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July 17, 2005
AJAX and page loads
Jason Calacanis just wrote a piece about how AJAX is bad for publishers because it decreases page loads which in turn decreases revenue. I might just be too idealistic, I've been accused of that in the past, but I think that going forward what is on the site is going to be as important as how many times it's loaded - especially in blog land. If two sites are offering similar content and one forces the user to reload the pages over and over again while the other uses a much easier user experience guess where people are going to go more often? That's my bet anyway, of course I'd rather have people loading my sites once and then telling their friends about how cool they are then cursing them because they have to wait around and reload things 2-3 times. Of course we're not using any AJAX on our sites either... not yet anyway. ;) Posted by sean on July 17, 2005 11:19 PM | View blog reactions
Previous Entry: Hi Karachi! Next Entry: Quote Of The Day We will be using AJAX in the future. I'm the guy that wrote the AJAX stuff for Technorati so I have a wee leg up on it. And yes I have put a lot of thought into how it affects page loads. Jason hit the nail on the head when he mentioned things like comments for blogs but his view is narrow and focuses exclusively on blogs. AJAX is a terrific tool for us as a builder community to enhance the experience for the users and they are what it's all about. What he didn't factor into his equations are the fact that you are going to attract new users with your sexy new site that will offset the loss in page view revenue. And nowadays smart advertisers work on a CPC model so you're only getting decent click thrus on pages with content that makes the user want to leave your site. This could be why the WIN network has such high ad revenue since people can't wait to get the fuck out of their site. And I'm not trying to be a smartass on this. I have a test site that does good google money because of the singular fact that it DOES suck. When it was built it was state of the art and was a visitor draw and had awful ad rev. Now that it's mothballed it makes more money a month than it ever did when it was being updated regularly. The shittier your content the faster people want to leave your network. I'm happy with less people leaving and attracting more with higher quality content. Or in the case of AJAX, less page views per user and a lot more users. Posted by: Jason D- on July 18, 2005 03:24 AM
"What he didn't factor into his equations are the Jason D: I did mention that... read the end of the post! "This could be why the WIN network has such high That's just dumb. People can't wait to get out of our sites? We don't hold anyone at our The reason we have a low page view per visit is because we give people So, yet another example of use losing traffic by giving folks a better Posted by: Jason Calacanis on July 18, 2005 08:32 AM
Jason C - I think you just backed up what Jason D was saying, let me propose some different reasoning here.... first of this C/D thing is annoying, can you guys come up with some cool nicknames or something? What Jason D was suggesting was that people go to some WIN sites, and leave right away. Forget the reasoning since that's all opinion based, just the fact that they are on the site for a short time suggests they are leaving for one reason or another. Leaving by clicking on ads, which might be one reason WIN does what it does in CPC ads. It's from people leaving the sites eventually. That's what Jason D was saying and Jason C's comment about NOT keeping people on the sites in the way Gawker does, and the few page views per user kind of implies the same thing, people are going to the sites and going elsewhere. Maybe they are just going and seeing the site was the same as last time they were there and leaving, or maybe they are going and scanning headlines and only following if there's a story that strikes them. Again, that's not a bad thing for an ad driven site, people clicking the ads - kind of desierable. Posted by: sean bonner on July 18, 2005 08:51 AM
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