This blog post will explain to you what you need to do to ensure a 100% clickthrough rate from your website. The process is incredible easy and doesn't require you to expend a single penny. It also don't require you to engage in any mind bending experiences that might strain your intellect. In fact you don't really need to do anything at all!
I was inspired to write this post in response to a post by a "Jonathan Leger" titled: "How to get a 45% click-through rate for your ad." You are view that post here: 45% clickthrough rate.
To save you the effort, the essense is to put a big bold at the top of your page with a short textual review under it. In his test case the combined clickthrough rate of the banner and the textual ad was 45%.
It is presented as if this is some truly amazing event. Now, before I analyze his presentation, I'll give you my secret for a 100% clickthrough rate. Please don't stop reading this post after you've learned my secret. And, my secret is:
Don't do anything at all.
It's that simple. I suggest that every website online today has a 100% clickthrough rate. Even this one. Everyone that comes to this blog post will click on something. It may be the back button, it may be a link, it may be an ad, it may be the X in the corner of the brower to close it. But they will CLICK. 100% of the users.
Therefore you don't have to do anything at all to get a 100% click through rate! Amazing!
Now, I realize that Jonathan was talking about clickthroughs on a specific ad on his page. Now, the 45% figure seems truly amazing, but I think if we read between the lines a little bit we might suppose that instead of this being amazing in a positive manner, it may be amazing in a negative way, ie: that he may actually be losing 65% of his potential business.
There are two aspects of his presentation we need to examine:
- What's on his webpage other than the ad/review he describes at the top. For example, is this a website about webmaster topics that generates a 45% click through on an ad for a Porch Swing? It is a furniture page? It is a DIY page for building Porch Swings? It the page content itself interesting and useful and/or related?
- We also need to look at the type of traffic the page is attracting. Again is the ad on a relevant page? It is getting natural search traffic? It is getting traffic from related (or unrelated) links? From his blog post it would appear that it is getting traffic from highly targeted Ad Words advertisements. ie: the people arriving on his page have a keen interest in Porch Swings before they get to the page.
On point #1 we simply have no information so we will discard the importance of that. However, it would be of prime importance if one to actually be interested in the success of the page and the advertisement at the top.
I think point #2 gives us a clue as to why I confuse that this 45% clickthrough is truly amazing in a negative sense and Jonathan is losing 65% of his potential business.
Let's look at a website that starts with some kind of splash or flash introduction. The kind where you have to click "skip introduction" or some such nonsense to actually view the content of the website. One might say, wow! Our introduction is really successful... 75% of the people actually click through to our real home page!
Of course that means you offended 25% and they gave up being seeing what you actually had to offer. You get the concept? Every added click is a deterent to someone actually becoming a customer!
Now what Jonathan seems to have created is an ad words campaign that attracts people who are extremely interested in Porch Swings to some webpage. That webpage has an ad and a review for Porch Swings at the top and unknown content below. 45% of the people who click the adwords ad click on the Porch Swing ads, which takes them to the actual product page.
The bottom line is that by having the ad words click take a potential customer to this inbetween page, rather than directly to the product page, he is losing 65% of his traffic on the way. He is more than doubling his expense with adsense.
The 45% clickthrough rate is no more exciting than my 100% clickthrough rate. In his case, because 100% of the people were interested and his process turned away more than half of them! In my case, because most of those clicks may not benefit me.
