CTR

CTR stands for click-through rate, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You’ve got links and your page, and for your audience to see what’s on the other side, they have to click through. Because CTR looks at clicks versus views, it is an essential user engagement evaluation formula. You take the number of user clicks divided by the number of user views on a given link to find out the percentage of engagement on that link.      

Why is CTR important?

CTR helps you understand how users engage with your website. It is often used to see how a marketing campaign, like a Google Ad or email campaign, for example, performs with your audience. You want to know what is capturing your audience's attention and what isn't. When you know how to capture your audience, you'll be able to develop better campaigns to keep users engaged. This builds trust and boosts sales or other engagements like reading a blog.

CTR Gone Bad

Everything sounds amazing, right? Right! Except… you can’t stick a million links on a page and expect them all to perform well. CTR can become less effective when there are too many links. But, is there such a thing as too many links? Yes, there is! It may seem like a good idea to create as many links as possible by casting a wide net to capture a large number of clicks, but some issues crop up when you do that.

Your Users Swim in an Ocean of Links

A webpage piled high with links is a bit overwhelming for some users. They may become paralyzed in the face of a link tsunami and not engage at all. Instead, they log off the site. Placing links in a manner that is inviting, and helps progress a story or series of actions along, encourages the user to engage more. The goal is to take your audience on a pleasant journey to the next call to action.

Click-Rate Effectiveness Gets Spread Thin

An inappropriately large number of links can cause some data collection and attention-holding issues. Your audience could quickly lose focus. They may forget why they were visiting your site in the first place. Instead of sticking around to read through a beautifully crafted article or completing a transaction to buy a product, the user becomes occupied with clicking through links. They do not stop long enough to consume important content. This can also dilute important data collection in terms of clicks. It's more effective to monitor a few purposeful links in between well-crafted bits of content. 

It Gets Repetitive

If you create 500 (or even, say, 15) links that direct users to the same page, you're going to annoy your audience. Again, it is a good idea to strategize how you will use your links throughout your site or within your blog. It's a little off-putting having to do the same motion over and over again. Also, having several links to the same page can skew the accuracy of CTR. It's good e-marketing practice to be more selective with your link usage and understand the purpose behind the links.

How to Improve Your CTR

A good click-through rate is a higher number of clicks than views. In other words, the higher the percentage, the better the rate. Your goal is to gain more user clicks than user eyes on the page's links. To improve CTR, you want to create utterly clickable links. These links need to be so irresistible that your audience cannot help but click on the link. Think of your link as a fishing lure. You want to place the best bait on that hook so that your audience bites without a pause.

And what's the bait?

Good quality content that compels your audience to click on that link to buy, read, or whatever the call to action is. Content for a blog is different from content for an e-commerce store, but CTR is forever.