Maximizing Click Through Traffic

By Todd W. Winslow
Posted Thursday, August 26, 2004

Anyone who runs affiliate programs on their website or who advertises on other sites, knows the importance of click through traffic. The higher your click through percentage, the higher your profits. Whether your income is generated by the hit, lead or sale, or any combination thereof, maximizing click through traffic is crucial in successfully marketing on the web.

The term click through is synonymous with the term hit - when a site visitor clicks a banner or text link taking them to another site or webpage.

In this article I will focus on the vast difference between banner ads and text links.

Banner Ads vs. Text Links:

If you're only promoting your affiliate programs or advertising your own business using banner ads, you're losing the vast majority of your click through traffic, which translates into lost income.

Banner ads tend to have a much lower click through percentage than text links. They also slow the speed at which your page loads and can be distracting - even annoying, to your site visitors. We're all very familiar with banner ads, as they are everywhere, which may partially explain their low click through or hit percentage. A lesser used and vastly more successful tactic is the text link.

A text link is a very short description of the merchant's program, product, or service with a hyperlink to their website.

Example:

Learn how to start and promote an online business - FREE.
Click Here

The words CLICK HERE are a hyperlink connecting to the merchant's site - (http://www.taddgroup.com)
The advantage of using text links over banner ads are numerous. The most important is they have a much higher click through or hit percentage than do banner ads.

The following example is actual statistics from one page on our website using one hour of traffic.

Product 1:

Banner Ad: 109 impressions / 5 hits
Text Link: 109 impressions / 54 hits

As you can see, the text link for the same product has a far higher hit to impression ratio, than does the banner ad. Program 1 banner ad has a 5% hit to impression ratio, while the text link for the same product has a 50% hit to impression ratio. This means the text link is generating ten times more traffic than the banner ad for the same product.

Using Product 1 as an example, this has a hit to sale conversion ratio of 40% (Ten hits would generate four sales.) Using a profit of only $1 from each sale, this converts to the following:

Product 1:

Banner Ad: Products Sold: 2 Profit: $ 2.
Text Link: Products Sold: 22 Profit: $22.

If the above was representative of the average traffic/sales generated in an hour, this would equate to the following daily income:

Daily Banner Ad Income: $ 48.
Daily Text Link Income : $528.

This example is used for illustrative purposes only. Your actual statistics may vary. However, one thing will remain constant, almost without exception, text links will far surpass banner ads for generating hits.

Examples for using text links and the various wording and presentation of text links can be found on our website: (http://www.taddgroup.com) and on our sister site (http://www.mysticbeagle.com)

I strongly encourage anyone who isn't already using text links, to give it a try. Post a text link on the same page as a banner (for the same product), and track the click through percentages for each over a couple of weeks. I think you'll be amazed by the difference, and pleased by the increase in your profits.

As a side note, if you insist on using banners, try using interactive banners - those which provide a function such as a search box, etc. These generally get twice the hits as do regular banner ads, but still cannot compare the what a text link will generate.

About the author:
Todd W. Winslow is the co-owner of TADD Marketing Group, L.L.C. He is also the founder of TADD Publishing Group which publishes a variety of e-mail newsletters (http://www.taddgroup.com), and is co-creator of The Mystic Beagle - a romance and relationship advice web site (http://www.mysticbeagle.com)

Keywords: affiliate associate programs, new business, starting a business, internet, joining affiliate program

Written by: Todd Winslow, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, USA
taddgroup@aol.com
(http://www.taddgroup.com)