*Jozzua

Lessons Learned From Wordpress and Adsense Design Testing

May 3rd, 2007

by Jozzua

If you’ve subscribed to my blog, you would know that I have been conducting WordPress theme design tests. My goal was to find out which themes would generate better Adsense ClickThrough Rates (CTR). High Adsense CTR significantly contributes to Advertising income. Let me give you a summary of what has happened so far:

I started out with a Water Wordpress Theme. This was my theme throughout last year up to January of this year. The theme was getting me a nice Adsense CTR and around $2-$5 daily. (Please note: I can’t share the exact CTR because Google’s Terms of Use indicates I shoudn’t do that).
Then I tested an original theme with with background and 3-columns, fluid width format. Once I implemented this, the Adsense numbers both in terms of CTR and income went down. I initially thought that this might just be a fluke. After three weeks though, I found that the numbers were still very low.
I then changed the colors of the theme to see if the low CTR and Adsense income was due to the color of the site. I used a theme with Maroon colors on the background and on the link text. It was still a three-column, fluid-width design. In two weeks of testing, the numbers were still comparatively low.
Last week, I introduced the theme that was getting my a very high CTR rate on my other website. The CTR rate went back up.

Lessons so far:

It seems that, in terms of Adsense CTR statistics, a website with two-columns fares much better than that with three columns.
Images beside Adsense Ads still work (even thought this is not allowed). The workaround it to use images from Adsense Image Ads.
Changing the color of the Ad link from blue to maroon doesn’t seem to affect Ad performance.

I plan to test another three-column design with Adsense Ads that blend with the rest of the website to see if that will work. I’ll set it up as soon as I finish the new theme. I might just even play around with the Google Optimizer to have really accurate web site performance data.

9 Responses to “Lessons Learned From Wordpress and Adsense Design Testing”

SELaplana Says:
May 5th, 2007 at 12:53 pm

i advise you to choose a theme that will become one of the distinguishing mark of you (as your trademark) and then focus on adsense placement testing to find what placement gets higher CTR

dolphinstate Says:
May 6th, 2007 at 5:25 am

Wondering what you mean by:

Images beside Adsense Ads still work (even thought this is not allowed). The workaround it to use images from Adsense Image Ads.

jozzua Says:
May 7th, 2007 at 9:14 am

Dolphin, according to Google, you may not post an image beside an Adsense Ad. Traditionally, it was one of the most effective ways for the Ad to be noticed and clicked on. Now that it is no longer allowed. What you can do is to use Google Image Ads beside Google Text Ads. In that way, you can still have an image beside the text - both Ads. This generally gets viewer attention.

Sustines, I’ll get to that point. One of the key lessons I learned in marketing is to ALWAYS TEST. Thus, I test the designs I make regularly as well.

SELaplana Says:
May 7th, 2007 at 10:22 am

if you don’t mind, i will review your blog (negative and positive) so that other visitors of my blog will learn something form it.

anyway, it’s another exposure for your blog….

dolphinstate Says:
May 12th, 2007 at 11:56 pm

Basing on my understanding on an article on Adsense help center, non-Google ads may be placed in the same web page only if it will NOT confused site visitors with the same formats and colors as Google ads

Why You Hate “Make Money” Blogs and Websites : *Jozzua Says:
January 28th, 2008 at 4:44 pm

[...] I said, I have been guilty of this myself. My Adsense design testing was done with the goal of making more money. I had failed to consider how this affects the overall [...]