The Benefit of Screenshots in Communication | Iconize Your Clickthrough Rate

Icons Increase Clickthrough Rate

I use quite a lot of screenshots when blogging as I find the old saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” very appropriate.
Michel Fortin also pointed out in his top plugins and blogging tips article today how graphic icons with each post help with clickthrough . He has been using eye tracking software to prove it, and is a fanatical tester.

No Excerpts = Less Comments?

This concept just came to me while writing this post, maybe I will write about it again tomorrow in more detail.

I use full content on the front page currently because I like the idea of having my cupboard open to encourage people to read what I have written, like it, and thus subscribe.

The vast majority of my readers are via subscription, thus when they click through, they read the single permalink page, which has a comment box.

I do however get a large amount of casual traffic. If they click through to the front page, and get to read 10 articles, they are less inclined to read the comments on a post, where typically on my best content, there is a lot more discussion, that often is worth more than the original post.

Maybe there is a measurable benefit in only showing excerpts in increased comments from more casual readers, and readers on their 2nd page view. They wouldn’t have to take an additional action to place a comment.

The problem is in testing this you introduce more variables, because you might get more or less subscribers by showing less content.

Enough of the wandering mind…

Pictures in Communication

I have had a few people mention that my pages don’t look quite right. I had done a number of tests using both Firefox and Internet explorer, and had continued to do so. Some things aren’t perfect under Internet Explorer, but I am not a designer so I will have to live with them and tweak things as they go.

I was shocked when I saw this

Michel dropped me an email today with a screenshot attached (I have reduced it in size)

I think Michel might be using Internet Explorer, I primarily use Firefox, and only check things on IE typically when I am playing with page layout. I didn’t think about how a plugin might break under a different browser.

This is how this looks under Firefox

By communicating with a picture, I was able to fix the problem in about 2 minutes by simply switching off the plugin and clearing my cache.

As a p.s. I think both me and Michel use a little tool called SnagIt for grabbing quick screenshots. I am not an affiliate in any way, and I still find bugs with it (scrolling pages never seems to work), but find what it does do very useful.