Sometimes Ugly Just Works
Posted on | December 20, 2009 | 7 Comments
So, I really like to park domains. Buy ‘em, park ‘em, and twiddle my fingers. Yes, that’s my domainer career. On occasion, I sit and put together fascinating ideas for development and then, being the ‘handy man’ I am, attempt to do all this all by my lil ‘ol self (no PHP knowledge, but I’m alright with HTML. Don’t professionally do CSS, but I can manage). Of course, the “vision” I had doesn’t exactly show through the site I’ve developed, but damnit… sometimes those sites make me some cash. And yes, I enjoy learning hands-on.
Moving on, there was this one site that I developed. A little family niche site that I occasionally threw up content on once every 2-3 weeks and didn’t exactly expect much from. Content here, content there… and if I had free time? Link build a bit… and move on to forgetting about the site. So, I go on vacation for 2 months and get back to my normal routine and check out how some of my sites are doing. This site? A whole 2090 uniques for August. Hrm. Interesting. Fresh reg’d in March and almost 2100 uniques in August… and I haven’t even touched it since May. Alright, so let me fix ‘er up a bit.
Two or three days of pure cropping, tweaking, optimizing etc. A bit more content, link building, and leave it alone. I got stats, and yes… I monitor growth. So, what happens?
2% CTR. two measly freakin’ percent.
2% is an atrocious CTR to me. Honestly, I have some domains that I expect 2%, but this is one that has been averaging almost 10% on for about 6 months. To drop from 10% to 2% after optimizing absolutely pissed me off. I literally sat and focused on just ONE site for almost THREE days (yes, that’s a long time!) fixing stuff up with all my know-how and the S.O.B drops in CTR? CPC was actually decent on this site–and it was one that I was proud to have fresh reg’d and bring in traffic.
Alright I thought. What happened? I left it alone for a week… and yeah, average 2% CTR. Traffic grew but CTR went down. Maybe it was the increase in traffic? Nah, this was search engine traffic… good ‘ol organic traffic that visited the site looking for something specific. Paired with Google AdSense showing targeted ads, I was bound to make some extra cash. And YES–I do admit that this specific site was purchased to hopefully make me some money. I enjoy the niche, and though it’s a small one, there was some alright search numbers for the 3 keywords and I knew I could have some decent original content up and indexed fairly well with a little bit of SEO.
Amazingly enough, maybe the new site was ‘too nice’. Yeah, flashy and nice logo and stuff… the traffic probably zipped in and out. So, I put up the old template again (WordPress site) and decided to move on with other stuff and check back later.
Fast forward a week: 8% CTR. More traffic, more cash. Cha-ching!
This was back in early November. I knew the holidays were coming up and people would be searching more family-oriented keywords. I didn’t really want to believe that the site was too nice and under optimized, so I decided to switch back to the same flashy custom-made template. And yes. Bad 1-2% CTR. Moved back? 7-10% CTR. It was actually something that fascinated me. I really dislike ugly websites and try my best to put up some nice stuff, but I do think about the CTR and CPC, so I optimize accordingly. What did I get out of all of this?
- 728×90 above the fold in its own div with nothing near it. Preferably under the header.
- It looks like pictured logos HURT click-through-rates for that 728×90 a lot. Stick with text if you’re looking for cash.
- Wrapping ads around the content isn’t always the greatest. I’ve always done this for most of my development when it comes to “mini sites” (which my mini sites are pretty damn complex) and am starting to just put them at the top of my sidebars.
- AdSense link units work amazing under the post title. Horizontal. Make sure width is large enough to squeeze all 4 (or 5) links in nicely. Line up the title and “Ads by Google”.
- Take advantage of the Google XML sitemap plugin as well as the all-in-one SEO plugin for WordPress. Honestly, these are two MUST HAVES for any WordPress site.
- Simple, simple, simple. Don’t get too crazy with development when you’re looking to increase CTR. I was using a 2 sidebar template for my “fancy” site and went back to the ugly 1 sidebar which allowed me to stick ads at the top and not make it look spammy.
- Always remember to try and develop for the traffic. I had a bunch of people coming from e-mail links. I’m assuming the content was decent enough that people were sending links out to their friends. So, even though you’re trying to make some money, if you do offer traffic what they are looking for, they can spread word of your site and get it out to other people.
Here’s a pictured layout of what my “ugly” template looked like. Mind you, there was very limited color and design work.
Check back for more new posts coming up! When I settle a couple things going on, hopefully more analysis and first-hand experiences posts in the future. More time for blogging, which I’m extremely excited to get back into.
And for those that don’t have the know-how, I just made a post about Amazon dropping the price on some website development software. Might be worth checking out. I will hopefully be putting up some how-to posts in the future (crossing fingers for before January).
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7 Responses to “Sometimes Ugly Just Works”
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December 20th, 2009 @ 12:20 pm
I have always found the uglier the page the higher the click through.
People hit the page and are looking for a good out.
What better than targeted ads?
BK
December 20th, 2009 @ 12:51 pm
“People hit the page and are looking for a good out.”
I’ve heard this before many, many times. I do have my limits, however, on how ugly a page can be. LOL.
I think there shouldn’t be anything wrong with intentionally creating ugly sites assuming you don’t try to trick users into clicking the ads
. I call it a little more “extreme optimization”.
December 20th, 2009 @ 6:03 pm
The parking co’s know just how strict the ad feeds are about how landing pages look and are practically forced to keep them ugly for this reason.
December 20th, 2009 @ 6:36 pm
Very interesting comment, Tommy. I’ve actually thought of this before, but there are many “beautiful” templates at some parking providers that at least look semi-Web 2.0ish.
Then you have Sedo’s hideous templates
.
I think Bodis, as of right now (still waiting for their new templates to be released–VERY anxious) has by far the best converting templates. I’m not exactly taking advantage of Bodis since my domains seem to work much better with 1-click landers, but I’m keeping a close eye on what happens with them due to their simple templates. Exactly what I want visually, except 1-click!
December 21st, 2009 @ 7:51 am
i tried a few scenario but a simple yet informative is the best way…
January 1st, 2010 @ 1:33 am
Nice article, interesting to see the CTR go back and forth with each change. I guess ugly does work, it has worked for Google and they are #1.
Best of luck.
June 19th, 2010 @ 11:12 pm
This was back in early November. I knew the holidays were coming up and people would be searching more family-oriented keywords.