Full posts or excerpts? That is the question…
Half-way or the whole thing?
I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking and reading on the topic of displaying full posts or excerpts on a blogs landing page as well as its RSS feed. And I’ve come to the conclusion that there isn’t a consensus of which approach to take. It seems like “it depends” is the way most people see it and I tend to agree. For the Resort Marketing blog, I’ve decided that I was the content to be freely distributed and easily browsed and scrolled through, so I’ve chosen to display full posts on both the landing page as well as in the Resort Marketing RSS feed. I do use a nifty WordPress plugin called RSS Footer which allows me to easily add links to the bottom of each post in the Resort Marketing blog feed which will link directly to my blog and posts like this:
Full posts or excerpts? That is the question… is a post from: The Resort Marketing Blogwritten by Eric Hoffman.
This all said, I do think there are circumstances in which excerpts makes sense as well. If your blog is a publishing center, which you have to drive traffic to, then it definitely makes sense to post strategically crafted excerpts that will drive click-throughs to your blog. If you do the same thing on your blog’s homepage that will certainly allow for more content to be displayed on the landing page. This is very important for blogs that have frequent posts and multiple authors, because if they didn’t post excerpts, content would make for a tremendously long scroll, as well as the inability to find content readily on repeat visits, great examples of this are Huffington Post and Mashable.
There is one other factor that I don’t know that people are currently paying enough attention to, and that is that more and more blog readers are looking to read via mobile devices. This means that first off, you should ensure that your blog will display well on mobile devices, and secondly that if those people are reading the RSS feed on a mobile device, they probably want to read the full post and not have to click through to the full posts. This is similar to the situation of giving people the option to subscribe to your blog via email, but then only providing the excerpts to email subscribers, I would doubt that you will find many subscribers will remain for long, and unless you have the geekiest blog in existence, there will always be people that will want to use email to subscribe over other methods and if you’re not looking out for them, you’ll lose them.
So, to sum up, my answer to my question in the title of this post is the lame, “It depends.” What to you think, is there a clear cut best practice for blogging and full posts or excerpts?
Photo credit: Flickr user Dawn HuczekWelcome to my "Resort Marketing" blog. I hope that you will consider subscribing to my blog's feed or leaving a comment on this post. I look forward to seeing you again soon and thank you for visiting!
Interesting thoughts, Eric. As far as landing pages go, I have chosen to use excerpts on SlopeFillers for a couple of reasons.
First, as much as I would like to think the opposite, every post is not applicable to, and thus, not going to be read by every visitor. Rather than make them scroll down 5000px worth of browser window to peruse the latest titles to see if there is one they want to read, I like to give them the opening paragraph and just a tidbit so the landing page flooded with text and easy to scan.
Second, for my site, when someone arrives on the landing page, it is almost always someone that is there for the first time. I don't want one article to tell the story of my entire blog. So, with excerpts, above the fold, or just below it is another headline that helps the visitor see sort of an "average" of what my posts are like and all about.
I think it also depends on post length. If each post is a paragraph or too like Seth Godin's then full text makes sense. If they are long, drawn out posts like CopyBlogger's then excerpts might be the better choice.
You hit it right on the head though, there is no one way nor consensus about it. To each blog their own
Thanks for your thoughts on this Greg. It's something that we've been hashing on at the office and I figured it was certainly worthy of discussion here too. I tend to think it's something that a lot of bloggers just start off in one direction and then don't consider any other options. I personally think that the implications of mobile may really come into play in this area sooner rather than later.
I haven't found a clear best practice, but my preference is to see excerpts on the landing page, and full articles in the feeds.
Thanks Bryan – no relation BTW for anyone who might be wondering!
I'll agree w/the lame conclusion, "It depends." As for personal preference, I like excerpts. I don't use RSS, so if it's a blog I visit every few weeks, it's nice to scroll and quickly see what's new. I suppose a recent posts widget at the top could satisfy that.
Thanks Rachel – I love that you agree with the "lame" conclusion!
Nice post Eric. Completely agree…it depends. Like anything and everything else in this new age of the personal web, each person will have their own preference.
But, I think you took into account the correct factors…frequency, readers, post length…and landed at the correct decision for you.
By the way, great job on the design refresh. Looks very good. Another potential downside of WP…it is too tempting to change themes each week.
- Troy
Troy, thanks for additional depth on the question at hand as well as on the blog refresh – I totally agree on the temptation factor too, it\’s so easy to continually try out new looks!