Can Your Mum Navigate your Blog?

I was speaking to a friend recently and she told me her mum reads her blog now. She’s not afraid and most definetely not paranoid of this. After all, I think it’s soon going to be the norm all around the world. As best you can to hide it, search is becoming more powerful and personal information is being shared open through social network sites.

So instead of fighting it, why not help mum to navigate your blog? Or is your blog not mum-friendly?

When my friend told me she tried teaching her mum how to use her blog, it really puzzled me. I never thought blogs to be any challenging to navigate or use at all. After all, the blog is made of repetitive elements like the:

• Header
• Navigation
• Sidebar
• Advertisement
• Content
• Introduction excerpt
• Search
• Most popular entries
• Recent entries
• Recent comments
• Recent podcast or videocast
• RSS feed button
• Mini buttons or badges
• Blogroll or Friends blogs
• Twitter
• Blog categories
• Archives
• Miscellaneous links
• Shoutbox or Chatterbox
• Footer

…give me a minute.

Oh my goodness! No wonder my friend’s mum had so much trouble even trying to figure out how to leave a comment on a blog post! I just can’t believe it. I still can’t bring myself to believing, all this time while blogs are suppose to be simple communication tools it has evolved into a massive pile of junk mess.

I strongly suggest anyone who has a blog to look at your blog…hard. From the list above, do you have more, similar or less than the above? Can your mum navigate your blog or at least leave a comment on it without your guidance?

One of the causes could as well be the blog design itself. If you noticed, most blog designs are catered to the common blogger nowadays. The comment button is a speech bubble or a plain text link called View Comments or something more different. This contributes to a big problem because it isn’t enough to define or explain the button function.

Now, this is only the comments button we’re talking about here. What about the categories, the search and etc. Can your mum or a blog ‘virgin’ navigate your blog? Well, there’s only one way to find out…you will have to ask them to try it out.

Question of the day:
Do you think your parents or people whom are not reading your blog, reading it?

[tags]Blog usability, Blog navigation, Blog layout. Blog design[/tags]

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