What do Sumblers Like to Stumbleupon
I got nice traffic from SU on several web pages I made. However, I do have some disappointments with it. I developed few sites, and am trying to figure out, by analyzing web statistics, what kind of content users like the most.
Before sharing my findings, let me say that I do understand that users will vary a lot depending on what tags you stumble a page with. Different tags will bring different people. That being said, here are few findings:
- SU users like a lot, how shall I call it, ‘instant satisfaction’. To see cool picture, funny short video, some nice short wise saying. If content is brief (in regards of seconds needed to consume it), I guess stumbler’s mouse is still somewhere above ‘thumbs-up’ button, and he/she will instinctively stumble the page. If there is, god forbid, content that needs some contemplation, user may simply forget to stumble the page.
- TOP 10… BEST of … Users like a lot lists, so just put at the beginning of a title ‘top 10…’, ‘12 things…’ , ‘100 ways…’ etc, and users will stumble a page more. For one reason or another, users like to think that there is a finite list of something, and that your page will cover all there is to the topic, or if not all, that by some magic you did manage to include the real TOP 10, or THE BEST xyz… Now, if you reverse the order, and start with 10, 9, 8, …1; o boy, will the reader be anxious to get to the bottom of it. Lists are so pervasive in all media. I personally avoid putting list about anything, but that’s just me.
- Good design is VERY important, often more than a content! I am just a web developer, and will have to find some designer soon to polish my sites.
- SU users (and internet users in general) seem to have ADHD. They just like to jump from page to page. If your page is not designed in the right way, they won’t even spend 10 seconds on it trying to figure out the context of the content. I cannot really blame them. I often behave the same. There are billions of pages, and if author doesn’t bother to make a page the most readable and understandable, why would user bother reading it.
This is an excellent example of what I am talking about:
Very little time was invested in the page (site). However, stumbleupon response was way better than for many other pages in which I invested hours, days or weeks of writing and programming, and that have much more useful things to say, or have cool internet tools.
NOTE: above (almost exact) post I originally posted as a comment on Build Super Links and Traffic With StumbleUpon. I realized that I may as well make it a blog post that I can stumbleupon so that users can comment on it, providing a feedback to my ‘theory’ of stumblers and internet users in general.
UPDATE: most recent finding is that sTumblers definitely like to stumble upon this page. There were 3004 8000+ stumbles the first two days!
Are YOU a Stumbler? Please leave your opinion and comment.
related:
Category: SEO Tips 24 comments »
November 28th, 2007 at 11:38 am
I totally agree. I use stumble some months and I behaved the way u describe. that’s because I think SU is something like a pleasant break between my everydayroutine so I want to see short and smart stimulants but long theoretical dissertations..
November 28th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
You overlooked one minor fact, this was in fact too long for a SU user to read. ;-). Better luck next time!
November 28th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
I like to Sumble upon typos.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Hunh, photos and videos are the things that usually bore me. I like good text content usually unless it’s full of very dense technical jargon. I /hate/ quotations and most online comics.
November 28th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Personally – I am looking for specific content.
If it is immediately apparent – I thumbs up the page – to save it and move on.
That said….some stuff is cool and unusual and I will pause and read it – and likely will not thumbs up OR thumbs down.
Strange, I know….
I’m liking the “pretty, shiny” pages – with decent content.
Hope that helps!
November 29th, 2007 at 12:34 am
I am a StumbleUpon addict. But I am also a reader, and I love content! Even long, deep content. I will dig into the archives of a site, and even try out a few of the offerings on a site’s blog roll. I give thumbs up to sites I like, rarely to those I don’t care for.
I have a comment on site design. As a stumbler, I dislike site designs that give a list of Google sponsored sites, etc., on the top of the screen. I have to then scroll down to even read the post to see if I want to stay and read more. Very irritating.
Marti in Mexico
November 29th, 2007 at 1:48 am
Agreed. If I wanted to read a novel I’d go and buy a book. a stumbled on page should really take no more then 2 minutes to fully enjoy and get the idea of whats going on.
November 29th, 2007 at 5:33 am
Make it clever and make it new. Yes, instant helps too unless the content hits close to something I’m very interested in.
November 29th, 2007 at 7:25 am
I found your comment about Stumblers having ADHD interesting… I definitely don’t have ADHD in the clinical sense, but when I’m stumbling, I definitely am clickity-clicking. Most of the time I’m stumbling when bored, thus the low attention span. I’m interested in the “quick fix”, if you will.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Sumblers?
November 29th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Ha ha! I didn’t even notice misspelling. Now I understand the third Sumbler’s comment! I wonder how many people noticed.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
pretty much sums it up…
November 30th, 2007 at 2:02 am
When stumbling, I often give a quick glance at every site I come upon, if I think it may be interesting, I bookmark to return and spend more time on it later. Kind of like a squirrel preparing for winter.
November 30th, 2007 at 11:36 am
I like typos as well..hah..sorry I couldn’t even read what you wrote
December 1st, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Check out the review page to see what Stumblers are saying about this page, and what they think of SEO people attempting to exploit the system.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/seolutions.net/blog/what-do-sumblers-like-to-stumbleupon/
December 1st, 2007 at 7:19 pm
This blog post was NOT about SEO. Read it again.
What stumblers are saying about this page is this:
People who like this website: 50 (max) visible (reached after less than 2 days)
Number of stumblers who have seen this page: more than 8000 in first 2 days.
Comparison: a page that is not liked by stumblers gets about 150-200 visits at most.
December 5th, 2007 at 6:10 am
Stumbleupon can without a doubt send you a nice amount of traffic, but the quality of the traffic isn’t really that great. The traffic very rarely monetizes well.
December 5th, 2007 at 7:01 am
Did anyone tell you that requiring from readers of your web site to login in order to be able to comment is NOT the way to ‘increase search engine traffic’?
Why? Because it discourages commenting. If less people comment, than less people will search for your blog post to see if there are more comments. Why would they search for it? Because they can forget to bookmark it.
Did anyone tell you that ‘Name’ field is for your name, nickname, or pseudoname, and NOT for keyword stuffing.
Now to comment on your comment: if you judge the quality of traffic by the amount of ad clicks that you get from it, than SU may not be for you. However, I do not judge the quality based on that. I also think that it may be inverse proportional to that because I usually click on ad (if ever) when the page doesn’t have information that I need, and ad may have that info. Higher ad click rate would say more about the (lack of) quality of a site, than about the quality of its visitors. In fact, tests confirmed this with a client in the past when degraded quality of a page increased monetization and decreased page views per visitors.
December 6th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Yeh, if ever you catch a lucky but handy bucket of traffic from a good/useful stumble then i think you’ll be shocked at the poor earnings-return but it’s always good to try.
Good post, thank you.
Marty.
January 16th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Stumble is great, I like to use the tool often. There are many great sites which can be found from there. Great post.
February 8th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Stumble is not worth it. I don’t see why people are still interested… the traffic doesn’t convert making it absolutely useless.
January 5th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
You are right on about what Stumblers like. They want quick and fast. Seems like their attention span is very limited. BTW-SU and adsense don’t mix! If you are doing both, then you probably are priced! Shaw
March 1st, 2009 at 10:22 am
I’ve only been a stumbler for a few weeks, and I am still searching for ways on how to effectively use it to generate more traffic, and it’s still quite vague to me how it would help me in improving my PR. Your post has some really helpful points in it, and thank you for these very useful tips.
April 12th, 2009 at 6:37 am
i’m not sure if i’m supposed to be choosing up/down for every page or if i’m only supposed to choose up/down when it’s obvious. what i’ve been doing is only rating it down if i don’t want to see anything like it, and rating it up if i want it in my favorites (i treat it like bookmarking almost). but if it’s something neutral or in between, i just click the stumble button. i do this because if i click thumbs down, it may exclude a related site that i would really like, and if i click thumbs up, it will just be another “why is this in here” site in my favorites.
i really dislike the saving every thumbs up page in your favorites thing (and you cannot remove these sites from your favorites without canceling your thumbs up), because that is the only thing that is preventing me from giving the thumbs up to a lot of pages i like. i treat it more like bookmarking, which i’m not sure if that’s what you’re supposed to do. so basically i give a lot more thumbs down than up because of this. i suggest stumbleupon change this.