Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Clearly the redesign was good. My traffic to that section of the site went up by a factor of 3, so it's evident that people can now find what they are looking for more easily than before. I get a gold star for usability improvement.
The problem is that my clickthrough rate on that part of the site DROPPED by a factor of 3. Now people can find interesting stuff to read, they don't bother clicking on the boring AdSense ads. Those clicks are 3x down on the original pages, not the new pages, so I'm not breaking even, I'm losing money.
So what's a website owner to do? It seems that making the site LESS usable might actually boost earnings. Does anyone know of any good books on how to make a site less usable?
Obviously there's a balance here. If the site is REALLY unusable, people won't bother visiting. However if it's TOO usable, people won't click on ads because the content is so good, so easy to find and so interesting that it attracts all their attention.
Here's how I see it though -- in the long run, the attractive and useful site will generate more word-of-mouth and natural linking. People naturally spread a good resource. In that manner, your traffic will accelerate more rapidly now than it has in the past, ultimately increasing earnings.
Does anyone know of any good books on how to make a site less usable?
LOL!
You can have a very usable website, with excellent code, and still make good money. It all depends on your ad placement, your page layout, and your website's color scheme (and obviously the quality of your content).
I use web standards, have a very usable and simple website, and do very well with Adsense. In fact my CTR is well above 10%.
The best thing I ever did on my website was get rid of the leaderboard and most of my skyscrapers. Instead, I placed the large rectangle beneath my article title, and above my article content. My CTR shot up 400%.
So don't throw away good usability and web standards, just so you can make more money. First, it will probably hurt your traffic and revenue in the long run. Second, you can and should strive for both.
Do you have stats that shows actual visitor behavior? If so, find out where they are exiting, then put your Adsense there. Blend it with the content! Then, go back and optimize the other pages.
Besides being the most visited pages, they are also the pages that generate the most clickthroughs and the most income, so they are probably pretty well optimized.
I don't have any pages that people end up on and which are so bad they just leave the site rather than look for something else!
The ideal situation would be a site with diverse content, that is well indexed and has a good PR. From SE results, users view an article on your site, and do one of the following:
1. Click on an ad related to what they're looking for
2. Read your article and then click on an ad
3. Read your article, and look for more information on your site -- eventually clicking on an ad
This is why it's important to have both an attractive, usable website, and ad placement that is in their face, but not obnoxious.
i think you are right for short term adsense revenue. but, since google is likely tracking user behavior with the google toolbar, google web accellerator, and clicks from the SERPs... they will notice that the average pages viewed per user on your site approaches 1.
i would not be surprised if this is "interpreted" by google to indicate that your site is not high quality, based on the assumption that users are not sticking around. this, in turn, could lead to lower rankings in the SERPs which would hurt your adsense revenue in the long run.
of course, using stickyness as a metric to determine quality is inaccurate for some sites, but i would still not be surprised if they use it.
my comments are VERY speculative, and are based on more than one assumption, but i build my sites as if they are true. in the end, my golden rule, is build sites for users, and all will work well.
so if the user lands on a page on your site about "buy red widgets" then the links on that page should be related to this, such as "buy blue widgets" but NOT "repair wodgets".
if you distract your users to other parts of your site, that are not related to the reason that they got to your page, they are probably less likely to click on an ad when they are there.
but corral them in the area that they have proven an interest in, and they are more likely to click.
all we want is a user to click on an ad on the site, not necessarily on the page that they landed on.
When dealing with site stickyness and Adsense, I find stickyness to be a useless endeavor. Your main goal should be to get the user to click on your ads and exit your site.
LOL. Are you advocating creating scraper sites, sites with no content but ads or a site with totally crap content so your Adsense revenues will be high? While I understand where you are coming from, this is the type of statement that can bring an Adwords advertiser's blood boil.
I don't think a site has to forego stickiness to do well with Adsense. In fact, they can compliment each other -- which is the whole idea behind Adsense. Of course, this will depend on the type of content. An article, for example, about tips on getting loan financing for a business will be a good jumping board for ads on business loans and bank loans. A person still in the process of deciding how to finance their business will stick to the site and read its content; then clicks on an ad when the person is ready to go to the next step and see what products are available out there.
Yes it may depend on the nature of your site.
On a info/content site folks may arrive looking for information and find it on a page that is not likely to attract ads paying much.
That's when it becomes important to catch their attention and ignite their desire.
Can you tempt them with the idea of wanting to buy a widget?
Good, then send them off to one of your widget dealer pages, which might well pay a LOT more than the ads on a general widget info page.
With any luck they might fall in love with an expensive widget that they also would have to finance and insure.
So now you've turned what could have been a $0.10, one page wonder into a muli-page, multi dollar visit.
When dealing with site stickyness and Adsense, I find stickyness to be a useless endeavor. Your main goal should be to get the user to click on your ads and exit your site.
That's a dead-end strategy, for several reasons:
1) The user who visits your site, finds nothing of interest, and exits via an ad isn't likely to return again--ever. So you've lost a potential source of repeat income. What's more, many visitors who find nothing of interest will simply exit through the back button--meaning that you'll earn nothing from them at all.
2) Users who click an ad simply as a way of leaving a site aren't likely to convert well for advertisers. Low conversions = big Smart Pricing discounts for advertisers = lower earnings per click for you.
3) The Google AdSense team may tolerate sites with little or no useful content, but Google Search appears to be making a concerted effort to root worthless "made for PPC" and affiliate pages from its SERPs--at least according to the Google site-evaluation document that was leaked recently (and which is discussed in a thread on the Google News forum).
However, it's within the Google guidelines though. In fact Google specifically approved the page since the initial version of the page wasn't and the contected me. I then revised it, asked it it was OK and they said yes.
As web pages go, it sucks, but it brings in so much revenue I just can't get rid of it (it's not my home page BTW!).
I do penance for that one page by providing lots of content on all the other pages!
I imagine if ALL my pages were like that, I wouldn't get a lot of traffic, but having one like that sure doesn't seem to hurt!
I read an interview with a big player in the domain name world. He redesigned a big site many times at great expense looking for maximum profit. And in the end realised that poor quality content makes him most money!
For the long haul though, surely great content has a better future.
So the site looked terrible, no images showing up, just scattered text... and Adsense.
My earnings for that channel are up for the day even though the images were down, and the site looked hideous for about 3 hours.
My site has very good content, and also has very good performance in SEs like Google. But my visitors don't stay that long. Most are looking for very specific information, not a place to lolly-gag around.
I would also assume that sites that do have stickyness, don't get a lot of click-throughs. This is because the user gets familiar with the ad placement, and filters them out as they use the services of the website.
What's my point here? IMHO, content sites and service (sticky) sites are in two different categories. Certainly, you can have both on one website, and that can be good. But again, IMHO I think a strict content site, without stickyness gimmicks, and with good diverse content, will ultimately make the most money with Adsense.
