Darren’s Day 2 task is to Run a First Time Reader Audit by watching a friend or family member, who has not read your blog, surf your blog. The reason why is because you learn a lot from watching how a person reads and uses your blog.

Early this morning I asked my husband if he would help me with an activity. With a gleam in his eyes, and a cheeky smile, he said “I would love to but the kids are awake.” Fortunately a husband can read your blog while the kids are around, so first part of the task has been achieved – find a First Time Reader.Rule clarification – he does not read my blog, would rather watch sport, and willingly offers opinions.

What I observed from watching him use my blog:

• Read – top to bottom
• Pictures grabbed his attention more than text – especially Lynette’s snippets which he liked to read the quotes [image by Lynetter]
• Liked video provided loaded fast – Really liked video on aquaculture students using PDAs whereas workshop video took too long to load so he gave up trying to watch it. I am going to have to do some research to why the video loaded so slowly because that is definitely not what you want when you embed a video
• Read entire page then read each of the pages at the top of my blog – as he is fairly new to reading blogs did not think to click on link to previous entries or check out blogs in any of my categories (tags).

His answers to the questions:

• First impression of what blog was about – Said hard to answer as he knows what I blog about however he did suggest that people who be curious to learn what mobile learning is about.
• Easy to read/navigate/understand – Yes
• What did he feel when first arrived at blog – curiosity, what is this all about
• Improvements – make it more obvious how to post comments (as he is new to blogs would be interested in opinion of experienced blogger), improve loading speed of workshop video
• Questions about blog – none
• Words to describe blog – Easy on the eye, well laid out, good colours, liked the use of pictures as it engages you more and makes it more human

His final thoughts were – wow – you have a lot of knowledge about all this stuff – mmm .

Doing a First Time Reader’s audit is a really good idea. I have checked out the results from how other bloggers have gone. Definitely important to grab someone who is patient and willing to spend the time checking out your blog. It would have also been good to get an experienced blogger, who was a first time reader, and watched how they interacted with my blog.