My site gets 2-4000 visits a day. Please help me grow it

[blackwater]

I am an admin for a psychology website which identifies individuals of each of the 16 types of the Myers-Briggs Typology Indicator. Of course, we also have Steve Pavlina up - please forgive the arrogance in pegging him for a different type than he himself identifies as.

ENTP - PhilosopherTypes

The site garners 2000 to 4000 unique visits a day and between 0 and 10 banner ad clicks a day. Much of our traffic comes from StumbleUpon.com. 28% of our visitors close the site almost immediately, whereas the rest spend an average of 8 minutes browsing the site.

I am looking for your advice on how to improve traffic and click rates, both directly (e.g. tips for traffic boosting and placement of ads) and indirectly (i.e. if there are design improvements we could make that would increase traffic). Regarding design, a restriction is that no one on the admin team has knowledge of web design beyond basic html, so the site is maintained in FrontPage.

[Justin Mazza]

I have difficulty looking at websites that have black or dark backgrounds. It hurts my eyes to look at it. Is it possible for you to change the background color to something closer to white?

[Fred Tracy]

Solid info, but like Justin mentioned, the layout is a little janky. If you made it prettier I'm sure people would stay far longer.

[malala]

Great idea for a site.

I would make the navigation more front and center. It takes a moment to figure out where you are when the site first opens up. So, if it were obvious to, say, "choose a type" before seeing any information, it might be more inviting?

[Curtis2011]

Originally Posted by blackwater

I am an admin for a psychology website which identifies individuals of each of the 16 types of the Myers-Briggs Typology Indicator. Of course, we also have Steve Pavlina up - please forgive the arrogance in pegging him for a different type than he himself identifies as.

ENTP - PhilosopherTypes

The site garners 2000 to 4000 unique visits a day and between 0 and 10 banner ad clicks a day. Much of our traffic comes from StumbleUpon.com. 28% of our visitors close the site almost immediately, whereas the rest spend an average of 8 minutes browsing the site.

I am looking for your advice on how to improve traffic and click rates, both directly (e.g. tips for traffic boosting and placement of ads) and indirectly (i.e. if there are design improvements we could make that would increase traffic). Regarding design, a restriction is that no one on the admin team has knowledge of web design beyond basic html, so the site is maintained in FrontPage.

Honestly you need to make a whole new template from scratch.

It can be just as simple as the current one you use, but it needs to be more user-friendly and also Adsense-friendly if you expected to profit from it.

I decided to have a little fun and make a mock up for you:



Based on my experience, I think a template like this would perform much better than your current one, in both Adsense Revenue as well as achieving a lower bounce rate. Although bounce rates are always a tricky thing to deal with!

Also, I am no expert in design or colors. This mock up is just an example of good functionality that is easy to use. I wouldn't necessarily call it a beautiful "design" but I think it would serve your needs. You might want to consult with someone else on getting a better color scheme.

As someone else mentioned, a dark background is often an annoyance to many viewers. A white background or some other light color is usually a much better choice and will probably help reduce your bounce rate.

[Dave80]

I agree, if the website design looked better I'm sure that would improve its performance too.

[ChrisGinsburg]

My first impression within a few seconds of landing there is seeing a bunch of old guys. If I didn't know why I was going to your site in the first place I would click off of it too. I think you need to make the objective and helpfulness of the site immediately obvious. I would agree that a whole new layout is in desperate need for the site.

[blackwater]

Oooh, this is very good info. Thank you to all of you - I will discuss it with my coadmin and come back

[blackwater]

Thank you for all the quality responses. We're working to accomodate the advice. Here is a prelimiary index page that tries to do as you recommended:

Philosopher Types - Famous People's MBTI Types

[Curtis2011]

Originally Posted by blackwater

Thank you for all the quality responses. We're working to accomodate the advice. Here is a prelimiary index page that tries to do as you recommended:

Philosopher Types - Famous People's MBTI Types

You might want to only have one personality type per content page on the website. Having them all on one page makes it take a really long time to load all the pictures.

[blackwater]

Originally Posted by Curtis2011

You might want to only have one personality type per content page on the website. Having them all on one page makes it take a really long time to load all the pictures.

that was out thinking too. we also thought the multiple pages were better for ADsense and such. But we did it and our traffic actually dropped.

[blackwater]

Hi there. Again, thank you for all the quality advice! It is really appreciated.

We uploaded a new index file today at: Philosopher Types - Famous People's MBTI Types

The file is not perfect, but a HUGE step in the direction you all recommended. Looking forward to see if this has any effect on traffic.

[accelertor]

Hi Blackwater.
IMHO a sustainable search engine friendly based growth depends on the site concept key words and the key words you are able to link these with.
My own market segment is fairly small (skydiving) in the big scheme of things so the opportunity to link to other key words is something I take whenever it presents. I also actively look for areas of convergence to link keywords in a page (never more than 5 in a page).
Hope this helps.

[blackwater]

are you talking about the classic HTML keywords defined in the head section?

[blackwater]

Well now. We re-designed the site the way you all recommended us.

And then we waited.

Our traffic is up, with about 7.000 unique visits yesterday, and $8 from AdSense in one day. And we don't even know what we are doing. We are mostly tech-noobs.

Thanks so much, everyone!

[Justin Mazza]

It looks awesome, I really enjoyed my time on there. Good tweak job.

[Smitten]

I do think it looks pretty good, now. However, the main content is too wide for comfort. I'd make the left sidebar about 30% of the width and bring the main column down to 70% or so, for increased readability.

[blackwater]

thanks for this
i am thining of doing a flash animation that allows users to 'chagne page' like in an E-newspaper

[MissyMiss]

Originally Posted by Smitten

I do think it looks pretty good, now. However, the main content is too wide for comfort. I'd make the left sidebar about 30% of the width and bring the main column down to 70% or so, for increased readability.

I agree. Other than that minor issue, it was great. Very interesting. I'm an INFP.

[Economica]

I'm blackwater's coadmin of CelebrityTypes.com. Thanks for the feedback and the kind words about our site!

Originally Posted by Smitten

I do think it looks pretty good, now. However, the main content is too wide for comfort. I'd make the left sidebar about 30% of the width and bring the main column down to 70% or so, for increased readability.

Originally Posted by MissyMiss

I agree.

I handle our CSS and I'm wondering how to go about fixing the width issue. The thing is that on small screens, a width of 70% for the main content simply won't fit our content. I can't figure out how to accommodate both types of screens, at least not with the layout we have now, where the number of cells in each table row is fixed at four.

If there are any design buffs out there who have a solution, I would be very grateful to hear it!

[Sandstone]

Awesome site! I really enjoyed taking the quiz and looking around. Like a good Pavlina visitor I did click on some ads too.

[Economica]

Originally Posted by Sandstone

Awesome site! I really enjoyed taking the quiz and looking around. Like a good Pavlina visitor I did click on some ads too.

Thanks for the encouragement (and the clicking)!

We have the content apparently. Now, how to monetize the site...?