Looking for comments on travel photography website

I'm looking for comments on how I can improve ad placement/style for my travel photography web site, ianandwendy.com. I get about 1000 uniques a day, but not a very good click through rate (1%).

Most of my impressions are on the slideshow web pages themselves. I use a heavily modified slideshowpro flash component for my slideshow. Yes, it's flash-based, but I've done all kinds of wizardry to make sure that a non-flash version is available for the crawlers (with I think good success, as you can tell from my well-targeted ads).

(sorry for needing to cut and paste, no live links for me!)

So, please look at: http://www.ianandwendy.com/slideshowAOG/OtherTrips/India/Delhi
for one of my slideshow pages.

I just recently added the little earth cliparts and the rounded box around the leaderboard, since I read a forum post saying graphics help grab attention. Hasn't really done anything for me so far but my data set is limited (only been at this for 1 wk). I know my leaderboard is at the bottom whereas a lot of people say top is better, but the slideshow navigation bar is at the bottom and I thought it more important to be closer to the slideshow nav bar than the site menu at the top.

I also have "country" pages , for example, http://www.ianandwendy.com/OtherTrips/India/index.htm
but all of the country pages have different layouts, depending on the number of albums/etc. (some of the layouts are horrible/works-in-progress - but hey, one step at a time...).

There's also explicit links to "no flash" pages for all the slideshows, which users are seamlessly redirected to if they don't have flash. I haven't paid too much attention to those yet though.

Any and all comments appreciated!

 

Have you thought about going the CPM route, signing up with an ad network, and using your high traffic to make money instead? Sites that are image heavy are notoriously low money earners. Just ask anyone with a wallpaper site.

 

I like your menu system at the top and also the rounded box around the leader board - looks very nice!

Anyway I don't know. I would say blend your advert into your text but you don't actually have that much text to blend it into (except for news page).

One thing I will say though is what a lot of people here would say - keep the advert above the fold. In case you don't know what this means (although I think you do), adverts should be placed in the top 1/2 of the screen. It's apparently more effective.

IMO one reason for your low CTR is the fact that most of it is based on slide shows... The visitor sits there and looks at the photos until their satisfies and moves on to the next slide show. Very low interaction between the site and the visitor compared to other sites.

I think what you could do is for each slide show, you could right a background information section. The visitor can read the text to learn more about the slideshow they're watching. You could incorporate adverts into this text and hopefully it'll increase your CTR.

I think it'd help increase CTR because as they read the text they travel down the page, further away from your main nav bar. When they finish reading they'd be presented with other links that look interesting (i.e. Ads) and are more likely click on those.

Also take a quick read through the material Google provide on optimizing ad placement on this page.


Hope that helps....

 

D'oh - that option completely slipped my mind!!! But yeah, as jack says you should try out CPM ads as well! Just experiment and see what works best for your site.

Good luck!

 

Simply stick your 728x90 ad unit just below your top menu, and your CTR will increase a lot. You can put a 728x15 link unit (adlink) where is your actual 728x90 ad unit.

 

IMO

I think people just look at the photos, not interested to book the hotel in New Delhi.(from the ads) Not sure what is the keyword they found your website. Gallery or something?

How about you also have a content about the place you have been travelled and people that want to travel might found your website through search engine and read information and might interested to book the hotel? (then click)

Now all your photos are in flash,, search engine can't index your photos.

 

Thanks everyone for the comments.

Jack, can you recommend a good context or targetted CPM ad network? I would prefer not tha have ads for casinos polluting my web site.

Dark, I have some (but many many) travel journals on my web site. Maybe I'll make them more directly connected to the slideshows themselves.

Dark/Sens, the reason I put it below the fold is because that's where the slideshow nav bar is (to stop, start, look at the albums, etc.)

Tony, there is an html alternative to the flash slideshow which is what the crawlers crawl. The alternative has all the right metas, the captions as text, etc. so it's all very search engine friendly.

You guys been clickin?? Having a much better day today (3 times better and it's not even lunch time). Stop skewing my stats.

 

Once you've done that you should post back on here so we can check out your ad placement for you!

I still think placing it above the fold would be a far better option. Your visitors are going to be using your top nav bar a lot more than your slideshow nav bar (easily over x10 I would have thought) so it'll be far more visible and therefore effective.

Think about it this way. Not all visitors are going to be interested in viewing your slideshows. Instead they're going to use the top nav bar to check out a few pages, so you're wasting potential clicks by them by not placing your ad above the fold.

Lol - I haven't clicked on any ads but lucky you!

 

I didn't click,, almost!

 

I second that, make the 728x90 really stick to the top bar, really close, no space and you'll never look back I'm sure. Do it and tell us in 2 days.. If you're not happy you can go back.

 

The three main (re: dependable and that pays out when they say they will) are TribalFusion, Fastclick (now Valueclick Media), and Casale. Recently I've been using Axill to fill some unused inventory (they play a flat .30-cent CPM). No worries about the casino ads -- all the ad networks have options where you can opt out of certain type sof ads, casino, adult, etc. Go with TF and ValueClick if they take you, Casale and Axill if the other two won't. Apply for all of them. Save you time.

 

Ok, I've set it up as a fork for the old slideshow. So, 50% chance you get the old one, and 50% the new one, with the ad above the fold, hugging the menu bar - each with their own channels of course. We shall see, I'll report back.

And again - no cheating and skewing the results!! This is scientifical, you know!

 

I'm curious to see how much of an increase they'll be

 

So, it didn't actually help. On average, the CTR was lower with the banner on top. so I've moved it back to the bottom.

Thanks anyways for the suggestions, everyone.

 

Ah... that was unexpected... But no probs.

You should keep experimenting until you find the optimum location.

Good luck!