After a good four or fives days of theme changes, technical problems, and a steep steep learning curve for your site admin, I have just this minute applied the finishing touches to our new ad layout.
You have probably noticed an extremely poor CTR from your Excerptz content over the past few days, please be assured that this decline was a direct result of their being just one ad unit on your pages for a significant period. There are now five ad units, so earnings should normalize and hopefully subsequently grow from now on forward. You should however be made aware that it can sometimes take Google a day or two to work out what to place on your pages after ad units have been removed. Consider yourself aware.
Below is the new ad layout, with ad spots marked in green. It is one ad spot away from being perfect, I hope to eventually include a third link unit which inserts itself after a paragraph somewhere in the middle of your posts, this would be of particular benefit to those of you who like to write lengthy articles.
I am confident that this ad layout will achieve a decent conversion rate, although I will not hesitate to test and tinker if it doesn’t. I have used this ad layout to great success on some of my personal sites, having originally loosely based it on the Google hotspots map:
A few people questioned the inclusion of a left sided ad unit when I briefly inserted ads a day or two ago, probably because they have become accustomed to writing on a website which places an ad unit on the right rather than the left. Whilst it is true that a right sided ad is slightly more reader friendly, it is actually much more common for major sites (not that we are major yet of course) to use a 250 x 250 or a 300 x 250 ad unit on that left side. Online publications which adopt a left aligned ad include:
- Xomba
- Helium
- Bukisa
- eHow (left and right)
- ThisIsFreelance
And almost every major name in Google News. So, give it a chance! There are plenty more features to come, and a few design tweaks necessary. Forthcoming stuff include a Facebook like widget thing, changes to the H1, H2 and H3 tags, a member list, author profile at the bottom of each of your articles (in which you can insert links), and hopefully that mid-article AdSense link unit. Oh, and I need to make your links blue, as at current they don’t stand out at all.
But for now I am truly exhausted, having slept for four hours per night for three nights, so I’m having a little break from everything but moderation and answering emails!
Best,
Ryan
Hi Ryan
First of all .. thanks for the hard work you’ve been putting in and I’m sure it will pay off.
Starting to look better now but can I add a bit of a ‘wish list’ .. mainly to tidy it a little after you’ve had some shut eye :-)
Ad above the page title – can that be left aligned and a little more space between it and the title. Alsoo if poss a little more space between title and ‘posted by’
Read your comments on the first left lign ad block .. not sure but will take your word for it :-) .. One thing that might help make it look less starnge …. can you move the ‘tweet like’ buttons above the bar above and under the ‘posted by’ that would make it a little cleaner.
I’m certainly no expert on ad placement but the bottom two seem to be lost to me .. would it be better to have one above the ‘more from this category’ and then the other between the ‘more’ images and the share/save button? As I say I;m no expert but aesthetically, that would look better I feel.
Glad to see H tags are being looked at and there are a few other minor things but they can wait.
One question though is what has happened to all the images that were inserted .. none appear in my posts but do in the ‘category’ bit?
Ok …. let you sleep a bit more now :-)
cheers
Ritsos, my brain has gone to complete mush. So we have ads up, we didn’t yesterday, that’s a big positive!
I’ll have a rest, and then have a play. There are ads on the page, that’s a start.
H tags defo being looked at, and hyperlink colour. I’ll leave the ads how they are to see how they convert, I have set up a channel for each, so I will quickly know if one is being carried.
I think your right about moving that 468 x 60 up the page, but remember I have another link unit to play with. I could move that 468 x 60 in the smack bang middle of an article and replace it with a link unit. As for the one below…. you always need something at the bottom of the page, you will be surprised how many people lurk about round there!
According to analytics a lot of people are navigating via those ‘common tags’ already, that is reason enough. But ultimately, if any of the ads prove themselves as pointless and ineffective they will be moved!
Cheers,
Ryan
Hi Ryan
A bit of fresh air might not be a bad idea for a day … go watch some County Cricket .. that should do it :-)
Agreed re ads .. let’s see how they go … hopefully start to see a few results.
I am surprised about people clicking the bottom ads but you have done wwayyyyyy more research than me on that so I’m happy to accept that.
Don’t know how easy it is to swap position of ads, but once it’s all settled down a bit … I wonder if you would consider swapping the top one in teh text to the right for say a week and see how it compares to having it on the left. I guess the presumption is that as people read left to right they will see the ads first, but I’m not sure that’s an issue with a relatively small width .. anyway .,.. will leave that to your discretion.
Re images .. do I need to go back to all my posts and re-instate them .. they have all vanished from my posts :(
ta
Charlie
Thanks for the work – already got a click today so something must be working!
Just a quick note on the new ad layout. If you have a picture top-right, the top-left ad block appears to be forcing text over/under the picture. And squashing the text up in a manner that makes them appear pretty unreadable.
Just thought you might like to know.
^ I think the only way around this is to manually move pics down a bit. Which works fine. And it’s better to have ads at the top over pics. So all is good.
Enjoy your day off.
He’s at it again … go to bed Ryan ;-)
Ritsos, I am officially a vampire. Slept all day. I’m going to get the header tags sorted!
Ok Spike .. I’ll leave you too it … will critique in the morning :-)
Buffy
And now it’s morning :-)
Not sure about the last few changes if I’m honest. Not a fan of the black background .. doesn’t work for me. The best actual design the site had was the very temporary newspaper layout, though I understand the reason for its demise. That said the one day that was my best … my impressions have gone down again though I guess we need time for this one to settle.
Personally, I’d revert to the white background and then have the header part and the menu dropdown in black(ish) .. that would give it a more ‘newspaper’ feel.
Also not sure about the way the ads are crowded around the start of the article .. looks very messy. I guess it’s difficult as obviously we all want the most succesful way but it doesn’t look pretty and a bit confusing for readers (and I seem to recall that the site is aimed at them as a priority).
Just my grumpy early mornin two pennorth ;-)
The newspaper layout had to go, for every person who supported that I had two people threatening to delete content. Affiliate marketers don’t like major page leaks like that, they like their pages of content to be their pages of content. If the four column layout was exclusive to the front page and category pages (like the three page layout is exclusive to those pages here) then I would have kept it, no doubt.
Since last night I did actually move one of those ad units to the bottom of the sidebar. The top ad layout will be there until I can work out how to insert an adsense ad into the middle of an article, at which point the 468 x 90 will be moved there. Unfortunately the revenue sharing plugin we use is rather restrictive when it comes to ad positions. Me and Oli (ThisIsFreelance) are both exploring ways and means of placing an ad there.
If I lost one of the ads at the top, I would have to put it at the bottom, where you didn’t like it? Therefore the only place left for it to go is the middle, which is being worked on and will hopefully happen at some stage.
As for impressions, remember it is the weekend! Friday – Sunday are always quiet. It does take a bit of time for ads to become relevant etc after changing ad layout too. Difficult to judge over less than 24 hours, I’ll take a look after a week, and if things don’t look good I will have to consider options. My 20% yesterday was not great, although neither was it terrible.
As for readers being a priority, I was referring more to the perception. A site marketed at readers, or a site marketed at writers, the original theme had a huge banner boasting revenue sharing…. that is the approach that has changed.
Anyway, let’s see where we are at in the middle of the week RE: ads. Monday and Tuesday tend to be my best days, Saturday tends to be my worst. I need to concentrate on some off-page SEO anyway, and I fancy writing some content, aesthetics doesn’t always earn the money!
Ok Ryan … take your point .. I agree things have to settle I guess so let’s hope for a bit of a pick up for us all …. I should get back to writing a few more articles too … it’s been a while :-)
have a good weekend