IE7 makes RSS easy
If you don’t have an RSS feed on your business website, you risk becoming irrelevant (and maybe even invisible) to your tech savvy customers.
The reason? Microsoft IE7 makes RSS easy for your customers to subscribe to your site’s content.
As early as 1st quarter 2007, business sites without RSS will start to dwindle and/or falter. Here’s why:
In the middle of October 2006, Microsoft released a new browser, IE 7.0.
I checked the stats at two very popular sites I master, and the IE 7 browser share looked something like this:
- October 2006: 2%
- November 2006: 5%
- December 2006: 15%
Wow! Can you say “lightning fast growth” ? And we’re only 14 days into December as I write this!
People are loving this new browser. They’re switching over to it in droves. And the kicker?
The new Microsoft IE 7 browser makes it just as easy to “subscribe to this feed” as it used to be to “Bookmark this Page!”
The new IE7 browser has an embedded, orange RSS icon that glows when a feed is available on a page you visit. Touch it, and you are led to the page’s RSS feed. You also get a bit of text that says:
You are viewing a feed that contains frequently updated content. When you subscribe to a feed, it is added to the Common Feed List. Updated information from the feed is automatically downloaded to your computer and can be viewed in Internet Explorer and other programs.
Click the “Subscribe to this feed” area, and presto! A visitor is automatically subscribed to your web content.
And when you update your site, your visitors will know. Their IE7 “Feed Favorites” list will be bold. They will have a reason to click-through, to see your new content.
My prediction? More people will be subscribing to RSS feeds in 2007 because of this very easy-to-use feature.
Don’t have RSS at your site? You’re going to become invisible and irrelevant….very quickly.
Why risk it? Why not optimize your site to include an RSS feed?
And why not do it before it’s too late?
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