What was the problem?
BXM had a strong social media strategy and many users came directly from Facebook. The challenge was to keep the user on the site instead of bouncing right back to Facebook after viewing the relevant content. The main KPIs were bounce rates and pages per session.
Another important consideration was monetization.
- How can we keep the user happily clicking through a slideshow?
- How do we increase ad viewability?
Bauer Xcel Media
- My role - Design, UX, A/B testing, data analysis
- Tools - Photoshop, Illustrator, Coda
- Platforms - Optimizely, Google Analytics
What was the approach?
Experimentation, iteration, and optimization
The business wanted a slideshow experience that would keep users clicking through photographs while keeping a high ad viewability rate. Different templates were tested and modified based on test results.
- Changes to size and location of next/previous buttons on paginated galleries
- Modifications to ad placement on various slideshow templates
- Testing various CTAs to point the user to a new gallery
- Rearranging next/previous buttons, share buttons and captions on paginated galleries
- Interstitial ads
- Single page gallery as a new template
What were the learnings or compromises?
- BXM readers did not seem to mind being sent directly into a new, but related, gallery without notice. In fact, any notice of a new gallery option increased bounce.
- On one javascript heavy gallery template, monetization decreased so that template was scrapped.
- Monetization was improved on single page galleries, so that became the primary template unless users were coming from social media.