Return of The Weekly Standards
May 18th, 2005
Totally by chance (looking through some sites I bookmarked a while ago for inspiration), I came across the “new” Weekly Standards . The old Weekly Standards, set up and run by Adam Howell was my favourite of all the CSS showcase sites, so I am keen to see what new owners, Forty Media , are going to do with the site. I am really pleased that they plan to leave Adam’s work archived “as is.”
Adam has a nice write up of the new site here and he has hit the nail on the head. It looks sensational, courtesy of design contest winner Mario Carboni and Forty’s James Archer must have worked really hard on this week’s write up of AT&T’s standards-based site .
Recommendations:
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Lose the adverts - in their current position they really break up the flow of the article. In fact note to all website owners - most of us hate this advert positioning, please don’t do it. Does it make that many more dollars on your ad words account?
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Cut the article length by 50%, maybe even 75%. I guess you wanted to start with a bang, but this can’t be a weekly read surely? I loved the old site for it’s intelligent succint comment and handy “stats.”
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No thanks on the guest pundit, either. I would prefer to see a trackback link, then, if a site’s worth talking about we can carry on the discussion ourselves.
That said, I am chuffed to bits about the return of the Standards, and James is going to do a great job. If you have any interest in web design whatsoever, add TWS to your RSS reader now.
Entry Filed under: Design
4 Comments Add your own
1. | May 19th, 2005 at 12:10 am
To be honest, yes, that placement of the Adsense units is necessary. They’re almost worthless otherwise…sorry
Note, I’m not James Archer of Forty Media, I’m James Paden of Xemion.com. Just saw your post and thought I’d answered your question.
2. Adrian | May 19th, 2005 at 1:01 am
Really? It makes that much of a difference?
Obviously, I am an old curmudgeon who doesn’t like clicking ads wherever they are placed
Anyhow, thanks for the comment, James, and I best of luck with TWS.
Xemian’s ad positioned top right, by the way: will you get the clicks?
3. | May 19th, 2005 at 3:37 am
Well, think about it a little, in order for an ad to be clicked on it…
a.) Must be noticed
b.) Hince, it must do something to catch your attention
c.) The only ads that annoy you are the ones that catch your attention
It’s a catch 22. You wouldn’t be annoyed by ads you didn’t notice. But if no one noticed, no one would click.
That’s why popups were so effective originally. They interrupted your browsing, your reading, your train of thought, etc.. They forced you to look at the ad.
This is why text ads are so much better than old banner ads. They can still have prominent placement, but they are LESS annoying than flashy, animated, banner ads.
You have the best of both worlds, though unforunately, it’s not perfect.
Xemion’s ad is on the top right, yes. It will not generate near as many clicks as it would in the middle of the text. However…a large reason for my ad is that I’m trying to brand my site. I want every web designer worldwide to think of Xemion first when they think of an online web designer directory. If I start annoying designers, not good for my brand
So honestly, no, my ad doesn’t get as many clicks as it could. I guess it has a 1% CTR right now or less, not very high for such an extremely targetted audience.
When I expand to the UK later this summer, I hope to have you in the directory
4. Adrian | May 19th, 2005 at 8:25 am
I understand the theory - which is how I know the top right is a weak spot for CTR. I guess I tend to base my thinking on the wrong assumption that because I don’t click ads, no-one does.
I wonder though (in general terms, not as a specfic criticism of TWS now, because lot of sites do centre placement of adwords) would sites get more readers without centre placed ads? Do ads damage the credibility of the site? As you say yourself:
is interesting because they do ads which are halfway between body text and right column. It would be interesting to know how well Lifehacker does with that placement - both in ad clickthrough and site credibility. Of course, we know that Lifehacker did a great deal with Sony, in exchange for very infrequent posts about Sony products, which is a model I would much rather see.
The debate will get even more interesting once we see AdSense in RSS . Even Google’s guidelines for RSS AdSense say syndicate the full article and place the ad unit at the end.
Users don’t want to be interrupted when they are reading.
Best of luck with the expansion.
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