When attempting to monetize a website–whether through display advertising, affiliate marketing, product sales, or some combination thereof–one of the most important things you’ll do is decide what goes where. While the type and quality of content that you have will go a long ways toward determining the volume and caliber of your audience, the manner in which you arrange those pieces will have a major impact on how much money you make from that traffic.
Most Web entrepreneurs don’t give much (if any) thought to the impact their layout decisions have on revenue. But it’s an incredibly important aspect of monetization. When it comes to websites at least, there are lots of different ways to put together the puzzle. (Sign up for our free newsletter for more tips on all aspects of Web monetization.)
Volumes have been written on site layout, banner blindness, and optimal positioning. It’s easy to get very advanced very quickly on this topic, but we’ll start out here by exploring some of the more elementary elements. And to do so, we’ll rely on a visual representation that’s an oldie but goody:
If you’re already familiar with this image–and everything it represents–you might be a bit too advanced for this post. But if it’s new to you, here’s the basic overview.
This is what’s known as the AdSense Heatmap (or some variation on that name). It represents a hypothetical website, segmented into various sections. The colors associated with each section indicate visibility to visitors and the concentration of clicks. Because AdSense works primarily as a pay-per-click ad network, clicks generally translate into revenue for the publisher. The darker areas represent sections where the human eye is drawn; content in these sections will generally be seen most frequently, and generate the most clicks.
This is obviously a generic representation; not every website will fall into this segmentation (actually, most won’t) and there are different things that can be done to ensure that certain segments attract visitors’ eyes (visual cues, etc.). So think of this as a rule of thumb–a starting point in your quest to conquer banner blindness.
The implications of the heatmap above are probably enough, but here are a few key takeaways:
Left Is Right
This sentence explains why the left side of the page gets so much more attention than the corresponding placements on the right. You read it left to right, which is how our brains are conditioned to consume content thanks to the nature of the English language. Our gaze starts left and gradually shifts right, but our focus wanes as we move across.
Our second horizontal pass at the content has an even shorter attention span, and before long we don’t even bother to take in what’s on the right side of the page. This is what’s known as the “F pattern” for the shape it forms if we map where time is spent:
So here’s the key takeaway: the left side of your site will get much more attention than the right. Accept this as fact, and use it to make our human nature work for you by positioning key sections and calls-to-action where they will be most visible.
Height Disadvantage
It’s a common thought process to want to put your best and most important calls-to-action (whether an AdSense ad or something else) at the very top of the page. That’s the very first thing people will load, meaning that it will achieve high visibility and a high click rate…right?
In reality, the top of the page (where many sites using display advertising feature a 728 x 90 leaderboard) is often overlooked. This is a great example of banner blindness; our Internet-frequenting brains have been conditioned to expect an ad at the very top of the page and the content we’re looking for down below. So we don’t dwell long at the top of the page, and instead scroll down almost immediately to get to the good stuff.
Take note next time you load a new website; you’ll find yourself scrolling almost as soon as you hit “enter.” Before you’ve been on the site for even a second, the leaderboard may already be out of view, as you’ve moved on to the meatier part of the page and started to digest the real content.
Hot Spots
A lot of website owners assume that content and ads should be like church and state–always separate. But a look at the basic viewing patterns may indicate otherwise; notice the attention paid to the meaty middle part of the page, where the desired content is usually found. Not surprisingly, more sites are starting to feature ads smack dab in the middle of their content, ensuring that it will get increased visibility and clickability.
Here’s an example from the ReelSEO.com:
Ads positioned within “hot spots” that traditionally include only content can perform very well because they are more likely to be viewed (and therefore more likely to be clicked) than ads that live in sections of the site where the eye rarely travels.
Make Orange = Green
We’ve been lightly implying above that the high visibility areas of your site (i.e., the orange segments on the heatmap) should be home to advertisements and link units. That’s a good idea for some publishers. And it’s a very bad one for others. With this limited amount of “prime real estate” there are probably a lot of goals you want to accomplish: generating ad revenue, getting social shares, converting newsletter subscribers, etc.
The high visibility areas of your site represent the best opportunity to highlight your primary goal. For some, that will be making money from AdSense. For others, it will be gaining a Twitter follower or newsletter sub, or perhaps featuring an affiliate marketing or e-commerce link.
Bottom Line
If you have created great content and built up a loyal and recurring audience, you’re well on your way to operating a profitable website. Along the way you may have overlooked the “physical” set-up of your site; as you turn your focus towards monetization of existing traffic, the boring details of site layout can become extremely important.
Check out our other articles on banner blindness and site layout, and be sure to sign up for the free MonetizePros newsletter to get regular updates.
About the Author: Michael Johnston