While my original intention for redesigning John Chow dot Com was to allow me to do more direct ad sales, the other benefit of giving the blog a brand new look is more traffic.
A new theme helps generates renewed interest and buzz for your blog. Readers who haven’t checked out your blog for awhile will come to see the new looks. What kind of traffic increase can a new theme generate? Here’s some traffic stats taken two weeks before the theme change and two weeks after the theme change.
Traffic Increase Because of New Theme
The figures on the left represents traffic for the two week period of August 8 to 21 (the day before the new theme went live). The figures on the right represent the traffic for two weeks after the new theme went live.
As you can see, the theme created a significant increase in traffic. Average daily pageviews went from 10,083 per day to 12,562 per day. The new theme seem to have spun of a wave of bloggers rushing to give their blog a new look. Shoemoney recently got my theme designer, Nate Whitehill of Unique Blog Design to give him a refresh. The same goes for Darin Carter at Darin.cc. Nate tells me he has received a ton of new design work since my new theme went live. I’m sure more business will be coming his way.
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