Which Links Get More Clicks? | Hacker News Reader

Which Links Get More Clicks?

adpushup.com

59 pointsankitoberoi15 comments

>When current leaks, it would invariably go through the earth wire, the reason for it being that it offers the least resistance for the flow of current.

Man, I wish people would stop repeating that "path of least resistance" thing about electricity. It makes it so much harder to understand how electricity actually works when you've been hearing that lie your whole life. It's also the kind of misinformation that gets people hurt.

Current flows through every path, always. Otherwise, parallel circuits wouldn't work.

Good point and made me go "oh yeah, makes sense!": but it's only used as a metaphor in the article which isn't about electricity - so it would be cool if this doesn't end up being the focal point and top comment!

I wrote the article.

You are correct - Current will flow through all paths, with more current flowing through the lower-resistance paths - Just like humans :)

I liked your insight about the persuit of happiness. Did you know there are ads designed specifically to help people feel less guilty after thy made an expensive purchase? (Merdedes does this).

That's quite interesting - not heard of this before. Can you share more information on this?

I seem to remember Cialdini's "Influence" touches on this (it's a great read about persuasion and influence in any case)

Basically we have a strong need and desire to be self-consistent, and so we seek reasons to rationalise our decisions and they don't need to be all that logical as we try really hard to fill in the gaps. Just present a somewhat plausible story, and you can make people substantially happier about their purchase.

A lot of aspirational brand advertising serves to make you willing to spend money on an expensive product, but also to help you justify the purchase to yourself afterwards by continuing to give you reasons why you made the right choice, so that you go tell your friends about your awesome expensive new Mercedes rather than go around telling them the car salesman tricked you into buying a car you can't really afford once you've had a chance to think things through.

On the lower end, those "write 200 words about how much you love X for a chance to win" competitions are based on a similar principle: They don't care one iota what you write; but apart from getting your address for marketing purposes, they also want people to think about positive things to associate their product with, and commit to them in writing - our need to be self-consistent makes us feel better about the product as a result and we become more likely to advocate the brand and be a loyal customer.

>Our mind chooses the path of least resistance when it’s given a work. It would try to find the easiest way to get a job done

Except when the task is boring and you're ordered to perform the task (like in a boring day job). My DICS-'personality' scan showed I tend to not perform the task until it is almost to late. Or I tend to find other, more challenging ways to reach the goal. I have to keep it exciting. There is a UX school of thought using these profiles as well. I paid for mine, but google'd a bit. Here is a free one http://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/

I love reading this kind of stuff. Can anyone recommend any similar resources?

Last time I saw someone actually A/B test it, telling users to actually click in the link text was superior in terms of click through rates. So this article doesn't seem to be factually based.

>when a passage is typographically well structured and design, the readers are more engrossed in the text

Design vs designed. Pedantic point but it stuck out in that specific sentence.

Thanks! fixed that.

Good read, but why is CSS linked at the end of the page?

To get a better Google Page Speed score :)

Who knows? I didn't click it.

The author's thesis was quite intuitively illustrated by the Google AdSense "Heat Map", which depicted a schematic of your typical web page, with a header, navigation bars down both sides, a footer, and some blocks where the content lay.

Heeding the advice of the Heatmap by placing one's Ad Units in the "Hot Spots" on one's old pages quite commonly doubled one's monthly revenue.

However the last time I went to look for it at Google's AdSense support site I could not find it. I don't know whether they moved it or took it down.

For your own purposes, try placing important links at different places on your pages, leave them there for a week - as the traffic to most sites tends to be cyclical with a one-week period - then analyze your web server logs so as to determine how many internal referrals to other pages on your own site resulted from each link.

I analyze my own logs with Analog (http://analog.cx/) which is powerful and configurable but has a steep learning curve. If you don't have the headspace to Read The Fine Manual, there are many fine competitors readily available.

Each subsequent week, move each of those experimental links to a distinctly different place on your pages.

Upon finding the most-effective placement for each link, put all the links in their best places, then try altering their presentation: text color, typeface size and style, backround color and the like.

Once you've found the best combination of everything, you will be in a good position to earn some coin via PPC ads.

I myself for three solid years earned $3,500.00 per month on the average, $5,000.00 for two different months, with just two Ad Units on just one single quite lengthy, well-researched piece on copyright law:

Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads

http://www.warplife.com/tips/law/copyright/music/legal-downl...

Come for the links, stay for the law school lecture.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com