Nobody Reads Your Blog Posts and They Don’t Click Your Ads Either
Visitors do not read your entries. They scan them. Visitors don’t look at ads. They are banner blind. They don’t even look at any real content that looks like an ad, even if it’s inside the main content element. These are all proven facts. Yet many bloggers and webmasters disregard these facts completely. So – here’s what you need to do in order to get your message through, and make those ads perform.
The first two paragraphs need to contain the most important information. Start every paragraph with one or two information carrying words. Users focus on the first two words and if those don’t entice them, they are less likely to even read the third word. Use bolding to highlight important information in your text. Visitors are more likely to scan the bold text.
Visitors generally ignore everything that looks like an ad. Even if you present some of your real, and important, content in any fancy formatting, visitors are likely to ignore it because it looks like a promotion. Visitors’ eyes focus on text; they scan the page first in a horizontal movement, then move down a bit, and do another horizontal movement. Finally, they scan the left side in a vertical movement.
The cure? Make ads look like content. It’s borderline unethical, but it just plain works. Outside of that – use the 3 design elements that are the most effective eye catchers:
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So- what were the three eye-catching elements?
- Cleavage
- Faces
- Plain text
The source I used for this blog post is website usability guru Jakob Nielsen’s report on eye tracking usability studies. You will do yourself a favor if you read Nielsen’s stuff. It’s amazing how many webmasters ignore basic usability rules.
Posted: April 18th, 2009 under Selling domains, web development.
Tags: ad performance, banner blindness, eye tracking, usability
Comments
Comment from Chef Patrick
Time April 18, 2009 at 10:07 pm
So why did you bother writing this article if no one reads them? I read every word.
I really would disagree with you about people reading articles.
The standard advertising banners yes, you are right. It is important to spice it up and not necessary mask them but give a reader a reason to be near one.
Comment from Chris
Time April 18, 2009 at 11:09 pm
I totally agree, consumers have become immune to traditional advertising methods, it’s time to cut through the clutter!
Comment from Esa
Time April 19, 2009 at 10:26 am
@Chef Patrick:
Actually, I was going to mention you with the babe videos as a prime example of effective promotion, but I plain forgot. Sorry!
Re: Reading. This is from the eye tracking study:
“Scanning is more common than reading, but users will sometimes dig into an article if they really care about it. ”
Apparently, you really cared about this 
Comment from MediaBlog.com
Time April 19, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I’m sorry, but those cleavages look plastic. Pure is in, plastic is out.
Comment from Andrew
Time April 19, 2009 at 1:55 pm
If you have relevant, highly targeted banner ads, people will click.
Comment from Fresh Avails
Time April 20, 2009 at 8:27 pm
The facts don’t lie and the sex and beauty sell. One thing that even experienced designers refuse to accept even though it is a proven fact is that White/Light Text on a Black/Dark Background is not as easy to read/remember Dark Text on Light background.
Also there is something in web design called the “Golden Triangle” It refers to the upper left corner of a website as the highest/most important part of your site so make it so!!!
Comment from Mark Fulton
Time April 18, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Hehe. Sad but true!
It would be interesting to see some eye-tracking results on AdSense display. Some people try to make them stand out and others blend colors with site design. Positioning and content of course come into play.