Google published a case study on their AdSense blog showing how a web site named MakeupAlley.com was able to increase their clicks on affiliate links by over 20% and realize a 50% lift in AdSense revenue.
The results were:
- 171% increase in on-site interactions
- 21% more clicks on affiliate link
- 50% lift in AdSense revenue
- Deeper understanding of using Analytics to assess user experience
Looking at the before and after design and layout with Web Archive doesn't show much of a difference. martinibuster at WebmasterWorld highlights the main changes:
A side by side review shows that the new MUA site only has two navigation choices in the nav bar, compared with eight choices last year. Site visitors are now funneled to the Product Reviews section (an obvious money page section) and the forums. Fonts and layout look identical.Gone is the link to the Links section and the link to Favorites is also removed. Somewhat redundant so no surprise. Also gone are links to MY MUA, Swap, Mail, and Diary. What they did to the navbar was create a tighter focus on driving site visitors to the money pages and to their community (content creation & site stickiness).
Clicking through to the Product Reviews section and doing a side by side review reveals a web page layout that is essentially the same. The site is supposed to be highly successful.
You can see that he is questioning how a site like that can really see such positive results? Maybe something else is going on?
He asks, "What do you think? Big change? Meh? Any lessons here?"
The thread is pretty large, so chew it up and maybe we will learn something?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
This story was scheduled to be posted today and was not written today.
