Although Evan Soloman was originally supposed to do this session, he couldn’t make it so his colleague Pete Davies took over. He started off by making the point that many times there is a huge disconnect between the developers and end users. As developers and content creators we tend to be very unaware of what our readers and end-users really want. According to Pete there are several things we can do to change this.
First, we can use surveys. As boring as these may be they are the most basic way of figuring out what who your readers are and what they want. A good example would asking them what they expected to find on your website. We do this all the time using our twitter and facebook account.
Another possibility is to to use analytics to determine what people do when they actually visit your site. Two of the most popular ones are Google Analytics and Kissmetrics. Something a bit more technical would be using a heat map. By using heat mapping software you can get a very clear idea of what your users are actually doing on your website. Simply changing where you put your sign up button can dramatically affect how many sign ups you get. Pete also made the point that you shouldn’t test what you don’t want to know. If you are not going to act on the data then it is just a waste of time.
If you would like to watch Pete’s full session or any of the other sessions you can do so at Blog World Expo
