I’m still waiting on the background and I think I can redo the text when I return home a few weekends from now.

I’ve included some before-and-after shots beneath the jump…

BEFORE

AFTER

DRAFT VERSION B

And here’s the new version. The only noticeable difference is that the bubbles have been redrawn.

With the old header, our bounce-rate had been about 45%.  That means that 45% of our readers left our website within a few seconds of getting here.  In the five days we’ve had our new header, our bounce-rate has dropped to 42%.

That probably doesn’t sound very substantial, but it amounts to an extra twenty readers that are sticking around each day.  This may also have a noticeable impact on user-traffic over time. If a new reader bounces, he’s not coming back; he didn’t like your site enough to stick around the first time.

In contrast, if he sticks around, you have a pretty good chance of bringing him back.  On Superhero Nation, a reader that does not bounce is 49% likely to come back again.  If someone comes to our website twice, he is 51% likely to visit us ten or more times and 29% likely to visit us fifty or more times.

Going back to our new header… twenty extra people are not bouncing on any given day.  Based on past statistics, I project that ten of them (49%) will come again.  Of these ten, five (51%) will visit us ten or more times and three (29%) will visit us fifty or more times.  That means our header upgrade essentially generates three super-dedicated readers each day. I suspect that this will have a substantial economic impact when I start selling products and merchandise.

Here are a few of my initial impressions.

1. I don’t like the white border around the two characters.
2. The first set of balloons feels easier to read than what we have now.  What do you think?
3. I don’t like the bolded letters in the second version of the balloons.
4. I like the font in the second version’s take on SUPERHERO NATION.  That said, the color might need some work.

• The characters are slightly larger than they had been in the previous header.
• We replaced the copyright at the bottom-right with a brief joke.

PREVIOUS HEADER (January 12)

• The fonts are a bit easier to read than they had been in the January 5 version.
• We changed the background graphic.  It looks less cartoony than the flag in the January 5 version.

ORIGINAL HEADER (January 5)

]]> http://www.superheronation.com/2009/01/12/emergency-header-revision/feed/ 3 http://www.superheronation.com/2009/01/02/header-change-3/ http://www.superheronation.com/2009/01/02/header-change-3/#comments Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:19:21 +0000 B. Mac http://www.superheronation.com/?p=1677 I got tired of looking at the same header for three months, so I tweaked it a bit.  The main differences are the fonts, but I also adjusted the background flag. 

The bubbles are kind of nasty right now, but I can fix them as soon as I get back to campus in a week or two.  What do you think?

Old Header

New Header

I replaced the reptile (Agent Orange) with Lash (the black hero).  A few reviews of the site had suggested that Agent Orange looked too unpleasant.  Unfortunately, Lash has a name-tag, so he can’t face left.  Consequently, I put the white guy (Agent Black) on the right and just gave him Agent Orange’s lines.  That’s an embarrassing shortcut for a writing website. It’s reminiscent of Mass Effect, which was notorious for characters that had interchangeable lines of dialogue.

Old Header (84% size)

New Header (May 29, 84% size)

Tweaked Header (June 1, 84% size)

This update looks minor but has actually had a statistically significant impact on viewers so far.  One: I changed Agent Orange’s quote slightly so that the joke is easier to understand.  I also changed the fonts again.  Finally, I moved the flag.  My reasoning was that the hardest text to read in my header is “FAIRLY UNBALANCED ANSWERS,” because it’s thin font.  To make it easier to read, I put it against a white stripe of the US flag rather than a red stripe.  This puts the red stripe under “PUTTING THE LAUGHTER…”, which is wider and easier to read.

I have also expanded the bubbles and turned them into ovals rather than rounded rectangles.  That makes it feel less claustrophobic, I think.

Statistical Data

One way I plan to evaluate this header change is by looking at the site’s bounce-rate and comparing it to the week immediately before the header change. Over the past week, the site has averaged a 66% bounce rate and 100 seconds per viewer, which is very similar to the lifetime of the May 1 header.

EXTREMELY PRELIMINARY RESULTS: Over June 1-2, the first two days we had the final version of the new header, our bounce-rate dropped dramatically to 56%.  On June 2, the first day that we have full statistics for the new header, we posted 54%, which is very near a record low for the site.  In a week or so, I’ll post results that are slightly more definitive.

However, I would like to unveil another form of analysis. According to Google Analytics, we’ve been getting a constant stream of searches related to our Superpower List. For example, over the past month these were four of our top six queries…

List of superpowers– 197 queries– 79% bounce rate– 98 seconds per viewer
List of super powers– 105 queries– 80% bounce rate– 84 seconds per viewer
Superpower list– 59 queries– 66% bounce rate– 205 seconds per viewer
Superpowers list– 42 queries–64% bounce rate– 165 seconds per viewer

Over the next two weeks, I will assess the effectiveness of our new header by evaluating what the retention rate on the Superpower List searches is. If the header is effective, then it should serve to retain random strangers and, ideally, lure them into our other offerings.

At the time I’m doing this update (June 3), it’s too early to draw any conclusions here.

Yours,

J.M.

April 23

April 30 Header

May 1 Header

The main change is the revision of two of the characters, Catastrophe (on the near left) and Agent Orange (on the far right). The header is brighter and generally more cartoony.

The second revision came only a day after the first. We took away Catastrophe’s speech-bubble to make more space for the character heads.

Original Header (April 14)

New Header 1.0 (April 22)

New Header 1.1 (April 23)

This was our most substantive header change in the past month or two. Rebecca recolored Agent Black (the white guy) and Agent Orange (the reptile). I love Black’s new coloring.

Generally, the tones have gotten brighter. I think Catastrophe is too dark. I’ll worry about that in a week or two.

I changed the caption to “fairly unbalanced answers to every/superhero question you’ve never had.” Because that’s considerably longer than our old one, I had to make everything else longer. As a result, I’m not pleased with the stretched-out “putting the laughter in/manslaughter since 2005.” (Ooh, also, I discovered that Superhero Nation actually began in 2005, not 2006 as I had previously believed. That’s why the date has changed).

Finally, I added thought-bubbles after Cadet Davis offhandedly suggested it. It’s harder than it looks: for Slapstick-fonted text to be readable in a header, it has to be at least size 20. Above, we’ve used size 16 for Lash’s thought-bubble and size 18 for Orange’s.

Impending Changes

• The bottom-right caption has to be refit.
• The text in the thought-bubbles has to be refit.
• Catastrophe is too dark. Maybe Lash, too.

Update: April 23

I fixed some of the text. The thought-bubbles fit in better and I changed the font of the captions above/below the SUPERHERO NATION gradient-logo. I also made the blue in the gradient-logo brighter, so it should stick out better against its black outline.

I think it looks a lot better.  More importantly, readers seem to agree.  Over the past 36 hours, we have some extremely preliminary results that our bounce-rate has dropped by more than 10%.

Here, glance at the two headers and see if you can spot what’s changed.

Original

Revision

The main change is a slight edit to our caption, from “…guide to superhero politics” to “superhero comedy.” I think “politics” scares potential readers and most of our posts aren’t political. Also, I think that people naturally associate “politics” with “propaganda” rather than comedy, entertainment or anything that would encourage them to stick around. So politics had to go.

This looks like a minor change. If I showed the original to 100 people and then showed them the new version 10 minutes later, maybe 5 would realize what was changed. But I suspect that this will significantly reduce our bounce-rate (5-10%). People are quite good at appreciating differences, even if they don’t consciously realize what they’re doing. I’ll release preliminary Google Analytics results in a week to show whether it’s had an impact. Over the past week, our BR was in the mid-to-high 60s.

By comparison, Google Analytics says that Comics and Animation sites have an average BR in the mid-40s. I suspect that we’ll remain worse than average for some time. Our site is very eclectic. Our audience is highly fragmented between sports buffs, politicos, online entrepreneurs and writing aficionados. When I write articles on, say, designing effective header art, someone who’s casually interested in comedic content is going to bounce. Even the the ISS limits its offerings to comedy, although it also makes tangents into sports and politics.

Other Header Modifications

Kudos if you picked out these aesthetic changes. The heroes have gotten a bit bigger and more spaced-out. Catastrophe’s face is a bit more evenly purple. The blue portions of the US flag are a bit brighter.

It looks like Catastrophe’s face is wider and rounder. It’s not, but we see a wider cut of it because I moved Agent Black (the white guy).

Other Modifications

At the same time I changed the header, I also changed our WWSGD plug-in.  Before, new visitors to our site were greeted by this message at the top of the screen.  “Superhero Nation is a wacky comedy site devoted to a superhero novel, sports and politics.”

I changed that to “Superhero Nation is a wacky comedy site and novel about New York’s second-most inept superhero and a Homeland Security agent that might not be a mutated alligator.
In addition, we are the world’s #1 provider of Lol Gators and occasionally offer noncomedic articles on creative writing, business planning and market analysis, visual design and marketing.  In fact, we may be the only site anywhere to offer these things in addition to Lol Gators.”