Putting RSS to Work: Immediate Action Feeds

In the course of working on the design for several RSS/Atom-enabled applications, I have become increasingly dissatisfied with the typical form of syndicated feeds. These feeds are so easy to generate that we can readily squirt out all sorts of information from applications without any regard to usability. I believe that such feeds shouldn't just be informational, they should actually be usable.

My justification for this is simple: we RSS/Atom users are lazy. Visit 15 websites every day? Not a chance. Subscribe to 200 full-content feeds which I can read in one spot? Sign me up!

Even so, most syndicated feeds from applications contain read-only information: events, state changes, etc. Yet if I want to act on the information, I almost always have to follow a link to the website where I can actually do something. Remember, I'm lazy. Yeah, I read the RSS notice about the impending core meltdown. But I now have to click through to a website, then authenticate, then find a button to retract the plutonium rods? What a hassle.

Fortunately, I believe there is an important new pattern emerging in RSS and Atom feeds, one that is focused on improving the user experience. I call this pattern Immediate Action. It is a simple philosophy that can make the difference between a typical feed and a really useful feed. Here is the essence of it:

You have probably already seen the Immediate Action pattern, not in feeds, but in your email inbox: "Click this link to activate your account." Or how about this old standby: "Click here to unsubscribe." The URLs provided in these emails have unique information to be received by a web-based application. The approach used to create a personalized email can just as easily be used in an RSS or Atom feed.

Immediate Action is a simple idea, really. But when applied, it moves your feed from being merely informational to being interactive. It is also a proven idea; good webmasters are constantly evaluating how to reduce the number of clicks between first impression and purchase. In the same spirit, do whatever you can for your users to reduce the number of clicks from your feed to the desired outcome.

Watch This Item, Immediately

Let's consider a well-publicized example of an Immediate Action Feed. Auction giant eBay recently generated a good deal of buzz with the announcement that eBay Stores can now provide RSS feeds of their items for sale. What has gone mostly unsung is a nice Immediate Action feature built right into those feeds: Each item contains an "Add to watch list" link. The URL goes to the eBay website and adds the item to your watch list, provided you are logged in. This is a great example of an easy way to implement Immediate Action by using REST-ful links in your feeds.

Figure 1. An eBay Store RSS feed

Disappointingly, the more important "Buy it now" link is not an Immediate Action. It should take you directly to a purchase confirmation page. Instead, the link takes you to the item's auction page where you must redundantly click the "Buy it now" button, which then takes you to the purchase confirmation page. The repeated step is unnecessary since even the confirmation page allows you to change your mind. Hopefully the eBay folks will get this fixed in short order.