Ok, as you know we did a more thorough switch to the new column layout I wanted to test: content-sidebar-sidebar.

Well, first off it’s clear that design and layout are very much correlated. Our old design did not support the clear use of the new column design. So, with a stripped design, what are our results?

Well, preliminary results show a 5% increase in CTR for Blogaholics. This happened almost overnight. And has remained relatively stable.

That’s enough of a push for us to begin redesigning the rest of our blogs. With all designs in place, I will fiddle here and there with ad placement and colour, since the new design is amenable to my tinkering skills.

I think the main areas we are seeing improvement from are:

- the removal of images or lines between sidebar content items

- the use of a solid white background

- the upper sidebar column cap ad block

- matching font sizes better from category names, etc to ads

- replacing lines between posts with extra whitespace

Overall, the improvement is in the flow of the eye. With no extra graphics to stop the eye, the content and the ads read as one, and that is an improvement for us.

I will continue to let you know how things go with this test, and with our other blogs. But it is clear that this column layout is working, and that our design is much better for our advertising returns.