Test And Experiment With Different Layouts

The Abundance theme’s many widgetized areas allow ample scope for experimentation, as does the ability to choose whether to display the content to the left or right of the sidebar. My own testing has so far demonstrated that moving the navigation to the footer and leaving the sidebars almost exclusively for monetization does have a positive effect on revenue. If your home page is a lengthy one then it may seem a lot to expect your visitors to scroll to the bottom to navigate – it’s seldom a good idea to include everything, just because it’s available – but the majority of search visitors who encounter your site will do so via the inner pages. As the image on the right shows, these are usually considerably shorter. It’s not uncommon for a visitor to browse several pages and leave without ever seeing the home page at all.

Conversely, the blogroll and the affiliate links that usually fill it often prove ineffective in the sidebar. Much better results have come from placing it in the lower banner area, which sits directly beneath every post. On some sites an image in the top left corner of every post draws the reader in to read the article down to the bottom, where they’ll see these links and click on them. On others, there is little visitor interest in these links and any sale from them is regarded as a bonus, with the majority of revenue coming from an Adsense block that shown instead of the image. Your mileage will vary just as much from one site to another too, but with the Abundance theme it’s as easy to quickly implement a new layout as it is to alter something as simple as link colors to test and see what the effect will be.