Does Your Homepage Use Full or Partial Posts?
July 28th, 2007
Not to be confused with a debate over full vs. partial feeds, I would like to gauge readers opinions on how to display posts on your blog’s homepage. Do you prefer to see full posts, or partial posts with a “Read more” tag of some sort? Or maybe you prefer full posts on some sites, but partial posts on sites where their content is a little wordy?
I’ve been contemplating switching to displaying a partial post on the homepage. This would allow me to display additional posts on the homepage, and possibly drive up page views, but would require me to remove the AdSense ads. I’m looking forward to getting your opinion in the comments below!
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I don’t remember where I read this (was it here?) where it said if you want to increase page views, use partial posts. But if you want to create loyal readers, then use full posts.
I understand what page views are, but what I don’t understand is the benefit of making people click through when they’re already on your blog. To me, it would seem the only benefit would be to the owner of the blog to see the number of page views jump, if they jump at all because it could mean fewer page views if readers are forced to click through.
Now, if all this is to show more activity on one’s blog and would be beneficial for Alexa, for example, to see this activity, then I could see the connection. I wouldn’t change my posts to partial because of it, but I would see the connection.
I’ve partial posts in the homepage. I tend to write long articles and the loading time was a concern. Also this also allows me to have 10 posts in the homepage. Having more posts in the homepage is important as this gives an rough idea as how good is the blog for the readers interest.
However if the post is shorter, then I don’t have the more tag.
I completely agree with what Ashwin said here.
I prefer partial posts since a reader may find it easy to glance through the first few lines, and read the rest only if he/she needs it.
The idea behind having shorter posts on homepage is something that needs a bit of analysis .
Now , Ashwin pointed it out correctly when he said that loading time might be a concern . I , for one , use the “Read More” tag because I think it’s a good way to increase the number of comments , if I were to offer the whole post on the homepage , no one would click through to leave a comment ( everyone knows I’m a comment addicted guy ) .
From my point of view Shankar , the idea behind using a “Read More” tag isn’t to increase the number of pageviews , it’s to tease the readers .
Now , you know there’s an old saying : “Give them a reason to come back for more” .
The “Read More” tag works like a post teaser , it teases people so that they click through and even read the article to the end ( if it’s interesting enough ) , teasing people in the smart way will keep their interest and curiosity alerted and you’ll have them coming back for more .
Full posts on my home page. I feel it gives a good impression. I want people to read my blog, not to navigate it.
Looks like most of the people share the same feelings like mine..
Partial Posts on home page.. Not to increase the page views but to allow the users to browse through the posts and read only those which interest them..
Btw Mark you said that
This applies in case of feeds and not posts.. Am I right guys?
I created an option on our site so that users can switch between the two views. It was kinda complicated because I still wanted an image on each article, so I have it go into each post to grab an image and scale it down to a thumbnail size. Then it displays an excerpt from the post.
If I didn’t have this option I would be doing full posts because most users like being able to scan the homepage to see if there is anything new. Just think of it this way…when you go to a site what do you prefer? Do you like having to go into a post to finish reading it?
Mark -
I have often said that here, but that was in regards to feeds, not homepage posts.
Some people love page views as they can allow you to raise your rates you charge advertisers, but for most blogs I don’t think it is a big deal. Alexa only counts each IP address once every 24 hours, so it wouldn’t have any positive effect on Alexa ranking.
Ashwin/Shankar – I guess I hadn’t really considered load time. I do hate having content that goes long past the sidebar though, so partial posts would allow more on the front page while keeping the content within the length of the sidebar.
Cristian – You feel that partial posts increase commenting? Thats interesting. I personally wouldn’t think it would effect that, but I may have to look into that a little more. Some quick checking shows only about 5% of my traffic even sees my homepage (most via Search engines, StumbleUpon, and Digg come right to the single post page).
Rhys – I agree that new readers will benefit more from seeing entire posts. They generally aren’t going to click over if they are trying to make a quick decision whether to subscribe or not.
dEEPAK -
Well said! If I was arguing for partial posts, I think this would be my main argument.
Ryan – Man, if I even had half your coding knowledge! I’ve seen that option and I love it! You should release it as a plugin to solve my problem.
I’m sure a lot of what I do could be made into plugins, but I’ve never really figured out how the whole WordPress plugin system works. I know that they use hooks and stuff, and looking at the code for some of the plugins makes me realize how much work people put into developing them.
Someday I may look into creating plugins, but I like having things more tightly integrated. I eliminated nearly all of the plugins that we used before with the new site design (we were using around 20, and now have just 3) by integrating it all into the theme. I essentially recreated many of the plugins that were optimized to do exactly what I want, because many of them go a lot further than we ever need. I was able to cut the load in half on our server by doing all of the work so it was well worth it.
I use partially posts on some of them using the more tag but only on the posts that are longer then my average post and I also use it on posts with multiple videos to keep page load times down.
I like partial post and think it would be better for your site.
Very interesting to see a lot of voices FOR partial posts in home page. I hardly visit any blog’s home page to read posts except the first time or two. If I liked the site, they would be in my GreatNews reader and I would just go to the specific post to comment. I guess the same applies for most search engine traffic landing in specific posts.
Right now, I am showing full posts and it goes down the sidebar way longer than I like. I have been debating on maybe just showing full posts for the first 2 or 3 recent posts and showing the read as excerpts. I have to look into how to implement this. Maybe it isn’t that hard!
Another option I have been contemplating is to using an AJAX plugin that I have come across that shows the rest of the post in the same page on just a click without loading the single page. I cannot remember the name of it right now because I gave up on trying to make it work over 6 months back when WordPress was new to me and haven’t tried it again.:-)
Ryan – Creating plugins are a GREAT way to get recurring traffic over the months and even years. Especially if you support them. Though, part of what makes your site so great is the stuff you’ve done that is unique to your site, so some of us are just stuck admiring!
I can see where building the plugins into your site is a good idea, but that is a lot of work. After seeing the results, it was well worth it.
Michael – That is a good compromise to only do partial posts for really long posts. I occasionally do long posts, so I may start doing that.
Matt – Your vote has been counted. Thanks!
K – I’ve seen that AJAX plugin you’ve mentioned. I had it up for a few days and didn’t really care for it, but it was an early version of the plugin. It might be better now.
We’ve built one plug-in before, but I don’t think that plug-ins add the traffic that most people want. It doesn’t bring in the dedicated readers that you would expect it to, so that’s why we took the route of adding features that make our blog stand out from the crowd. And the funny thing is that I hardly came up with any of the ideas myself…everytime we launch something people give their feedback, and we just make note of it all for the next time around. So we have our readers to thank for the new site.
I keep coming back to this question on a regular basis. So far I’ve been on the side for full posts on the homepage.
However, the increasing availability of good magazine/news style templates and the success of such layouts has made me reconsider.
This evolution of the blog format is almost entirely dependent on the use of partial posts to present many snippets of information for the reader to consider.
As we continue to be inundated by information (and I’m an information junkie), much of the resistance to partial posts on the front page will fall by the wayside in favor of the advantage it brings – the ability to quickly scan for what you want in an efficient manner.
And if we want to capture our reader’s attention with a partial post, it will force us to be better writers as well.