First Time Blog Readers

First impressions are important in person and the same concept rolls over to blogs as well. Here are some tips I came across post in ProBlogger that highlights what you can do to do some analysis of first time impressions of your blog. First you'll need a co-worker, friend, or family member who hasn't seen your blog yet. Second you'll have to you'll need to have a computer in front of your test subject and ideally you would have to be in the same room. While your friend is surfing the blog for 4-5 minutes you can monitor how they use your blog.

• How do they navigate?
• Where do they click?
• What do they pause to read?
• What do they skip over?
• What areas of the blog do they seem most drawn to

Once they've finished surfing you can ask them about their overall impressions and experiences

• What were their first impressions?
• What did they first think your blog was about when they arrived at it?
• Did they find it easy to read/navigate/understand?
• What did they 'feel' when they first arrived at your blog?
• What suggestions do they have on how you could improve your blog?
• What questions do they have having surfed your blog?
• What words would they use to describe the design?
• What are the main things that they remember about your blog 10 minutes later?
• What suggestions do they have from a user perspective?

Definitely some worthwhile tricks to analyze how someone navigates in your blog for the first time.