So a few weeks ago within ShopLocal.com, a key switch was made to the method that most users of the site browse the weekly ads. The traditional HTML powered weekly ad experience was replaced with a CircularCentral powered experience. Whenever a drastic change is made to a core feature of a web site, there is always some real risk associated with user adoption and usage.
Here is the new CircularCentral based weekly ad viewer that is front and center within ShopLocal.com
Well the votes are in. Users are making their voices heard loud in clear, in terms of page views per visit (which is really a measure of content consumption). On average over a 25 day period (1/1/2010 – 1/25/2010), the users of the new CircularCentral weekly ad experience showed a lift of 160% in the number of pages views per visit.
Wow. For a publisher site (such as ShopLocal.com) that means real money. Every time a publisher can increase the number of page views that users create, that in turns creates more display ad inventory. Even if the inventory becomes remnant and monetized via ad network backfill, this is extra money in the pocket of the publisher (be it at a lower CPM that direct sold inventory).
And from a user perspective, it’s a win as well. Essentially what this change in weekly ad viewers did was to tear down barriers so as to make viewing and interacting with the weekly ads easier, faster and an overall richer user experience. Those are qualities that users will always reward you for, typically in terms of using and engaging with your product more.
As a side note, the team did end up keeping around the traditional HTML weekly ad experience for a few reasons such as SEO benefits (the Google bot much prefers HTML based content over Flash content) and for those users that are either on slower internet connections or just have an established preference of browsing via this more traditional method. In either case, the traditional option is not the default method for viewing the weekly ad content and it is downplayed.
The results are so clear - uses interact and consume more content within the new CircularCentral view - at an increased rate of 160%
As a side note, the team did end up keeping around the traditional HTML weekly ad experience for a few reasons such as SEO benefits (the Google bot much prefers HTML based content over Flash content) and for those users that are either on slower internet connections or just have an established preference of browsing via this more traditional method. In either case, the traditional option is not the default method for viewing the weekly ad content and it is downplayed.
Constant improvement is a mantra here at ShopLocal. To that end, the team knew there was room for improvement in our popularity ranking algorithm that we call “Wisdom of the Crowds” (WoC).
The current system for determining product popularity only counted those products that a shopper specifically clicked on. There are a number of product level clicks that are counted in terms of a shopper expressing interest such as a product detail page, a buy online click or an add to a shopping list click (which are cumulatively called Expressions of Interest). Not any more. The ShopLocal team has begun collecting and counting another key piece of consumer interest data – product rollovers.
By factoring in both product rollover data AND expression of interest data, the overall Wisdom of the Crowds ranking data is all the richer and accurate. This process of collecting and using rollover data for SmartCircular sites is underway and will complete over the next month or so for all clients, SC sites and versions of SmartCircular.
At a macro level, what we have learned so far about rollover data is:
- Rollovers are on average about 5x as common as Expressions Of Interest. This means by adding them to the Wisdom of the Crowds calculation, the overall popularity ranking data should become much more accurate and more truly reflect actual consumer interest.
- Rollover usage varies significantly by retailer. No surprise given all the variation in UI/UX out there within weekly ad sites. Also some sites don’t even use rollovers. Or on other sites, the rollovers are down played. In any case, we are now tracking them all so as to extract the most useful and complete set of consumer interest data as possible.
Illustrated here is a specific product level rollover that has been triggered by a user rolling over a predefined hotspot region that is overlaid on top of the circular page view images. When talking about rollover tracking, what is actual being tracked is the number of times, for a specific product, a rollover is triggered and left open for at least 2 seconds. If it meets that criteria, it would be counted as one (1) rollover for the product.
Here is a quick snapshot of some early returns from a 6 day sample set of data across 20 retailers:
- # of total product level exposures: 1,006,078,269
- # of total product rollovers: 25,620,887
- # of total product specific indicators of interests expressed: 4,532,430
- Overall ratio of interest divided by rollovers: 18%
- Rollover trigger rate (of overall total product exposure) : 2.55%
- Interest trigger rate (of overall total product exposure): 0.45%
- Total CTR (rollovers + interest): 3.00%
UPDATE 1/21: The ShopLocal analyst team just today cranked out a nice little additional stat on this topic that is worth sharing. The correlation of interest/exposure ranks compared to the rollover/exposure ranks, on average overall is 0.6636 Meaning that rollovers are for most sites a good measure of interest. Maybe think of it this way. This correlation helps prove that the items a user rolls over are likely the very ones that they end up taking other subsequent action at a later point in their site visit.
So here is a very interesting data point, from one recent Pointroll campaign that had part of the ad impressions benefiting from Yahoo! BT data and the other part of the impressions did not include any BT data.
BT enabled Pointroll ads had a 41% overall higher interaction rate than non-BT enabled Pointroll ads.
Same creative. Same publisher. Same timeframe. Basically as many other variables were held constant between the two groups except the inclusion of BT data within the test group. Sure, its not airtight statistically sound case due to the single campaign data point, but its very indicative of other similar campaign results the team has seen when comparing BT enabled ad results with those that did not receive any additional insights from BT data.
The important point to take away is BT works. By using user level “hints” to better select what creative, copy and content elements should be inserted into the ad units, BT enabled ads are just more relevant and personalized to the user. Therefore its no surprise that these more personalized ads receive more interest as expressed in either interactions or clicks.
If we look at click-thru rates as another meaningful measure, BT enabled Pointroll ads had a 73.5% overall higher click-thru rate than non-BT enabled Pointroll ads.
A classic question that retailers often ask ShopLocal employees recently re-surfaced. “What’s the value to upgrading to ShopLocal’s latest and greatest circular platform (called SmartCircular 4.1)?”
The answer is simple. Across the board lifts on nearly every success metric such as on average page views went up 15% and 45% increase in the direct interaction of shoppers with the content.
For four (4) recent real retailers (their names have been removed to protect their identity, but are super big name retailers that everyone would recognize) that have choose to make this upgrade, here are the actual percentage % lifts that this site upgrade delivered:
Click the image to view the full size version of the table.
NOTE: User interest equates to detail views + adds to shopping lists + buy online clicks
For each retailer, here are the most noteworthy results that shown in the above table:
- Retailer A: Helping get their shoppers to go deeper with specific products and view an item detail page (+459%) and overall getting those same shoppers to be more engaged with the advertising content overall (+39%)
- Retailer B: Making the in-store printable shopping list a more useful and easy-to-use pre-shopping tool (+206%) and overall getting those same shoppers to be more engaged with the advertising content overall (+68%)
- Retailer C: Providing a better way for their shoppers to browse the weekly ad in circular page modes (+17%) and bringing to the center and increasing the usage of the most powerful ROBO shopper indicator of intent – the shopping list (+33%)
- Retailer D: Getting their users to stay and engage with more of the overall weekly ad site (+80%) and bringing to the center and increasing the usage of the most powerful ROBO shopper indicator of intent – the shopping list (+38%)
Here are three (3) easy and practical tips to use within the creative of your rich media display ad campaign, all of which are backed up by real live past campaign metrics.
1. Use human faces: People for whatever reason love to click on other people’s faces. So play to this behavior. Somehow weave at least one human face into your unexpanded ad (e.g., what Pointroll calls the banner).
2. Use buttons: It’s amazing how many fancy-pants designer types look down on the use of buttons. News flash. They work and attract clicks. So use them when appropriate instead of just assuming users know to click on just the images.
As is visual demonstrated within these actual real data heat maps of clicks, peoples faces and buttons are what generates most of the clicks. Products produce far less less.
3. Keep intro animations sequences short: The data across all of the different ad sizes clearly supports that the clicks start coming the moment the intro animation sequence ends. At 14-15 seconds, the number of clicks peak and slowly tappers off. The opportunity here is to shift these curves to the left, so as to minimize the lose rate of users that abandon and do not click.
There is a marked inflection point within each of these charts at 15 seconds - the average publisher max allowed time for an animation sequence to occur within. So if you want more clicks, shorten the intro flash animation sequences!
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