Do You Recommend Excerpts For Blog Posts?

[Yaro]

I've had some feedback that my blog homepage is too long since my articles are so long the page is taking a while to load, which may be costing me some visitors.

Should I start using excerpts, which means you will have to click a "continue to read..." link on each article to get the full article or should I reduce the amount of articles I have appear on the homepage?

Or is it fine like it is? Any other suggestions?

Yaro

[Aitch]

I've had some feedback that my blog homepage is too long since my articles are so long the page is taking a while to load, which may be costing me some visitors.

Should I start using excerpts, which means you will have to click a "continue to read..." link on each article to get the full article or should I reduce the amount of articles I have appear on the homepage?

Or is it fine like it is? Any other suggestions?

Yaro
[/b]

This could we worth experimenting with Yaro. I’ve always thought your fonts are a little unnecessarily big too, and reducing them down to a very readable 12 point would also go a long way to shortening the length of the page. Some readers may be put off a little by page length as well as by page size, despite the quality of the work.

Think about it this way, if a book was given to you as one huge long sheet of paper, would you feel compelled to read it with no end in sight? Books have pages and pages are bite sized digestible clumps of text. Maybe you could try to feature only the current article in full on the home page with excerpts and links to the most recently added pieces directly below it.

When the user clicks on a recently added article you could then include ‘all related articles’ below that particular work.

Of course, the above suggestions are just in my humble opinion.

Good luck with your experimenting.

Aitch

[Tylor]

i think it is great

really

every time a user needs to click he is faced with a decision

he needs to decide what to do

click on your link or go somewhere else

he know he will have to wait again if he clicks it might scare him away

decifing is a psycological burdon and can cost you more visitors



my opinion is - the user is there - dont make him work or make any effort

spoon feed him gently



i like your big fonts and the soft gray color it is comfotable and pleasant for the eye

also keep in mind that some viewers are old and have a bad eyesight

seriously i have seen people complaining online about the size of fonts as in this forum


for me and most people it is very readable but it is difficutl for them

[JamesET]

I do not think you need to use excerpts. Your articles are not such a length that they are needed. They would allow more of the recent articles to be seen on the main page though.
Also, since your blog is nearly all text and not images, making the articles shorter on the main page will not really shorten the load time. You would need a lot more text for that to make a difference. Maybe there is some other reason some have slow load times?
Most of the blogs I see have long main pages. I think most people that read blogs must be used to scrolling by now.
Your content is good. That is what matters most.

[Blaine Moore]

Split the difference. Leave the full text up for the first article or two, excerpt a few articles after that, and just throw up titles for the rest...heheh.

I personally don't have a problem with your home page, but I rarely visit it. I just go straight into your articles from my RSS reader.

On my site I put the entire article with one caveat: almost all of my articles I manually place a "(more...)" tag to split it up and reduce how much shows on the main page.

[Dave Getchel]

Leave the full text and maybe reduce the number of articles per page. It's fine for me though.

Dave