July 7th, 2005
Interface Elements for Providing Feeds and Having People Subscribe to Them
by Joshua Porter | 
6 Comments | shortlink: http://bokardo.com/p/137
There are many options for creating an interface element that points to your syndication feed. Below are some of the most popular ones:
Plain old XML icon
The original, orange XML button popularized by Dave Winer
Part of Jeremy Hedley’s reworked buttons (my personal favorites)- XML A CSS-only XML icon
Feed Technology Specific
- RSS Orange RSS icon
- Atom Orange Atom icon
Branded icons
Branded icons are provided by blog readers in an attempt to get people familiar with those readers to one-click subscribe.
Feedburner XML button
Add to MyYahoo button
Add to NewsGator button
Sub with Bloglines button
Add to Rojo button
Text Links
There are also many different ways to say that you have a feed in text. Some are much more clear than others:
- “RSS Feed”
- “ATOM Feed”
- “Syndicate this Site”
- “Grab my XML feed”
- “Subscribe to Feed”
- “Add New York Times RSS feeds”
In addition, several sites provide more in-depth explanation for subscribing to feeds on a separate page for those curious enough to click through.
What Method is Best?
Every now and again someone will bring up how confusing it can be to learn about feeds and how they work. Jeff Veen talked about the usability of subscribing to feeds recently. Molly Holzschlag recently asked “where’s your feed?” while conducting a survey on where feed links are placed. Steve Rubel points to a ZDNet bit discussing the poor naming of RSS and the confusion that it brings. He agrees with David Coursey, who wants something as simple as “subscribe” feature on applications. So, given that we’ve identified so many ways to provide a feed, what’s the best one?
User Centered Language
I think the folks in the “subscribe” camp are on the right track. Consider the definitions of subscribe and syndicate on dictionary.com
- syndicate: To sell (an article or cartoon) for publication in many magazines or newspapers at the same time
- subscribe: To authorize (someone) to receive or access electronic texts or services, especially over the Internet
It’s pretty clear that syndicating a web site is what developers do, and subscribing to a site is what readers do.
So, continuing this evolutionary process in providing clarity for our readers, we might improve our interfaces by offering a button for our feeds that tells users what they can do with it: subscribe.
Here’s one possibility: 
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Comments
1. Chris Wills 10:54am, Thu 7th, 2005
A subscribe button is the way to go. It has the most meaning to the greatest number of people. I’ve been using “RSS Feed” in a text format but will be changing this to a “subscribe” graphic soon. I’ve also found it useful to provide additional information to inexperienced RSS users to explain what RSS is about. I’ve done this on my site by using a small question mark graphic.
2. kevin 1:16pm, Thu 7th, 2005
This works great, and I think is preferred in very specific instances. That said, there are times when it’s necessary to let people know what kind of content a link points to in (that it points to a feed and not a web page per se). Perhaps in the context of an application that indexes a number of different feeds ina a view that also contains links to hypertext docs.
It seems like one-click icons for various online readers are also a necessary evil but I’m all for slapping those in an xsl-ified view of the feed.
3. Paul Miller 6:54am, Fri 8th, 2005
I agree wholeheartedly that a technology-neutral button such as your ’subscribe’ is the way forward. First, though, we need to crack the technology so that clicking the button really will – reliably – do just that, rather than return meaningless XML to the browser, throw up an error, or whatever. NetNewsWire running on Tiger copes pretty well now when a Safari user clicks on one of these things. That is not true with other software and operating systems.
And if we’re seeking a term that makes sense to people, subscribe is definitely better than syndicate, but may put some people off clicking as (to my mind at least) it carries connotations of *payment* in from the physical world; you subscribe to a magazine. You PAY A SUBSCRIPTION to get the content.
4. Marilyn Langfeld 7:49am, Thu 28th, 2005
Hi Joshua,
After I read this post I decided to add a similar ‘SUBSCRIBE’ button to a site I’m redesigning, in lieu of RSS or XML. The client loved it, but her internal clients preferred ‘SIGN UP’ so that’s what we’re trying. They felt that SUBSCRIBE might incorrectly indicate there would be a subscription fee.
The site launches at the association’s national convention in mid September, and we’ll be watching users navigate it there. I’ll get back to you with any feedback I get at that point.
5. Josh 9:23am, Thu 28th, 2005
Good to know, Marilyn. Sign up is definitely another alternative. I wonder, can we come up with some sort of test for this stuff? Has anyone tested various alternatives and seen which have what effects?