How to learn where your users click
Implementing a more clear menu, like I did the other day, and do other changes to you blog, might be of no meaning at all if you're not aware of how/if they are used.
Assuming your blog is for you readers, and not just a personal journal for yourself, you'd want to know if the features you add to you blog are used at all. If they're not, it might mean that either they fill no meaning to your readers, or they can't find it.
Of course there are a 3rd alternative that is very easy to miss. Today many people are reading your blog via a RSS-feed, in their RSS-reader. They wouldn't know if you changed your blog all over with a new skin, and they would probably don't know any features you add/remove from you blog.
But let's get back to the users that read from you web page. How can you for example learn if your new menu item is being clicked, how to know if that sidebar link you put up are being used?
Community Server has made this rather easy for us, and it's been written about before, but I thought It'd be worth mentioning again in this case.
Instead of linking directly to whatever you want to link to, use the URL Redirects of Community Server. It will take the original URL (i.e. http://mysite.com/blogs/donaldduck/archive/2006/08/09/How-to-talk-like-me.aspx) and give you a shorter one (like http://mysite.com/r.ashx?2). But the URL Redirect also counts how many times it has been clicked.
To implement this in the top menu bar might not be straightforward if you haven't used Community Server that much yet. There's an article that I wrote earlier that might help you there.
So by implementing the URL Redirects for some of your links at your blog home page, you will get a more detailed picture if anyone uses them at all, or as mentioned earlier, if they can't find them. It will enable you to see what links/menus on you blog home page that your readers click!
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