Increasing pageviews per visitor but.

adsense ctr and epc dropped..

[fi5hbone]

I did a design long ago that was aesthetically much more pleasing than my previous one. Recently, I just uploaded it and there were some mixed results. The better design resulted in my visitors navigating around my site more and staying a longer time at my site.

However, as a result of that my CTR and EPC dropped. Is this something I should accept or are there any changes I can make to get the CTR or EPC back? I really would not want to revert back to an older design if possible.

[edited by: martinibuster at 1:44 am (utc) on Jan. 13, 2007]
[edit reason] No site reviews, please. [/edit]

[sailorjwd]

Better navigation is better for your visitors.
More pageviews is a good sign.
Longer time on site helps too.

While some here think CTR influences EPC I have given up on which way it might influence it.

8 months ago I had triple the number of visitors/pageviews. Today my CPM/EPC is 1/2 of what it was and CTR is down slightly mostly because of slight moves in ad placement (to make them less obnoxious).

Do you have the ads on the same place on every page?
Maybe keep things different by moving them left/right or changing color on some pages.

[fi5hbone]

Yeah. I know what you mean. I really hate to sacrifice design for money. It's really difficult striking a balance. Do you have any idea what ad position works best for content based sites?

[danimal]

if you are getting more average page views per unique url, it could be difficult to justify going back to the old design... unless you were doing things like splitting a 3-page article up into 4 pages, just to increase the page views? tweaking the current design might also be an alternative.

the ctr and epc could have dropped this month for a number of reasons, not just because of a site re-design... there are so many things that affect it.

[sailorjwd]

Unfortunately if you place the ads in the best place for CTR then you will be considered an adsense w hore,
mfa scumbag, etc.

I am a recovering adsense ctr-alholic (with a few relapses).

[maxgoldie]

The way I look at this is that if you say, split some of your longer pages into smaller ones (to improve usability for eg.) you will necessarily be creaing more pages, and thus more page views. So, say I am one of those "click-adverse" visitors that would never click on an ad, when I used to view only two pages per avg on the old design, I now am viewing 4 pages on the new design - the result will be that page impressions will have doubled - and clicks did not increase.

So, with page impressions doubling like that, with traffic levels remaining the same, the CTR would decline. If the CTR goes down, the eCPM does as well. And while the same number of people are still clicking ads on your site as before, that same number of clicks is now set against a doubled number of page impressions. The CPC is less because eCPM is also less, because CTR is less, causing overall earnings to decline.

In time though, it is likely that the new design could be a good thing, as there are now more pages getting spidered, ultimately driving traffic levels up overall, which could offest the above reality in a good way.

[fi5hbone]

I did not split up long pages at all. I merely changed the design to make it more aesthetically pleasing and improved the navigational structure.

I made certain changes that would not make the site too ugly in a bid to increase CPM, but to no avail. This is not good.

[maxgoldie]

Sorry fi5hbone, I wasnt implying that it was your intention to paginate your content, but what I was trying to say was that anything one does to increase pageviews without increasing visitors, will have the same net effect.

There is a rift in consensus as to whether or not CTR and eCPM are connected, and if they are what I said above could explain this.

[fi5hbone]

It's ok. I guess I will be sticking to this design and not worry about the earnings so much. I can sleep better knowing that I do not have an ugly site out there that has the advertisement sticking out like a sore thumb.

Do you find that ads embedded within content or outside content works better? Or do ads that are away from the content work any better?

[SiteChemistry]

Do you find that ads embedded within content or outside content works better? Or do ads that are away from the content work any better?

Every site is different, but in general ads embedded in the main content above the fold get most clicks. Experimenting with colour schemes can make a massive difference too.

[maxgoldie]

I found this: when I first started using Adsense three years ago, I hastily threw an adblock on my lower left column of a three column layout and never gave it any more thought. Needless to say, my earnings/ctr were horrible. I averaged around 40 bucks a month.

Many months later, I put a borderless, blended large rectangle on the middle column (where the main content is), above the fold. Immediately my earnings rose from 40 dollars/mo to 400. Then, I added to that by breaking my content into a more defined navigation, eg. I once had all the widgets in one link. Then I broke them down in the site nav into red widgets, blue widgets, etc. Earnings went up there substantially. And then I broke the red widgets down even further into scarlet widgets, crimson widgets, rose widgets, etc..and earnings peaked. (That way, you will be sending more relevant/qualified traffic to the advertiser -- the name of the game. So, what you have done by altering your navigation could be a good thing, despite some negatives at the start.)

Lg rectangles in the center of content and towers on the right column along the scrollbar seem to work best for most, but like everything else YMMV.