User Experience or Revenue

Posted on | May 13, 2010 | No Comments

Weighing the User Experience of your visitors and the revenue needs of the website is balancing act internet marketers address on a daily basis. One could say the best user experience web page is devoid of marketing and advertising providing your users with the information they are exactly looking for. Unfortunately without revenue its difficult to maintain and justify the cost of the maintenance and creation of the web page providing the information. The best revenue web page would be filled with advertising in the form of banners, sponsored links, and even pop-up/unders . Unfortunately, most people are not looking for the services advertise and bounce fairly quickly.

There is a general consensus that optimizing for user experience or revenue requires a marketing or product manager to favor one or the other. Over the page 10 years I’ve played with this balancing act, analyzed results, discovered the issues involved with both marketing scenarios and found a solution to the paradox.

The User Experience Page
User Experience is key for a functional website. It encompasses all aspects of the page from the content, to the links, to the imagery. A positive user experience could be defined as providing value and ease of use for any an every user that enters your site. The majority of your users are probably coming in from search engines, where they have already searched for what they are looking for when they reach your page; you objective is to ensure they find it. A clean user interface, easy to ready content, and visuals which add to their experience are all good things. Advertising in the form of pop-up ads, banner ads, and obnoxious video ads all detract from a positive experience. In an ideal page, built for the end user, advertising would probably not be found on the page as it serve your financial interest over their personal experience.

The Revenue Page
I think we have all seen these pages across the internet. The provide sponsored links disguised as additional content or articles. They are filled with display advertising intended to distract the user from the main content and generate a click or conversion. These pages support the financial needs of the website and webmaster. Unfortunately these pages are usually so over run with advertising users rarely return to the site and if they do it was probably by accident.

The Optimal UX-Revenue Page
The first piece is knowing what drove the user to the page in the first place. This is where you match user experience with revenue generation. If you rank for widgets in Google, Yahoo, or Bing, your advertising better not be selling sprockets on that page. If you don’t own a widget company, partner with one through an affiliate program. Write the content on the page to give specialized information regarding your topic, speaking to the benefits of your company or partners. There is a reason why every book in Oprah’s book club is an instant New York Times Top Seller. Her viewers trust her opinion on the matter, just like your users will trust your opinion on the widgets your selling.

The actual advertising on this page should be well thoughout. Avoid the traditional banner or giant image link ads. These generally have low low click through rates, as most users can identify and ignore them. I recommend advertising that engages a user. Forms are a great way of doing this. If you sell a widget for a bicycle, have a few drop down boxes where a user can select the make and perhaps the specific widget they are looking for. Another way is to display images of the product, detailing the specifics. The links should then send the user to your partners’ page for that specific product, or better yet a shopping cart page with that product already added. In this scenario you are giving the user exactly what they are looking for. These types of ads from my experience have 4-5x the click through and conversion rate of the traditional banner media. I like to only have the one ad on the page as its the primary focus, but if your topic spans another related product, go ahead and add a advertisement for that. Better yet, create a separate page for that specific topic and capitalize and build SEO for both.

Its often tough balancing both User Experience and Revenue. Its easy to throw a bunch of bad ads on a page for a short revenue boost, but the quality and credibility of the page will crumble. A well throughout marketing and user experience plan will benefit both the users and you as the website owner.