Hi there. Still tweaking on my extreme sports videos site. A majority of the visitors come from Stumbleupon (about 75%). Stumblers tend to give less pages/visit than the rest, but I guess the Stumble button is more attractive for many than following links. I guess that´s one reason why pages per visit is only at 1,4 at the moment. Another reason might be the most common user pattern is going directly to videos (not via front page). Or doesn´t related/new videos look interesting?

 

Anyway; Do you see any obvious design tweaks/suggestions to get the pages per visit pointing upwards?

 

Here´s the link - Thanks in advance for any answer!

 

Attached is some screens of GA showing the last month.

 

PS: If user screen resolution is below 1000 pixels at page load, the design is tweaked a bit (to fit mobile/tablet).

 

 

Edited July 14, 201115 yr by adrenalinfeed

You seem to have all of the major content on the site at the main page, perhaps divide the videos into different categories which can be accessed on the navigation bar. This should encourage viewers to explore the different areas of the site.

Thanks! That´s a really great tip. Have actually been thinking about adding categories as a drop-down for a while. But, since the site is only about half a year old, there´s not too much content in it yet (about 220 posts so far). Therefor, it has not been implemented yet, as it would be more visible that the site isn´t too established yet. But I agree, it might definetly give a better user experience. Will try to design the categories selection soon!

I visited your site and if there was a "most viewed" or "better rated" kind of button I would have definitely clicked it. Maybe that's a good idea

I visited your site and if there was a "most viewed" or "better rated" kind of button I would have definitely clicked it. Maybe that's a good idea

 

A feature like this is allready in the todo list. Will definetly prioritize to get this one done soon. Thanks for your reply!

 

By the way; Do you think "Most viewed", "Most liked" or "Most popular" is the most attractive? I´m going to get the data for all anyway, but not sure weather it´s any point on having all of them visible. Most viewed, I will get from the Google Analytics API. Most liked, I will get from Facebook. Most popular (or perhaps a better sentence) will probhably be a combination of the first two. If I get the number of fb likes as a percentage of number of views, it will probhably give a good indication.

I'd go with 'Most popular'

Most viewed doesn't really tell me anything other than a lot of people have viewed it . It doesn't tell me if they actually enjoyed it or not so I would tend to try to get some sort of star rating at the end of each clip. Just a simple click once the video has finished from 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 something like that. Then you could list the videos with a visual cue for visitors.

You seem to have all of the major content on the site at the main page, perhaps divide the videos into different categories which can be accessed on the navigation bar. This should encourage viewers to explore the different areas of the site.

+1 , that's perfect.. give the user something to explore other than just scroll..

Thanks for all answers. WIll have lots of things to work on now, which is really good.

 

Have also been thinking about changing the template for a while, as the adsense ads isn´t quite optimal placed. So will try to get theese things done in the new template. Thanks a lot, folks!

Thanks for all answers. WIll have lots of things to work on now, which is really good.

 

Have also been thinking about changing the template for a while, as the adsense ads isn´t quite optimal placed. So will try to get theese things done in the new template. Thanks a lot, folks!

 

What sort of hits is your site getting?

If it's a few then think about approaching companies to advertise rather than adsense.

That's a very disturbingly high bounce rate. Nearly 9/10 of your visitors are going on your site and clicking straight off.

 

And this is further exacerbated by your average time. 40 seconds is very, very low. They're clearly not even watching full videos?! Perhaps your content is not working, and not interesting enough?

 

I think this though is the strong disadvantage of sites such as Stumbleupon. Yes, you get huge traffic, but 99% of it is useless.

 

I also think the design fails for me. It's clunky, difficult to use, and doesn't present much to me.

Edited July 29, 201115 yr by brightonmike

Right, i've seen this site develop over the time that you've been on this site adrenaline so i think it's time i dipped my toe in and gave it a bit of a write up.

 

First off i'd like to point out that i have run several companies in the skateboard industry in London over the last ten years and have myself been a skateboarder for almost 20 years. Just so you know a little where i'm coming from.

 

I think your site has potential but at the same time i just don't see myself ever visiting it or staying on it.

 

Reason are...

• Clunky interface. A few changes could really smooth this baby out and make it a much better experience.
  
• Who are you? There's absolutely no information on who you are and what the website's for. No welcome, no call to action, no explanation... Nothing!
  
• Video Info. Or lack of. All there is is a video and title. No description of the video, no indication of what it may be about and how many people have liked it, commented on it or shared it.
  
• No easy way to sort wheat from chaff... or different content types. I can see they are in categories but you offer the user no helpful way to sort through the categories or avoid the content that they don't want to see. If i want to see Skateboarding then i don't wanna land on a page full of paragliding with no way of quickly accessing the good stuff.
  You get a lot of bounce due to this. Let's say i stumbled upon your site but then couldn't find relevant content. I just wouldn't stick around. Now if that content that might interest me was staring me in the face then i'm more likely to stay. I understand their is a 'related' section but it looses it's prominence battle with the ads.
  
• Ads. Pleeeeease don't turn your website in to the online equivalent of Piccadilly Circus.
  Flashing, rotating shiny adverts that bare no relevance to the content is going to make me leave pretty damn quick. Currently i see Vodafone, Schue, late rooms and a whole host of Google ads that fight the content for dominance and they're winning!
  

 

As you're using Wordpress, use some of its awesome built in functions for sorting and displaying content.

I'm aware that you are tackling some of these issues above but this is just a brief run down of why i wouldn't be a returning visitor but i would like to be!

 

If you want any help then hit me up and i'd be happy to lend a hand.

Edited July 29, 201115 yr by MikeChipshop
My Spelling sucks! Apparently so does my spell checker.

I agree with Mike. The design just isn't working and as such, despite your high volumes of traffic, nobody is actually "using" your site. It's much better to have a lower volume of high quality traffic than a high volume of low quality traffic.

 

There's potential, it just isn't all clicking into gear. Mikes advice is great so take it!

Thanks Mike

That's ok, Mike!

Thanks a lot. I totally agree with you guys.

 

Have been re-thinking the design a bit, and ended up with something quite different. Could this be a better way to go? The "Awesomeness" dropdown will refer to categories, such as skateboarding, snowboarding and so on. Don´t know the right word for it yet, though (so sticking to "awesomeness" in the sketch for now).

 

Have also been thinking about using the YouTube/Vimeo API to get more info about the videos etc. Not quite sure on how to implement this into the design yet though. Perhaps a "More info"- column somewhere, which are expandable? Thanks in advance for any opinion.

 

Hehe. You know the times you design something and don´t quite like it yourself. This was one of them.

 

Been doing another redesign, not quite finished yet this one either. But hopefully this is a better direction to go.

 

Mike: Helping hands would have been really cool! Send me a PM with your Skype id if you feel like it.

 

 

Mike: Helping hands would have been really cool! Send me a PM with your Skype id if you feel like it.

 

 

No problem, may as well put it here because it is all over the web anyway.

 

mike.bishop

Back again, with some quite dramatic redesign. ->Link

Edited September 8, 201115 yr by adrenalinfeed

It's still not working for me, I'm sorry.

 

The gradients are too strong, there's too much black, and there isn't enough contrast, for example you have dark grey text on a darker grey background. The text is often too big and clunky looking too.

 

You then have this ugly Facebook box that just sticks out like a sore thumb.

 

But the biggest problem is you haven't really changed the layout to make browsing videos easier. It's still just a long list of videos.

 

You have category drop downs but frankly because of the design they're almost completely lost, I almost didn't notice them at all.

 

To be honest though, I think you need to rethink your expectations of the site. You get most of your traffic from stumbleupon. But realistically, once someone has seen a video of yours through stumble, they're just not likely to watch lots more.

 

If they do want to watch adrenalin videos all day, I feel they're more likely to go off your site and on to Youtube, where they will have a much more vast selection. Further, Youtube know how to present their videos.

 

I just don't see many people actually wanting to spend time browsing your site to watch these videos. I think the video site has been over done, and whilst you've focused on one particular subject, you're still not really offering anything people can't just see on Youtube.

 

You've essentially created a website that acts as a portal for Youtube. All you're doing is placing Youtube videos in to your design. It's therefore not surprising you have such a high bounce rate and unless you can offer something unique that Youtube does not, I can't see it changing.

 

Good luck anyway though!

Wow, how did you get to those numbers in the first place? Around 100,000 visits per month for a website of your niche is amazing. How long has it been online? Care to share your success story?

Thanks for your replies. The site is ten months now, I think. Too bad you don't think the design has changed much for the better, Mike #1. But, actually, people coming from Google (about 100 a day at the moment) tend to browse at average 3-4 pages per visit. So I guess the market is there, if I finally reach first page on the main desired keyword, which is searched 1.8 million times a month (according to Google Adwords). So far, I'm on average on page 3. By the way, what would you do better? Besides the fb box and the gradients?

 

Mike #2; I guess it's not much of a success yet, but I'm quite pleased with the numbers, taking the age of the site into account. The key, is basically publishing great content, and keep doing it. That's it.

Pardon for replying to this old thread. But, have been doing a lot with the site, and the stats have changed quite dramatically.

 

 

Any suggestions on how to improve more? The six teaser images on the front page, was added today, by the way.

If it were down to me I would go with a drastic re-design of the site. I actually think a 'wall of content' effect could work for you. I'm completely guessing but seeing the evolution of the site and the traffic numbers I can't help but feel most of your visitors are going to be 'shallow'. What I mean by that is they don't care about categories/sorting/search/proper labelling. They just want cool videos. They'll either be linked directly to a video by a friend, watch that and leave or they'll watch a video and then click on whatever the next one the site recommends is.

 

Think of how you use YouTube. Most of the time I find myself on YouTube I've been sent directly to a video. There is the rare occasion the video is in an area I'm interested in and I'll click a couple of the sidebar videos (Cats reaction to water got me hooked a few weeks ago) but most of the time I'm gone after that video, back to wherever I got the link from. Usually Reddit.

 

That is how I see your website. You are where people land but not where people spend their time in the first instance. People aren't firing up your site and checking the homepage for the 'latest' videos. They don't care how old it is, they just want to know if it is good.

 

If it was down to me I would drastically change your design to accomodate the 'grazing' aspect of your userbase. I think you want to swap what is dominating the main page. Newest is a little important, some people want to be first but by in the large most people just want the coolest stuff. So I'd go with 'wall of content'. The main page should be all videos, divided up into sections that interest people, not necessarily the category of the video.

 

Again, think of YouTube. I don't go there to watch 'News' videos. I go there to watch people screw up on TV. Sometimes it is news, sometimes sports, sometimes blooper reels. So the same applies to your site. People don't want to watch 'Skateboarding' videos. They want to watch 'Falling off things' videos. Or 'Massive Jumps' and the exact sport doesn't really matter.

 

Most Watched of All Time / Hot Right Now / Editors Choice / Most Shared / Most Gruesome / Celebs / Idiots on 2 Wheels

 

Your site has a whole heap of potential. It's something I would love to get my teeth sank into. I think you just gotta break the mold a little. Think what exactly it is your users expect from the site and create something that is best at doing that.

Hey, thanks so much! That´s some really nice feedback to get.

 

I especially like the 'Falling off things' and 'Massive Jumps' ideas. In Wordpress terminologies, that would mean tags, which I haven´t used too much on the site yet.

 

I also think you have some good points about the people coming to the site through referrals etc. When people search for "Extreme sports videos" and go to the site, they will spend an average of over 5 pages per visit. But, people who gets an url from Reddit, Stumbleupon, etc., normally goes after a video or two. That one will never change, I guess. But, people following us on Facebook, twitter, or even RSS, seem to browse quite a lot. And the new videos is critical, in order to get returning visitors.

 

The Wall, is also a good one. I didn´t have the top six videos on the front page before today. But, might definetly get more of the same at a later stage.

 

The most important feature, though, is getting people to comment, and to like the posts, which makes them spread. I think that one is working quite good, but could allways be done better. Anyway, thanks so much!

There are some really cool videos on your site man!

There are some really cool videos on your site man!

 

Thanks! The goal is allways to keep the quality as high as possible, in order to become unique and frequently visited by doing so.