I can definitely recommend Crazy Egg for improving web design. I use it on my most important pages, and being able to see where visitors click and where they come from is an invaluable tool. Well worth trying out.

I will DEFINITELY have to try CrazyEgg out though. Looks like an awesome tool.

Thanks for running this experiment! This is very valuable information.

Having your link near the top is always be beneficial, but in the end if it’s not relevant then you are wasting your time. Relevant things will always get way more clicks.

Things like capitalizing letters only serve to amplify a link’s ability to attract attention of viewers, but if what they are viewing isn’t relevant then their time is wasted.

What do you do (as sometimes happens) when the host of the group writing project rearranges the posts (out of chronological order) for some purpose of their own? (Perhaps to put like entries together …)

I sometimes try to read them all, but very easily loose my place in the list and if they were separated into groups of 5. I could open in a new tab a group, go check them out and then come back and easily find my next group of 5.

When I see “99 ways to do something irresistible,” I get a little exhausted. But if I see a list like “7 ways to do something irresistible,” I’m more likely to click through. I also figure someone might have come up with 5 pretty good ideas in a list of 7, but a list of 99 is likely to be mostly filler.

Anyone else feel the same, or is this a case of “more is more” for most of you?

But I think it’s important to point out that this experiment only confirms what you’ve been teaching all along:

- List posts are always popular.
- Titles DO matter!
- Ranking can make a difference, but the above two seem to override rankings.
- Good content that directly benefits the readers helps (but will make little difference with a bad title).

I bookmarked that heatmap website and plan on using it in the future. Maybe I’ll do my own such experiment. Actually, it’s a good tool for any blogger to use so they can see where the “hot spots” are on their blog – and use those hot spots to maximize revenue and readership!

Way to go Darren! Great post!

Somehow IT LOOKS LIKE PEOPLE ARE SHOUTING UNNECESSARILY.

Many sites state you can’t use capitals for titles.

It certainly draws the eye – though

The article that received most traffic was listed in the top 10 of the list, and secondly it had a title that encouraged people to click the link.

Thanks for posting the heatmap information.

I got some traffic but not a huge amount. I was pretty far down on the list. The big thing was the links. I got a little over 30 links from some highly ranked blogs that were relevant to my blog. I know that’s still not a lot of links but my search engine traffic increased by about 5x soon after the project. It did drop some after a while but stayed well above the previous level.

Great post by the way, I was hoping you’d break down some numbers.

I am learning how to get traffic to my blog.