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Web design for increasing clickthrough rate

If you are a commercial website, you expect that your visitors will take an action that will create income for you. For a content-rich website like ours designed to push ecommerce for our advertisers, a desirable action by our visitors for us is a click on an ad. Once the visitor reaches the ecommerce website, the desired action can be a purchase or something similar.



How can good web design increase clickthrough rate (CTR)?



  1. Avoid clutter at all cost. Most human beings don't like clutter in their lives and so is true on a web page as well.
  2. No (our pick is this one) or minimal animation. It it a distraction and an irritant.
  3. Make navigation easy.
  4. Place your ads so that they are neither intrusive nor hidden. (Take a look at this page http://www.mynippon.com/beauty/belly-dancing.htm)
  5. Place your ad in a place in the article where the reader is likely to say, "Gee, I need more information on this" or "I gotta buy this stuff." (Take a look at this page http://www.mynippon.com/beauty/lose-weight-have-fun.htm)
  6. You can use an image to draw attention towards the area where the ads are. (Take a look at this page http://www.mynippon.com/RomanceNews0120/story9.htm)
  7. Use bullets, have small paragraphs, and get to your point fast. Most readers do not have enough time to read a long introduction.
  8. Limit the number of links in the article. If your goal is to have them click on an ad, then you must provide only one link at the end to a relevant article. So if the reader does not click on an ad, s/he will click on another article and stay on your website rather than hit the "back" button.

You might also want to take a look at another very clean design that we use on iProceed.com targeted at the busy business reader.