Marketing Defined

A recent Poynter Institute’ Eyetrack III study covered by Andy Wibbels of Easy Bake Weblogs, confirmed my hunch that smaller type fonts encourage greater Reader participation .. also adding weight to a recent repositioning test of Adsense ads on this blog.

[Important: Do read this edited Post ... positive results with Adsense positioning included!]

Most Blog scripts seem to use rather disturbing “in your face” HUGE fonts, and this feature began to annoy more and more while analysing Marketing trends on some leading Blogs. [And it's not my imagination that text always appears larger in old Aunty IE, than my fav Firefox browser]

.. Constant scrolling to get through the enforced large paragraphs became tiresome.

About 2 weeks ago, I down-sized this Blog’s body font .. also repositioning the Adsense ads so they were no longer “dwarfed” by the standard “gi-normous” Blogger font … the results have been exciting!

While traffic is growing daily to this Blog, and may partly be attributed to the smaller, legible type-face…

More Importantly! stickiness has improved with subscribers on average reading 3 pages per visit.

The increase in Adsense CTR’s I can certainly confirm. .. can it be I am finally on my way to “Adsense” riches… hmmh! another 1,000 web pages might just cut it.

Analysis of Positive Adsense moves:

• Changing to a smaller Adsense block say the half banner right on top of each post page even before the title… or alternatively, using the larger 336 x 380 rectangle Adsense block on the top left hand side of the Post itself gave good results… its just a case of analysing the CTRs when applying a change and deciding what works best for you. Preferably, there should be no borders around the Adsense blocks so as to imply that the Ads are an integral part of your design, thus encouraging a higher Click Through Rate.
• Apply a  color to the Adsense URL’s that matches the other url’s on your blog. Here again it is a question of analysing what works best for you.
• Change the actual text of the Adsense ad block to a very light grey - the hex colour 999999 is recommended.. and again test if this works for you. It certainly does for me.
• Remove all the surrounding Big text which dwarf the Ad blocks

My Adsense CTR’s have increased by over 100% - but as you well know… Adsense ads on one new Blog will not make you wealthy by any means… so keep updating daily with great content.

..those who profess to receive monthly five figure cheques from Google, have hundreds of web pages containing theme related and optimized content…  from which they derive this lucrative income.

Back to the Eyetools study which revealed:

• Smaller type fonts encourage focused viewing behavior [that is actually reading the words of the post], while larger type promotes lighter scanning..so all your Posts will be in vain if users just scan your page. My Oz compatriot, Darren Rowse of Problogger recently suggested that on average a reader spends between 2 seconds - 2 minutes skimming over a Blog!
• Visual breaks - like a line or rule - discouraged people from looking at items beyond the break, like a blurb.
• When people look at blurbs under headlines on news homepages, they often only look at the left one-third of the blurb.
• Shorter paragraphs performed better in Eyetrack III research than longer ones.  Our data revealed that stories with short paragraphs received twice as many overall eye fixations as those with longer paragraphs [recommendation: use a WP plug in that breaks long articles into 2 pages - with an image ad of around 250x250 directly under all pages of the article.]
• Eyetool test subjects typically looked at text elements before their eyes landed on an accompanying photo, just like on homepages. As noted earlier, the reverse behavior [photos first] occurred in previous print eyetracking studies.

The Eyetools report concluded by stating:

It is not an exhaustive exploration that we can extrapolate to the larger population.

Rather it is a mix of findings based on controlled variables, and observations where testing was not as tightly controlled. The researchers went wide… not deep

“Deep” enough for me … this is encouraging news on the subject of Eyetools, smaller fonts and optimum positioning of Google Adsense ads.

Read More at the Poynter Institute: Eyetools III Research