasters to:
1.) Provide fresh and relevant content on their website, which encourages users to return.

2.) Constantly changing content means that search engine spiders will visit more frequently.

3.) Automate content delivery.

The benefits of RSS feeds are not limited to webmasters, surfers too benefit from the technology as well.

Benefits to Web Surfers

The beauty of RSS is that readers can quickly scan headlines (titles) and read articles of interest. Because the information is condensed and provided in a single location users can generally review more information in a shorter time frame. Additional information is only a click away. Best of all readers choose the feeds they wish to see, there is no spam with RSS. If you are not completely thrilled with the content appearing in a feed simply remove it from the newsreader. The technology is a pull technology rather than push technology, meaning the content is not forced on the consumers, who pull the content they want to see.

RSS allows for users to:
1.) Easily locate information.

2.) Read condensed information or ‘soundbytes’ with clearly marked and dated topic material.

3.) Classify and categorize information in an easy to navigate manner.

4.) Maximize their time without having to deal with spam.

RSS feeds can be viewed in a news aggregator or reader, which constantly updates and shows unread feeds. I found the functionality of the newsreaders to be similar to a simple email client. Consumers generally enter the URL of any RSS feeds that interest them. Topics with a common theme can be segregated into related groups.

Benefits to Content Developer

While the benefits to users and webmasters are clear the distribution opportunities made available to content developers should not be overlooked. Information contained in the RSS feed can be easily syndicated, increasing content distribution and reach.

RSS allows for content developers to:
1.) Increase exposure in niche markets.

2.) Communicate with user bases and reach potential customers via an alternate communication method.

3.) Disseminate relevant information.

4.) Define themselves as an industry expert.

5.) Automate content delivery.

RSS has effectively standardized the format for content delivery and has effectively defined the accepted standard for content distribution and syndication. RSS will likely rival email as a means of content distribution in another few years. The shear simplicity makes the technology very appealing.

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