I’ve found that experimenting with my blog’s design can have some troubling consequences. Since I’ve changed the design, my Adsense earnings totally dropped. This wasn’t really surprising. I’ve been hit by design tests before.
80% Down On Adsense Income
With the recent test I have had, however, Adsense really went down. It went down by almost 80%. What could I conclude with that? Perhaps the visitors found what they needed so much so they didn’t really need to click on the Ads anymore. Is this blog really getting much more usable than before? Are my web visitor’s getting a much better user experience?
I must admit, my previous designs were laid out to generate the most Adsense income. Now, it’s more for user experience testing.
Web Site Visitors Staying?
Well the best place to look at for whether your user’s are enjoying their time on my site. I resorted to good old Google Analytics to tell me how I’ve been doing.
I compared the January and February 2008 numbers. People were staying much longer, reading much more but the overall traffic went down. I have a suspicion it was caused by the change in the overall linking within my site. I think the site reorganization and re-linking was not really as search engine optimized as before.
So, now, I have less people coming in the site but they are staying much longer.
What about bounce rates?
I talked about bounce rates in my previous post. I’ve seen that compared to the previous month, this web site’s average page views per visit increased by almost 7%. The bounce rates went down by 1.61%.
That’s a good thing. 
Lower bounce rates are better.
According to my new favorite web analytics guru:
My own personal observation is that it is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying. I stress that this is my personal analysis based on my experience, but hopefully it gives you a feel for what you are shooting for.
I still have, unfortunately, average bounce rates of 80%. Ack!
So what’s the price?
I consider these growing, painful pains. I’m learning about UX and usability but my AdSense income goes down. I might have to resort to alternative sources of revenue like this TOPSPOTS tip jar I’m testing.
Oh well, life goes on.
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:02 am
Jozzua: It is not unusual for a blog to have a higher bounce rate, becuase most people who will come will be regular readers who know you and they will just read your latest post and leave. Bounce. But that is ok becuase you just want them to read your latest missive. : )
80% is a bit high, could be a bit lower but don’t worry if it is not too low.
If you have compelling content then look at the repeat visitor rate (do people come back again and again - increasing chances to click on ads) or look at percent of New Visitors (again here if new people come then they will read more articles and perhaps click on adsense).
Some quick suggestions, hope this helps a bit.
-Avinash.
March 2nd, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Wow. Avinash, you commented. What an honor. I’m starstruck. LOL.
Thanks for the comment. I’ll take heed.