Introduction
RSS is becoming a very popular means to learn about additions and changes to websites. Born and raised in the news and blogging world, it is moving to the mainstream and is now becoming a replacement for email as the major way to notify readers of ongoing changes. Once you start using an RSS aggregator to read your news, you'd like other things to go there, too.
A logical RSS use is for update notices on "regular" websites. By regular websites, I mean normal business and organization sites, such as for a manufacturer, a restaurant, a church, a conference, etc.
An issue here is that, unlike weblogs and news sites, most regular websites are not created with automated content management systems that automatically create RSS feeds. Most regular websites are authored "by hand" with tools like Dreamweaver, FrontPage, Notepad, TextEdit, and Emacs.
The Software Garden ListGarden program provides a manually operated tool to fill in the gap here. Webmasters can use it themselves, or configure it for use by others, to do the day-to-day creation of RSS feeds. This tutorial goes through the steps necessary to get started. It consists of five major sections:
Planning
Before adding RSS to your website, you should do a little planning. These are mainly marketing and procedural issues and not technical ones. Some of the tasks are deciding what you are going to use RSS for and where it fits into your website. Another is deciding what your RSS entries will be like, such as the writing style and depth of information.
Maintaining an RSS feed, while simple, does take work. You want to make sure that it is helpful to both your readers and your organization and therefore worth the effort.
Ask yourself questions such as:
- Which changes to this website really matter to my readers/customers? Which new information related to the business or organization matters to them?
- Are there distinct RSS feeds that would be appropriate? For example, an organization may want separate feeds for members and the general community. A company may want separate feeds for the users of different products or services.
- Would an RSS feed open up the need for more normal webpage content on the website?
Knowing that you can notify interested parties opens up new opportunities. The RSS feed itself may become the catalyst for a new service. For example, a restaurant may want to highlight the special of the day or a store may want to notify customers of arrival date changes for new items or the availability of scarce items due to cancellation. This may mean backup to the feed with a "special of the day" or "availability" page. (ListGarden can automate some of this with its optional HTML output, but in many cases you'll want a "real" page.)
Having a page showing the history of the specials, product arrivals, etc., can act as a way of introducing customers to the full range of services of the company or organization. You need to make it fit into the structure of the normal website itself to get that benefit, which may come even if there are few subscribers to the RSS feed itself.
- Will having an RSS feed have downsides? Will it lead to customers expecting more responsive service than you can prudently provide? Will it be clear under which circumstances you give notification and under which you don't?
Think about the writing style and content of RSS feed items before you start writing them. When you first start the RSS feed you will probably want to publicize it and your first items will help set the tone and decide whether your most loyal customers will be happy with it.
For customers of a business, the tone of the writing should match the tone of the company or be tuned to fit into the medium of using an RSS reader/aggregator. You are not a news organization which gets revenue by having people just view pages on a website. There is no need to waste the reader's time enticing them onto your site. In their mind, the RSS feed, the website, your telephone support, and your products and services are all part of one big jumble making up their relationship with you. Show them that you respect their time and treat them like you know they have other things to do besides deal with your company. RSS has become popular because it saves time; follow that, don't fight it.
Here are some pointers to writing that makes it easy and quick to read:
- Be concise and clear. Do not use the "teasing" language that has become so popular on television ("Will it rain tomorrow? Will you need an umbrella? Tune in at eleven to find out"). Think about which information the readers would want and make it easy for them to get it at a glance.
For example, instead of "We announced a new product that will change your life", write "New SleepSoft 400 pillow with better dust-resistance" -- same length, more information.
- Take advantage of the the fact there are two fields, title and description. The title is often displayed in RSS readers like the subject in an email, with the description either in a smaller font size or only available with a click. When your readers are scanning the titles listed in an RSS reader aggregating many feeds, you want them to be able to decide if they want to read your item's description, and from the description whether or not they want to follow the link (if there is a link). You do not want them to feel disappointed. The title should not misrepresent the description, nor the description the link target. Readers should feel that the title and description give them a good two-stage filter when evaluating information.
- Titles should be 3 to 10 words long, at most. Look at a good news feed, like that from Reuters, to see some "professional" titles and descriptions in the news world.
- The length of the descriptions is something to be decided carefully. News summaries are usually just a few sentences at most. Sometimes the information in the feed can stand alone with the right amount of description text, with the link only as a permanent backup. This may be appropriate even if it makes the description a little bit "too long". (For example, a simple solution to a common problem.) Sometimes you really don't want to overwhelm most readers with too much material that they won't read and need to skip over. (For example, step-by-step instructions for a solution.)
It may help to re-think the title (if you wrote it first) after writing the description to see if it conveys what you wanted and relates well to the description.
- A newspaper is a good place to look for figuring out a style for the descriptions. The first paragraph of a traditional news article is often called the "lead". It sums up the whole story. Your description may be a summary of something elsewhere, such as a product announcement or event, or it may be the entire set of information. In either case, make sure that you include the relevant facts and leave out as much flowery embellishments as possible. A style that does not have a "marketing" tone has been shown to be better on the Internet. Read it after writing and see if you can shorten it. Longer, more detailed information can always be in the page to which the item links.
- Look at the work of others. Start reading RSS feeds with an aggregator and see how you use it. Try to figure out what you like and don't like as a user.
- Write a few sample items. Prototyping is always good. Show them to others and see what they think. Feedback is good, too.
Part of the style is the rate at which you publish new items. You want to provide updates at a rate that is appropriate to your topic and readers. Daily updates from a simple restaurant with an unchanging menu would probably be inappropriate, but daily items from a non-profit to its fund-raising volunteers during a fund drive may be. The idea of RSS is that you can publish on a sporadic basis. This is unlike a "traditional" strategy of constantly having updates so that people always find something new when they visit your website whether or not you have something important to say to them.
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