Will FeedBurner or Plain XML Get You More Subscribers?
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The RSS subscriber count is the statistic I’m most interested in. It tells me how many people are listening to my tips and tutorials (Thank you to anyone that is!)
I want as many people as possible to click that little orange button, so I have chosen unique icons and put them in noticeable places on the site. But what about when they click those links?
I’ve burnt my feed with FeedBurner for the statistics of course, but do I use their “BrowserFriendly” (Log into your feed, then go to Optimize > Browser Friendly), or do I leave it as the default XML?
Why Use the Default XML Display?
- Clearly not a webpage. An RSS feed is very different to a normal webpage, but with how the FeedBurner page looks, you could think otherwise. Showing the XML page is a clue for new users that the RSS feed needs to be treated differently.
- Well designed in modern browsers. Most modern browsers have designed a page for showing RSS feeds that is easy to use, but doesn’t fall into the trap of looking like a normal web page like FeedBurner’s.
The exception is Google Chrome, where the RSS feeds are just a wall of text. But Chrome is still young, so I’m sure that will get sorted soon enough.
Why Use the FeedBurner Page?
- Links to a “What is RSS?” page. IE7 and Opera both link to an explanation of feeds, but the others don’t. With FeedBurner, everyone gets the explanation link.
- Includes a “Subscribe by Email” option. There’s no reason not to offer an email version of your feed on your blog already, but incase you haven’t, the FeedBurner page offers this automatically. Not everyone uses RSS, but everyone has an email account!
- Can be more convenient for people who have already subscribed to a FeedBurner feed. It remembers the reader they chose last time from an extensive list of readers, and offer the same one again.
It Doesn’t Always Matter Which You Choose
The first thought I had when choosing between these two was trying to follow a standard.
Let’s say a FireFox user loads their first ever feed and sees FireFox’s feed page. The next time they load a feed, they should recognize that design and know how to use it, right?
Well, what if the next RSS feed they load is a FeedBurner page? That looks different, and the FeedBurner page is a little more awkward to get used to (Recognizing one of the mess of subscription buttons was how I first caught on to what it was).
So which is more popular, plain RSS or FeedBurnered RSS? If one was clearly in the lead, it could set the standard. If anything, I’d guess FeedBurner was winning but it’s definitely not a clear lead so no standard has been set (And it seems strange to set a standard that relies entirely on one company!).
But it gets better than that, sometimes it doesn’t matter which you choose. Both Safari and Opera override the FeedBurner page and show their own RSS pages instead.
In fairness, these 2 browsers have by far the best RSS pages, but should the browser makers be allowed to overrule what the web owner has chosen? You tell me.
And if you were thinking no, what if they’re doing it much better than FeedBurner? Look below to see Opera’s beautiful (liquid) RSS page, and it’s worth getting Safari just to play with the functionality they built into theirs.
Dave Rigotti recently came up with a clever way of tracking RSS feed conversions. I haven’t done any testing myself, but for anyone interested in testing the two alternatives, this post at Webmaster Source is a good place to start.
Personally, I’ve used plain XML on Pro Blog Design for most of the life of this blog, because I don’t like how the FeedBurner page looks very much. I swapped to the FeedBurner page recently just to try it, but I’ve no data to say one is better than the other. I’m not sure which I’ll wind up using in the end.
So which do you use on your blog? And which do you prefer to see when you click a new feed?
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About the Author
Michael Martin
Michael Martin is the founder of Pro Blog Design. He works as a freelance web designer, loves WordPress, and has an unhealthy addiction to smilies.
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I’m on safari and that doesn’t seem to take over the feedburner page. It only happens when you try and view a plain XML feed.
I tested it a couple of times last night (Because I’d never heard of this before, I wanted to be sure) and it did it every time for me. When I loaded it today, it showed the FeedBurner page, but when I refreshed that exact same page, it showed the Safari page.
Seems like it comes and goes, which is more confusing than ever! :(
This is a topic that I haven’t really considered much.
I use the feedburner page on my blog simply because I assume it’s easier for people to subscribe with.
As feedburner continues to gain support as a de facto tool for blogs more people will probably use the feedburner page to display their feeds. That being said it makes sense to display your feed with whatever it is people are most familiar with. I wouldn’t want someone to not subscribe because there are thrown off by a XML display.
The decision is also very niche specific. Web design/development or blogging type blogs will be fine regardless how you deliever the feed. If you have a knitting blog, more instruction is probably needed.
Seems we’re agreed on displaying it the way that people are most familiar with. I’m just finding it hard to tell what people find most familiar. I think you’re right about techy/blogging niches though, readers there are probably familiar with both the XML and FeedBurner itself.
If I’d never seen either type of page before, then I’d rather see FeedBurner than the raw XML I might have seen a few years ago. But now the FeedBurner page hasn’t changed and it’s far from ideal. Some of the modern browser pages are more friendly I think (But not all of them, which is where the nuisance comes :( )
I don’t have a blog, but when I’m subscribing to feeds of blogs I really don’t like being confronted with a Feedburner page. The first time it happened (and I’m far from a web newbie here) I was a little confused as to exactly what I should do to subscribe via my default (Mail.app on a Mac).
A standard RSS feed icon appears in the address bar of Safari (if a feed is present), I click on it, and it automatically prompts me to subscribe using the program I specify. With Feedburner I either have to click on the icon a second time after the Feedburner page has loaded (which I only just now discovered), or choose “View as XML”.
So I guess the major issue I have is that the page is not intuitive enough for people who know what they’re doing. What surprises me is that most web development blogs choose to use Feedburner when the majority of their user base are likely to be versed in what RSS is, so they don’t need to be told over and over again when they go to subscribe, and have likely set up their system to use their preferred reader by default.
P.S. I also hate seeing “number of subscriber” info on websites: it’s the 2008/9 version of the page counter.
Ben,
I agree that the FeedBurner page can be very confusing. It’s just all over the place. It’s so cluttered that I didn’t even realize it had a “From the author” section until I was setting up my own FeedBurner page and saw that was one of the options, and I’d signed up to dozens of FeedBurner pages by that point!
It does offer a fair few readers, but if your reader isn’t one of its favorite few, it sounds like it must be much more difficult to sign up with.
(Sorry about the RSS counter, it’s part of what keeps me going though! When you put so much time into writing content and replying to comments, it means so much to see that some people value your work enough to come back time and time again. I’m not much interested in other stats, just the RSS.)
I’m with Ben on not liking the RSS counters, but only with the chicklet type. I think yours is displayed nicely. More and more blogs are starting to style their RSS counters so I doubt the chicklets will last much longer before they become tabo.
lol – I’m just thankful that the look of the chicklet is mostly controlled by FeedBurner. I haven’t seen quite the range of Matrix-style visitor counters that I remember from the good ol’ days! :D
It is fairly easy to get your subscriber count in plain text though, so like you said, custom style counters will probably get more and more common as people pick up on that.
Hehe, sorry about the counter remark, it wasn’t directed specifically at you. I didn’t even realise you had it there as I tend to skip straight to the content in the page I want, overlooking the design unless it’s obtrusive, and sign up using the RSS link in Safari’s address bar (because it’s easier).
Anyway, it’s certainly useful to have that information as a website owner, but it doesn’t really need to be broadcast to users. That and the fact it’s one design element that needs to be taken into consideration when realistically it could be left out altogether.
I consider browser overriding RSS styling (Feedburner or not) terrible practice. By the way Firefox does that as well to Feedburner, just not always it seems.
Content gets cropped, information about RSS sucks and is only centered on how it is supported in browser – completely omitting big picture.
It could be fine for plain XML feeds, but doing that to feed that was modified to be human-readable already is evil.
FireFox does it as well? I didn’t realize that, it always seems to show the FeedBurner page for me. I agree though, it’s fine (Great, even!) on a plain XML feed, but if the owner has chosen to style it a certain way, it’s not up to the browser maker to decide that their way is better.
Firefox is somehow unstable with it. I checked before I wrote that comment to be sure and it showed me override (v3.0.5). But I clearly remember that sometimes I get Feedburner-ed page without any changes. I have no idea what it depends on – only use it for Firebug, my main is Opera.
Thanks for linking to one of my posts… glad you liked it! Cheers
I think the question is not: What design but should I use FeedBurner or not.
>The first thought I had when choosing between these two >was trying to follow a standard.
Following a standard is always a good idea. If I click on a RSS Icon I want my FeedReader to open and add the feed to my list.
That’s how it worked all the years before there was FeedBurner.
And now? I click a RSS icon and have to figure out where the button is to add it to my FeedReader. It’s just a annoying waste of time.
Personally I’d love to see FeedBurner just go away and never appear.
Keeping track of statistics how many times you feed was fetched by different IPs is also possible with on of the many stat plugins. So why FeedBurner?
FeedBurner only adds cosmetica layer, feed doesn’t stop being a feed so it’s more likely that your feed reader has problems detecting it.
>So why FeedBurner?
Because it’s simplistic way to gather stats, tweak feed, integrate extra features into feed and save a lot of bandwidth over time.
I know that there is the original feed but that doesn’t change my argument:
you don’t just click and have the feed in your feed reader. You have to check the ugly page and search for the right button.
>Because it’s simplistic way to gather stats,
>tweak feed, integrate extra features into
>feed and save a lot of bandwidth over time.
Beside the bandwidth there is nothing you could not do by yourself.
>you don’t just click and have the feed in your feed reader. You have to check the ugly page and search for the right button.
I don’t really get you on this one. I didn’t ever had to search for buttons on FeedBurner-ed page, Opera offers to subscribe when detects that page is feed, external desktop clients usually require copy-pasting URL. What is different?
>Beside the bandwidth there is nothing you could not do by yourself.
You could also write your own blogging platform. :) If there is easy and reliable way to do something it is often reasonable to use it.
I really prefer FeedBurner, why?
There are nice features inside, like stats, and the powerfull my brand feature.
Well. i’ve been using the one from Feedburner all the time. It is the one that is most user-friendly, and that is the most important for me. Also with Feedburner you get a lot of options and features that make life as webmaster lot easier.
Two things, Michael.
1. Bloggers can track RSS subscription with Google Analytics. Setup right, they be able to track conversions accurately.
http://hamletbatista.com/2007/07/24/tracing-their-steps-how-to-track-feed-subscriber-referrals-with-google-analytics/
With your method, you have to make sure you view the right “average” subscribers number (weekly or daily) and as we know the number of times a feed is requested per day or week is not exactly the number of feed subscribers.
Here’s how Google calculate the FB number:
http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?answer=78955&topic=13075
2. Bloggers who want to take it to the next level can now track the number of people that clicks on the link within the RSS content. FB tracks clicks on the title, but not in-content links.
http://blogbuildingu.com/software/rss-feed-campaign-tagger
(Ok, that’s my plugin)
It works by tagging your RSS feed content links with Google Analytics tags. The report will appear in GA report without the need to do anything. But if bloggers want to track goals, It needs to be set up in the GA account.
With this, bloggers can now track how responsive their subscribers are to their promotions.
The tracking is not perfect, but at least that’s a good start, I think.
Those are great tools Hendry, thanks for sharing them! Those methods sound a lot easier to work with than the tip I suggested. Going to have to try them out. :D
Thanks for bringing this up, as I haven’t really given it much thought before now. I’ve used Feedburner since they started and at that time it was the best option because the only alternative was a raw xml feed. Back then, most people would think the page was broken.
Another reason Feedburner was better had to do with there being different RSS versions and formats, using Feedburner made it easier for the visitors, especially those that knew nothing about RSS.
After reading this post, I’m going to be giving this some serious consideration. After looking at the Feedburner version of my blog, I have to say I’m not too fond of it. I use the Flock browser (built with the same source as FireFox) and I much more prefer the raw xml now that the browsers today can display it in a useful manner.
One thing to consider … now that Feedburner is part of the Google family of apps, it won’t be long before you start seeing Google ads displayed on the Feedburner page of your blog’s RSS feed. If they spruce up the page and allow blogs to monetize their own Feedburner pages then I might revisit the use of Feedburner.
Enjoy … Scott
Page beautifying in Feedburner is an option, not mandatory to use service.
Actually they are allowing to use ads in feed for some time already. :)
Those ads scare me a little. :(
What’s next, custom formatting? Setting fonts for your posts? HTML? Full webpages all over again? :(
I just set up a site and decided to just count all the IPs that visit the feed to see how many subscribers there is. I heard that FeedBurner can be a bit all over the place in regards to your stats.
In answer to your question
“should the browser makers be allowed to overrule what the web owner has chosen? You tell me.”
I think the more companies that are involved the better the chances of finding better solutions and improving on the whole process that still seems to allude a lot of people.
I personally prefer plain RSS since I use “good browsers” only, i.e. Firefox and Safari. But it seems that Feedburner RSS has evolved into some kind of standard.
They have opened the job as a full-time position, which means my temp job will no longer exist and I have to apply for the full time one. ,
I think that Feedburner works much better to attract subscribers. Yes, Firefox and Opera have a good RSS subscription feature (that looks better than feedburner) but not everyone has that.
Fashion life
Hi Michael,
I’ve been working online and in computing for quite some time and I personally can’t stand the feedburner page. It always takes me a few seconds just to figure out what the heck all of the clutter is. I assume most newbies will get confused and immediately turn around. That’s what I have done in the past. But, I haven’t done any real testing either. I actually just found your post because I was trying to figure out how to change it to the xml version…and I found it.
” (Log into your feed, then go to Optimize > Browser Friendly)”
Thanks.
If I’d never seen either type of page before, then I’d rather see FeedBurner than the raw XML I might have seen a few years ago
Did it every time for me. When I loaded it today, it showed the FeedBurner page
Feedburner continues to gain support as a de facto tool for blogs more people will probably use the feedburner page to display their feeds. That being said it makes sense to display your feed with whatever it is people are most familiar with
I guess the major issue I have is that the page is not intuitive enough for people who know what they’re doing. What surprises me is that most web development blogs choose to use Feedburner when the majority of their user base are likely to be versed in what RSS
The other thing that I liked was that it had been produced specifically as a CMS
I usually do go through the spam filter, so even the simple fact you have a Gravatar will help any future comments of yours stand out for me
I heard that FeedBurner can be a bit all over the place in regards to your stats
I personally prefer plain RSS. But feedburner continues to gain support as a de facto tool for blogs more people will probably use the feedburner page to display their feeds.
as publisher, feedburner is preferred, cause you can organize and analyze your feed. They also tell you how many subscribers for your site.
as subscriber, plain text is preferred, this because plain text load faster.
These days, with advancements in Chrome as well as IE8 (soon 9), FF, and Safari, it really doesn’t matter what kind of XML. And I agree with the last comment here, that plain text, (and leaned as much as possible), will always load fastest and, especially with RSS, that’s the goal!
nice info ilike this
Some really interesting points there and something that I had no even considered before. I use feedburner as a standard and haven’t even considered doing it any other way, but its true that if people are use to working a different way then this layout may be a little alien. I will definitely be looking more into this to consider the options.
Even i was in search for the same answer.After reading i think that the feedburner feed according to me is more user friendly than raw xml format.
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i have also added feedburner feed for my blog