I’ve tried several plugins to try and increase page views per visit over the years, and this month I think I’ve found one that works.
The Slide from Simple Reach pops up a very discreet little window in the bottom right of the screen, with a post recommendation related to the post that is currently being read. The Slide works with Wordpress, Drupal, Tumblr, Blogger and other sites by manually installing the code.
I’ve been running the slide for around 2 weeks now, and the results have been very good so far with an average CTR of just under 3%. Of course, this doesn’t mean that my site traffic has gone up by 3% as some of these users might have clicked on another link anyway. But, somewhere in that 3% is a genuine traffic increase which is good when you consider (i) The Slide is free and (ii) it doesn’t slow down pages as the javascript loads asynchronously.
The CTR continues to improve and I believe what is happening is The Slide is learning which posts have better response rates on which pages, and is adjusting over time what posts are promoted. I believe this to be true because my sites that have more traffic have the highest CTRs due to there being more traffic for Simple Reach to analyse.
In the latest version of The Slide WordPress plugin, users can now customise the ‘Recommended For You’ text and also the colour of the link.
One disappointment I have with the slide is that it isn’t registering on all my pages and I’ve sent an email to the Simple Reach team to see if we can fix this.
More: Simple Reach
