If visitors view image gallery or not?
Look at this statistics of two real sites:
Site 1:
| Visits duration | ||
| Number of visits: 594 - Average: 428 s | Number of visits | Percent |
| 0s-30s | 360 | 60.6 % |
| 30s-2mn | 32 | 5.3 % |
| 2mn-5mn | 59 | 9.9 % |
| 5mn-15mn | 60 | 10.1 % |
Site 2:
| Visits duration | ||
| Number of visits: 594 - Average: 428 s | Number of visits | Percent |
| 0s-30s | 977 | 83 % |
| 30s-2mn | 51 | 4.3 % |
| 2mn-5mn | 43 | 3.6 % |
| 5mn-15mn | 30 | 2.5 % |
Tables show that 60-80% of visitors leave the site in 0.6 mins right after they enter one. It is arguable that the most of Internet site have the same statistics. Why this happens and how to pass this magical 0.5 mins?
Visitor has entered the site, so he’s interested in its theme and he’s looking for the information mentioned as this site has. The visitor is from the target audience of the site. Why does he leave the site? The answer is simple: he can’t find information he needs. If information hidden from momentary view, for visitors it’s easier to leave the site instead of digging its depths. Visitor just closes his window and starts looking the next site.
How to gain visitor’s attention?
What kind of information is interested for site visitors? For sure, the photos themselves. So, the visitor just can’t find photos while browsing and therefore leaving. How to gain visitor’s attention to photos? The way is simple and very well known and used by all off and on-line media: nothing is more attractive but the nice photos at the first page! Nice looking pictures are the attractive tool that works anytime and anywhere. This method is a proven by numerous number of people.
What kind of pictures can be placed at the first page of the gallery. Most easier and beneficial way is to use pictures from the image gallery itself. If gallery has several sections, then it is possible to use different pictures for each section. To attract returning visitors, images should be periodically changed. Once per several minutes, once an hour or daily (to keep visitor’s eyes from design adaption).
Attention gaining tools
Lets see how technically implement image displaying on the site. This can be done manually but spend a lot of time and energy. The most easier way is to use a free web tools made especially for this aim. Spend a time once to install and completely forget about displaying images.
There are a lot of web tools and each of this has different set of functions. How to select the best one?
- First, this tool should solve the main task – can show pictures from several gallery sections and change them periodically.
- The second main factor is an easy installation and tuning procedure. The more easier this process, the better the tool.
- The third, but not the last one, is a technical implementation. Unfortunately this factor is hardly determined by the end user.
Tool to gain visitors attention to the image gallery
There was research of scripts presented in Internet. There are about ten variants. One of this are too simple, others are too complex, and the last have a lot of features but require payment. Therefore was made a decision to create a FREE version of the script that has all required features, is easy to use and install, and implemented in high level object oriented architecture.
The first version of the script
- Shows randomly taken pictures from one or several sections.
- Rotate pictures once per day.
- Has unlimited number of sections, photos in the section, images per web page.
Script installation as simple as 1-2-3:
- Unpack and copy script to the site.
- Create one utility directory.
- In configuration file, indicate the place where the image gallery stored with all required sections.
In the nearest time will be available the next version of the script.
In the next version:
- Additional rules of displaying images: in daily time intervals (for example: 10-12, 12-14, …), in crontab ways (in any possible order based on time)
- Additional rules of getting images: in strongly defined sequence, ordered or random.
- Securing images from stealing.
- In addition, script can be used as a simple banner rotator
- Administrative shell to customize options.
- Go to script’s home page at
http://www.usefulclasses.com/index.php?prc=readArticle&aid=potd - Bookmark the page to get fresh script version later
- Download script for free from:
http://usefulclasses.com/free_classes/pictod_1.0.tgz (TGZ-archive)
http://usefulclasses.com/free_classes/pictod_1.0.zip (ZIP-archive)
Summary.To attract visitors to the image gallery you would have to follow a few simple steps:
- On the first page, use nice looking pictures gaining visitor’s attention
- Take pictures from the gallery’s sections
- Rotate pictures periodically
- Use simple and free script to implement this features on the site
