Carousel Interaction Stats - June 2013 Update

Carousels continue to be a hot topic. The numbers I posted back in January resulted in quite a bit of discussion. Out of curiosity, I decided to revisit the data now that I have more data to pull from. The following numbers are from January 1 through June 30, 2013. We’ll be looking at the same five sites which include ND.edu and four un-named Notre Dame sites.

ND.edu

Feature are not randomized. New items go into position one and typically fall off the end. However, sometimes newer items are pulled out of rotation before older, and other times older items are returned to position one.

  • Homepage visits: 3,755,297
  • Percentage that clicked a feature: 1.07%

Percentage of total clicks for each position:

  • Position 1: 89.1%
  • Position 2: 3.1%
  • Position 3: 2.4%
  • Position 4: 2.8%
  • Position 5: 2.6%

ND.edu Click-through rates

Site 1

Site one is a departmental site. Features are loaded in random order.

  • Homepage visits: 37,688
  • Percentage that clicked a feature: 1.266%

Percentage of total clicks for each position:

  • Position 1: 71.07%
  • Position 2: 7.13%
  • Position 3: 6.71%
  • Position 4: 8.18%
  • Position 5: 6.92%

Site 1 Click-through rates

Site 2

Site two is an aggregated news site. Features are loaded with newest story first and fall off in order of appearance. It is the only one of the examples that uses an auto-playing carousel. We typically don’t create auto-playing carousels because we’re not fans, and some research shows other’s don’t like them much either. However, the numbers for this site are quite different from the others. The most notable is that it has a much higher feature click percentage.

  • Homepage visits: 43,724
  • Percentage that clicked a feature: 9.409%

Percentage of total clicks for each position:

  • Position 1: 54.57%
  • Position 2: 17.87%
  • Position 3: 10.84%
  • Position 4: 8.75%
  • Position 5: 7.97%

Site 2 Click-through rates

Site 3

Site three is an executive site. Features are not randomized. Newer items are added at the first position.

  • Homepage visits: 8,210
  • Percentage that clicked a feature: 1.51%

Percentage of total clicks for each position:

  • Position 1: 62.1%
  • Position 2: 15.32%
  • Position 3: 12.1%
  • Position 4: 10.48%

Site 3 Click-through rates

Site 4

Site four is another departmental site. Features are not randomized. Newer items are added at the first position.

  • Homepage visits: 26,900
  • Percentage that clicked a feature: 2.985%

Percentage of total clicks for each position:

  • Position 1: 84.81%
  • Position 2: 4.48%
  • Position 3: 10.71%

Site 4 Click-through rates