A few weeks ago, I wrote about how much I like it when an employee or a company admits they made a mistake.
Well, now it's my turn.
To my blog subscribers: My bad. I made a mistake, and I am sorry.
It all has to do with that pesky "Read more" link that I started including in the email posts a couple of weeks ago.
Some people wrote to me saying that the extra click was annoying, and that it interfered with their enjoyment of the blog. As you see here, I am keeping the "Read more" link in place, and I hope you'll understand the following explanation.
But first, back to my mistake. There were two, actually:
1. I introduced the "Read more" link without warning or explanation. Sorry about that!
2. I introduced the "Read more" link before making sure the online blog was reader-friendly for mobile devices, which I know many of you use to read the posts. Sorry about that!
Now the explanation.
The idea of the "Read more" link is to get people to visit my website, where my blog is hosted.
Why do I want people visiting my website to read the blog? Two reasons:
1. I get a lot of great comments from readers who email me their thoughts on a post. And while I love those emails, I would love it even more if those same reader thoughts started discussions. But that can't happen when I'm the only one seeing the responses. It can only happen if people use the comments section on the online blog. The only effective way to get people to do that is to drive them to the online blog. BUT I SHOULD HAVE EXPLAINED THAT TO YOU.
2. I am using my personal website, where the blog is hosted, to promote my speaking and my books. Needless to say, I want my website to do well in Google and other web rankings for that reason. One sometimes inconvenient fact about the web is that the more traffic and clicks a website gets, the better it does in these online rankings. So I wanted to drive my readers to the site for that reason, as well.
When I first installed the "Read more" link, I had these reasons in my head, and I reasoned that since I was only asking an extra "click" of my readers, I didn't need to say anything. But that was wrong.
It was also wrong to do it before the mobile version of my site was ready, as I said earlier.
But that is now corrected! The online blog should be just as easy to read on mobile devices as the email version of the blog was. Yes, it's an extra click, but with the readability issue fixed, that's all the "Read more" link should mean to my readers:
One extra click for you that helps me out a lot.
But I should have said that sooner.
My bad!
