Comments on: Interface Elements for Providing Feeds and Having People Subscribe to Them

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:23:39 +0000

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?

By: Marilyn Langfeld

Marilyn Langfeld — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 11:49:45 +0000

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.

By: Paul Miller

Paul Miller — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 10:54:57 +0000

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.

By: kevin

kevin — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 17:16:05 +0000

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.

By: Chris Wills

Chris Wills — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 14:54:37 +0000

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.