Posted on October 22, 2007 at 4:11 pm | 
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When I was working in Belfast earlier this year, I picked up a copy of Jacob Nielson’s ‘Designing Web Usability’ for a pound in a small secondhand book shop. You can’t really go wrong for a quid. I vaguely remember lectures from a few years back discussing Nielson’s work, the main thing I remember though is what I considered to be his over simplistic approach.
Simplicity is definitely priority for good usable design. The perfect case study is Google versus Yahoo. Bring up Yahoo. Every inch of retail space is used, which isn’t good. There’s so much redundant stuff that it gets in the way of finding what you’re really looking for. Now look at Google. The search box is right in the middle of the screen, it’s the first thing you look at and there are no distractions crammed all around it. Even using iGoogle, that nice spacious feel is still preserved at the top of the page.
I was looking through Useit.com, Nielson’s own site and his understanding of perfect usable design put into practice. I searched around and found the newsletter subscription page and searched a little more to find the little RSS (Really simple syndication) feed icon, but no icon or feed was found. I emailed Nielson asking why there was no option to subscribe to his new updates via RSS. The reply I received pointed me to this page, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/newsletters.html. If you scroll to the bottom of the page you will find the heading RSS / News Feeds, where Nielson explains his preference for newsletters.
The arguments for and against both newsletters and RSS or news feeds are more than valid, Jacob Nielson is probably the most qualified and experienced usability expert around, but I don’t believe the comment about RSS being a cold technology is totally true. Nielson says, ‘feeds do not form the same relationship between company and customers that a good newsletter can build’ and adds that newsletters are a warmer and much more powerful technology.
I don’t like newsletters, I subscribe to two, gamespot.com and Nielson’s own, but compare that with the 50 odd blogs I follow. Blogs are warmer for me, I find the writing style generally a little more informal and personal and I can select what I do and don’t want to read from the reader I use. It just works for me.
I suppose what I’m getting at is there’s room for both, why risk potentially alienating some of your audience, however small a number it may be. I’m sure answers will be slightly biased as I’m publishing this on a blog, but what is the general feeling of newsletters versus blogs?
2 Comments
So far,
October 23, 2007 @ 
Craig Murphy
An interesting approach. Personally, I can’t keep up with newsletters (those that arrive via e-mail at least) - I have a secondary pst file for those and use rules/custom e-mail addresses to get them out of my inbox before I see them. I rarely look in there, but I’m afraid I’ll miss something if I remove myself from the lists.
Too many newsletters are HTML format that take too long to render. Those that offer plain text options are less attractive and are often “randomly wordy” thus making them more prone to being skipped over.
RSS is my primary news source - I use GreatNews (at the moment), it works for me. I use lunchtime to catch up - if it’s not in Great News, it’s unlikely to get my attention. Of course, Twitter is now getting a look in too.
So, unless there is a compelling reason for a newsletter to hit my primary inbox, sorry, there’s only a small chance they’ll get looked at. To answer your question, RSS is not a cold approach…how long that will last, who knows.