Webmasters, marketers and social media users submitting content to StumbleUpon have about 2-4 seconds to catch someone’s attention. Given that, it’s essential to have an attractive, fun and usable web page or you’ll fail to bring in thousands of potential visitors.
For those of you just coming up to speed with this 8 million member strong social bookmarking website, StumbleUpon is essentially “channel surfing” for the web. When someone’s channel surfing, your site should stand out with elegant simplicity or some sort of wow factor, or else it’ll get passed up in the blink of an eye.
Most Stumblers who influence the direction and popularity of content do so by using the “Stumble!” button on the browser toolbar, discovering a web page and voting thumbs-up, “I like it!” They also spread your content to other users by using the “Send to” button to broadcast this to their connections. So to be successful, it’s critical to catch a Stumbler’s eye during the surfing process.
Each press of the “Stumble!” button provides a very small window to make a positive impression,
and it’s not the Crazy Eddie impression we’re talking about here. If you don’t catch someone’s attention or if you piss them off with crappy web pages or sales pitches, your content will not meet much success in this important social network.
So, you ask, “What is failure — how do you define that?”
StumbleUpon Fail (n):Â low adoption, .2 seconds spent on page and very few people “liked this page.” In the “reviews” section of StumbleUpon, most users hate on your content. Other instances: NO TRAFFIC in your sweet little analytics panel and WTF happened?
Wanna fail? Try these strategies:
1. Make Your Page Too Complex
Ever hear hear the life tip “Keep it Simple Stupid” or (KISS)? Well, the same applies for StumbleUpon. If your page is cluttered, too complex to view or too complex to interact with (e.g., poor user experience or flash elements that take forever to load), your content will almost certainly fail. Here are a couple of examples:
Too Complex Exhibit A: I’m going to clutter my page with banners, images, mixed color palettes, no theme and flashing pop ups.
Too Complex Exhibit B: Too much competing for my attention; not enough above the fold. (What is this page about?!)
2. Turn Your Page into a Billboard
If most of what a user sees above the fold on the web page is advertising, it’s likely that you’ll get passed over.
Billboard Exhibit A:Â (Google AdSense out the wazoo!)
Billboard Exhibit B: (90% ads in view! – where’s the content?!)
3. Create a Poor Page Layout with Terrible Usability
If your page doesn’t really say anything either through words or imagery, or it’s cluttered with pop-up windows and animations, it’s likely that Stumblers will breeze on through without really considering the value of your page.
Poor Layout Exhibit A: (Ummm???? Hello, white space??)
Poor Usability Exhibit B: (Hey Broken Blog, No, I don’t want ‘The Inside Poop’)
4. Show a Directory, Site Map or a Link-Filled Page
If your page is just a map of navigational links, Stumblers will probably not thumb it up or pass it along to anyone.
Directory Filled Page Exhibit A: (BORING!)
The above sites are not necessarily bad websites all around, but the specific pages that were found in StumbleUpon were simply not optimized for total success.
So now that we’ve trashed some fellow Stumblers who didn’t do such a great job, we should find some examples of things that do well in StumbleUpon. What works well?
1. Simplicity of Message
(Ahh, I get it!)
2. Larger Fonts & Text at the Top
(THIS WORKS; I’m thumbing up and passing this along to my friends)
StumbleUpon is about sharing fun, interesting and attractive content and presenting it in a user-friendly manner. Success in this network is about simplicity of message and usability. If you cannot find ways to get your message across while keeping these elements in mind, then don’t bother; you’re apt to offend and piss more people off than you are to get any web mastering or even friendly social sharing benefits back. Happy Stumbling!
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16 Comments
Great examples Jake. To be fair to the other sites, you just had to compare them to Useit.com didnt you? That just isnt fair for most sites!!
That's funny Dave. Yeah, tough comparison for some. I feel bad for putting sites up against useit.com
At the same time, Stumble rules are pretty straighforward: Keep it simple. Incidentally that simple elegance is usually what many usability folks will recommend, thus, a site like Useit "magically" appeared in my Stumble surfing. This was a totally natural selection from StumbleUpon – pretty cool, huh?
Great article, but this is only half the battle (I stumbled here by the way). The other half is keeping someone on the site assuming they don't pass it by immediately. Here are my top ten reasons for leaving a stumbled site.
1. Spelling
2. Long loads
3. Poor Design
4. An article's content doesn't live up to the title
5. Things I delicious for later and never go back to but give a thumb up for getting my attention
6. Things I delicious for later and actually go back to
7. I just spaced out and hit the stumble button for no reason
8. I stumble to a site then had to do something outside the browser (seems rare, huh?) or a new tab/window and then get back to it sans interest.
9. Automated videos or obtrusive advertisements (low in the list, I know)
10. Tag stumbling-skipping a good site because its not what I'm trying to stumble happens…it just happens.
Awesome reasons, Scott–thanks for the tips. It's really good to hear from stumblers and see what they like and what turns them off.
Long loads are a really big problem for sites. It's an instant fail. Thanks for stopping by Scott.
Loading time, 90% of ads and non-compelling content (which gets submitted in vain attempts to gain traffic) are top 3 fails for me.
Some pages simply have failing audios/videos and 2-5mb images.
Great post. I will rt this one right away.
Another dimension on this topic is off course to put your page in the correct category in stumbleupon.
well usually i got rubbish, no content just ad on top and you know what i do with them
.
i hate when some one share me a link which has so many ads on it, i wont even bother to look at that page and try always to ignore that stumbler and even i block them some time
here is a little guide how to use Social Media Effectively http://www.theecommercesolution.com/blog/2007/05/...
a lot of people use stumble but they don't do it wisely… and hance blames it on the sociakl network like stumble for the failure.. whenever i log in to stumble i get to see the good stuff and the bad stuff and the intolerable stuff…. but the stuff that i prefer to thumb up is likely to have more of pictures and short content with clear text,… this is what i think stumble is all about…. and Dave thanks for doing this great job of posting it for the reader like us
[...] Wie man StumbleUpon nicht nutzen sollte – Don´t be stupid! [...]
For the last time today, palate is the roof of your mouth. Palette is a collection of colors. Please get it right.
Thanks for catching the error–fixed.
Hi and thanx for the Tipps. This can be well used also at other social networking sites like digg…
Great blog post!!! Besides the great content (like simplicity…similar to Google's approach to the Web), I think the windmill pic you posted is incredible. Thanks!
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