How Many Posts Should You Display on Your Home Page: The Results
Overall the voting on last week’s poll was less than I had hoped. Even with a second post asking for participation, I still didn’t see an overwhelming increase. Nevertheless, the results are in.
Taking 44% of the votes “3 posts on the home page” is the winner! Second place goes to “5 posts on the home page” with 22% of the votes. Here is a quick run down on how everyone voted:
What people said
Everyone has their own opinion about how many posts to display and here are some of those comments:
Reztar from DELPRO Review and Opinion said, “Just voted “3″. It is better if in general if the length of you post can match the length of your sidebar. So, maybe it is best to have recent post in full, and the other 2 in excerpt. Just my opinion.”
Graphic designer David Airey (from the site of the same name) said, “I voted for three too, and will probably drop the number on mine from 4 to 3. I list the latest 10 in my sidebar, which gets around the issue of people not visiting for a few days. One thing I’d like to do is list the first post in its entirety, and the next two as excerpts, like Reztar suggests. Not sure how yet.”
Sensory and consumer research consultant Jensen, from Ideas-Sensory, said, “I like the idea of having an entire month’s worth of entries available. That way if someone is away they can scroll through the entire month. Perhaps you could have a summary post at the end of each month as a way to highlight the main topics of focus. These topics are a little too detailed and dry. What other topics do people want to hear about?”
Niche blogging for a home business blogger Dane Morgan (also from Blog Strokes) said, “I’m experimenting with 5 and 10 on different blogs. In all cases the first post is a full post display with the remaining 4 or 9 being excerpts. I do have an idea I plan to test soon though where I’ll be displaying the first 10 as excerpts and then the most recent 5 from each category as linked titles, each category in it’s own position. Obviously i need to build up enough content and post pretty frequently for this trial.”
AV Enthusiast blogger Mlankton said, “I personally find a page with only 3 articles on it just as annoying as one with 30. It should be long enough that you can scroll down a bit, but not too far. I say 7-8 articles per page depending on how much article you show before the more tag.”
Fantastic feedback! Thank you to everyone that took the time to chime in with their views on the question.
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Filed under: Blogging Related
I’ve found that I have more readers clicking on more pages when I only publish excerpts on the home page. This lets readers scroll through my last 10 stories or so and read the ones that are the most appealing to them. THen I have the related stories plugin work its magic.
I’m starting to believe that how much of an article you post on your home page along with how many excerpts you display is driven by the subject matter of your blog and the type of audience it attracts. Tech focused blogs are probably better suited to several excerpts on a home page. Tech readers might get drawn to your site because of a specific post but will often scan the rest of your stuff if they like/respect what brought them to the site in the first place. More general news/commentary blogs tend to write about the current “hot topic.” Readers that come for those types of articles probably have less interest in previous posts. In those cases it might make sense to display fewer posts.
It all depends and I’m still sorting through my thoughts on a “best practice” approach for post displaying.
Thanks for your comment J.D. everyone’s personal views on this subject are greatly appreciated.
I have a blog where I have a snapshot of all the templates so I show the recent 10 posts otherwise most users feel like the blog lacks templates and leave…
You’re particular blog supports my previous statement that the subject matter and your audience are the real drivers behind how many posts you should display on your home page.
Thanks for the comment Zahid.
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