If you have been following Technically Personal, you might have observed that there is a small change in the theme layout over the past 2 days.
Yeah! I have added a small news ticker on the right topbar (next to the logo). Technically, I can’t call it a ticker, since it “flashes” and doesn’t “tick”. Anyway, this small WordPress Plugin was custom built for TechPP by Stratos, who is so wonderful with WordPress, PHP, MySQL, jQuery and other related things. I gave him out the requirements and the idea, and he handed me the plugin within half a day!!
The idea is to utilize the prominent space which was going waste to advertise other “Related” posts on my blog and thereby reduce the bounce rate. Currently, the bounce rate of TechPP is not alarmingly high (it’s around 45-50%), but still there is a lot of scope to reduce it to say 35 – 40%. I thought a good way to do that is to have a News Ticker which keeps flashing the related posts at regular frequency.
I do not want to go into the details of the plugin, but would like to know the opinion of you guys. I request all those who are reading this post via RSS reader or eMail to visit the website, have a look and give some valuable inputs.
- Is it serving the purpose of advertising other related posts?
- If you had observed it before reading this post, was it catchy enough for you to click?
- The static text “also @ TechPP” is configurable. Can you suggest anything better?
- Any suggestions on improving the look and feel of the ticker?
- Any other place it can be put for better visibility and looks?
Your inputs will help us improve the plugin and if I see it being useful for others as well, I might even release the Plugin under GPL.
Thanks for the mention Raju! I would like to hear about the feedback myself
Hope this works out for you great!
@ Stratos,
Congrats that you have done a cool interesting and wonderful job.
@ Raju,
I don’t think of any other spot on your blog to place that ticker, the current placement is right one and it catches the attention of visitor, but as our concentration would easily move to readers area, its better if you place it above the post title of every page. Let me see what you experience with bounce rate.
I think its looking better there only. Its looking great
Hey now that i am thinking of it you could also place it at the end of the post, like the related posts plugin. Hey did i mention you can place it to as many locations as you want?
@Pavan: Thanks man..
I noticed it as soon as i opened your site. I was amazed, it looks great, and is at right place.
@Simran, Hariharakumar,
Thanks guys
@Pavan,
On top of the post is a cool idea!! but that will make the link ad units redundant
how about inserting the ticker in the middle of every post? But I am not sure how to achieve this in Single.php
It would be nice if full text shows up..Some part is not showing up..Try showing up in two lines of text..This is my opinion
@sham,
Thanks for the suggestion. I deliberately restricted the length of the titles in order to maintain uniformity.
Don’t forget man, i can help any time you need!
It’s good. I noticed it first thing as soon as i opened the site
It looks cool and useful too. I saw it as i visited your blog.
When you’ll be sharing this plugin with us
I didn’t even notice it until i read this post. I don’t think it will reduce the bounce rate by that much. If you change the color it will make it more visible. The reds in the logo and in the RSS Feed viewers counter are very vibrant and my eyes just skipped over the ticker which blended with the rest of the page.
This is a good idea, and the placement is pretty good too as its above the fold, would be interesting to see how it works out for you.
Trust stratos to come up with the right solution. To be perfectly honest I didn’t realize it was a ticker because it didn’t move whilst I was reading the header. I only noticed after reading the post. Your positioning is perfect and I reckon if there was a way to make it scroll it would be so much more noticeable. Heck it would literally drag your eyes to the right spot.
Err where’s the ticker gone?
@Preetam,
I have removed it for now, testing out few things
Oh I was about to ask the same question because I din see it, Meanwhile how did it worked for you??
Oh….hmm.
I don’t see it now…