Every now and then you want to do a case study to test if someones strategy is truly beneficial. But the problem is that you do not have the time or effort to do so. Well the internet is so vast there is bound to be someone that is doing a similar test that you are doing or was already done.
For example, I was going to test if external links should open in a new window and bookmark buttons. Come to find out these were already done and recently as well! The best part is that I didn't have to do anything, except read someone else's results.
If you know Robert Kiyosaki or read any of his books, he always says to use other peoples' time. Using other peoples' time is great because you do not have to do anything besides just post the data elsewhere. This is a great leverage for an author of a website or blog. Blogging alone can be time consuming, especially if you start out. It will be hard to gather stats, organize, propose, etc. Also, what is the use of a case study if there is no traffic?
This is solved by 2 of the popular blogs on the internet. Darren creates a case study if links should open in a new window and DoshDosh create a mini poll on his side bar about social bookmark buttons being useless.
These 2 blogs are very popular and has tons of readers' everyday. In the end their stats would be very good to study opposed to a blog that only receives 100 visits a day. Since I was going to do these tests myself, yet someone else did them I will be posting the results on here.
Here are the results of Darrens' Case Study on Links Opening in a New Window:
The way Darren did this is have his reader comment on this specific topic; he then simply tallied it all up and provided the results. This graph is pretty self explanatory. To me this is very closely matched.
I personally, hate opening referencing websites in new windows. To me its just annoying and it seems as if its a pop up, even FireFox pop up blocker will sometimes stop the pop up. To counter act this I add the external page in a frame with a direct link back to my website. View it Here
The link will take you to Cnet.com but there is a difference with this as it has a top frame at the top which is not obstructive. If you think that is more annoying then let me know, as I am curious to this. I was approach about this by some readers, and it does not affect trackbacking and so far to my knowledge it does not affect technorati. But some blogs that I pay respect to and read a lot I do not add the frame window. I would like to know if that frame window annoys readers.
Well in any case DoshDosh did a test I wanted to do a while ago once I switched over to WordPress. DoshDosh added a simple poll on his website asking readers if they use the social bookmark buttons on blogs. The results were quite interesting:
Here are the results for the poll:
- 45% of users never used them (99 votes)
- 37% of users use them (81 votes)
- 19% of users don’t know what they are (41 votes)
According to the results, 64% of voters do not use social bookmarking buttons, with 19% of them not knowing what they are at all. Out of the 37% of voters who use the buttons, there is probably a large number of them who already know how to bookmark through other means as well.
I don’t think social bookmarking or voting buttons are necessary for any website but I keep them up because they can serve as reminders for your visitors to bookmark or share the article with others. If I had to choose between text links or icons, I would probably pick text links because they seem to be more instructive and direct.
I am not really surprise about these results because I personally do not use bookmark buttons, unless its really helpful. In any case I use third party software, such as the FireFox Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon plugins.
The reason why I would be doing this test is to see if I should remove the Share plugin within my blog and just keep the auto scroll button I created on the left side. DoshDosh does say it reminds readers that there are social bookmark sites out there, the only reason I think I may just leave the "Share" plugin.
In the end, I didn't do any of the work. Readers from these 2 great and popular blogs have done it for me. I just re analyze and put in my 2 cents about it. Also, these 2 blogs has great traffic and dedicated readers, experienced and new. They have provided the data to the authors of the blog. The author then organizes the data and posts his results. I have just re-evaluated the post and their statements and re-posted the data on my blog, providing the information to new and potential readers. I did not do anything except just read their post, as I do on a daily basis.
Using Other Peoples Time is a great leverage, as Robert Kiyosaki says especially on the internet and in the world of blogging.
