Killer Design for CTR Campaign

If you missed to read it in my blog, here is the detail. The original article is already indexed by google so I am posting it here..
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How does your design affects your Adsense CTR?

Many times we tend to complain in Webmaster Forums that our Site's CTR is low and we always blame the placement and traffic. If you are selling or running third party ads in your site, this article could help you analyze your CTR.

Good site design always attract visitors' attention but there are some disadvantages. My own 2-week experiment on design and CTR tells me that good design with colorful lay-out and images cannot help you in making $ through Adsense and other affiliate programs.

In many cases, people do not focus on links being advertised because images and graphics steal their attention. Let's not discuss content and traffic on this article. We are going to focus on design and lay-out.

During the start of August, I created 2 blogs under Myseoblog.net's domain and hosted them on subdomains. Both blogs have similar content but slightly rewritten for SEO purposes. The first blog (which I already deleted from database) had a very good design and placement using one of Dailyblogtheme's beautiful theme. The second blog possess a very simple and plain theme without any graphic nor a single image, except that Feedjit traffic monitoring script.

I let these 2 blogs running for 10 days without advertising in any forum or in any blog. I just let Google discover them and after 10 days, I have a very good result that could justify my conclusion.

The first blog with beautiful theme had a total of 4,852 visitors from Google, had 57 clicks with a total of $31.45 earnings from Adsense. The CTR is around 1.17%. CPC is fair considering the blog has Technical topic. I was not satisfied with the result of the first blog and after seeing the result of the second blog, I deleted the first one.

For the first 10 days, the second blog with ugly design and plain white color got 4,765 visitors from Google, had 198 clicks with a total of $132.75 earnings. The CTR is around 4.15%. The CTR is too far ahead of the first blog. You may wonder why both blogs got fair traffic from Google. The blogs as I mentioned are hosted under Myseoblog.net subdomain and the articles were getting indexed fast (after posted several hours).

If you are planning to create your own luck with Google Adsense Program, it is better to have your own experiment to see which one is effective. This Myseoblog alone has been skinned more than 20 times since I created and placed it online last year but finally, I make it settled with Prosense Theme. The reason is not just because of good CTR but also its user-friendly, easy to customized sidebars, and browser-friendly lay-out.

My second blog as mentioned above is still online and you can take a look how simple and ugly the design is and tell me your assessment. I cannot tell you the current CTR but I could say it's really beyond my expected result. The statistics the you may found at the sidebar following the Adsense ads is the record of site's visitors within 48 hours. You may take a look at my second ugly blog by going to Verizon High Speed Internet Customer Experience

 

Great advice... nice to know someone is willing to share their experiences and help others, thanks

 

Good stuff. You don't even have the ad's link blended to same color and you got a very good CTR. Thanks for sharing your the information.

 

Good stuff , and important information
Thank you
+1

 

Very Impressive Article I Must Say...

 

Thanks for sharing you experience with us.. Hopefully we all we be benefited by this

 

Hmm interesting, nice testing!

 

This is a dirty litle secret for many of us. Users dont see websites as we do...

 

This is really a finding! Thank you for sharing this with us.
We tend to think that images and complex designs will increase the CTR but you have shown the opposite.

 

I don't care what other people with say about my current skin as long as the content is original and the CTR is high...

 

Great article. That is interesting that basic schemes make so much more money!

I do have one question though. Could you share your info on your 2 layout's long-term traffic patterns? I'm curious as to whether the basic scheme makes a site less memorable and reduces repeat visits in the long-run.

 

My niche is specific and visitors are targeted. Everyday I am getting 4 to 8 email subscribers so I don't think it has nothing to do your worries about long-term scheme..

As long as your site is updated frequently with fresh content, I don't see any problem..

 

Thanks I had forgotten you updated so often

Do you think it would matter as much if you had a niche that didn't need regular updates?

 

Any blog must be updated at least 2 times a week

 

Naturally but for non-blog sites

 

Nice advice...

That just remind me what I read a couple of weeks ago, I haven't tried it yet...
It was about 2 vs 3 columns theme... It said that for money makers it will be better to use 2 columns than 3 columns theme...

What do you thing about that?

 

Columns has nothing to do with the layout unless you have good placement... I am using both 2 and 3 columns and the result still the same..