Recently, a case study came out showing that one Web site had experienced a extraordinarily high level of success one day, in terms of ad click-through rates. The site owners were obviously delighted, but very curious as to what was causing this large spike in ad revenue.
After all, they were used to 1% click-through rates, and were getting 10% this day. Absolutely unheard of. So, what was the secret? Did someone finally figure out how to create the ultimate convincing advertisement that users simply couldn’t get away from?
No. It turns out the site itself was down. Nothing was showing up at all, except the ads. No Web content whatsoever.
So, what’s the lesson? Well, users are more likely to click on your ads when they have nothing else to do. I’m sure there’s a great Website design secret just waiting to be unleashed from this case study, but we’re still trying to figure out exactly what that could be.