When web surfers are looking for something in particular, you might expect them to turn to a big search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. Another major option is personalized search, from Stumbleupon, the site that currently directs its members to a billion sites per month.
A new service from Stumbleupon, called StumbleThru, allows you to discover content within a domain as if you are on a “personalized tour of the site.”
Vijay Vachani, Stumbleupon Business Development Manager says StumbleThru is a fun and efficient way for surfers to consume a tailored stream of content from a site they want to explore more in depth.
Vachani says StumbleThru is as good for publishers as it is for users.
Now that Stumbleupon has syndicated the StumbleThru experience to publisher domains, creators and content providers can now leverage what Vachani calls “the StumbleUpon secret sauce” and apply it directly on their website to further engage visitors.
All it takes for the publisher is to implement a customizable button, and sites can offer their visitors a personalized, StumbleUpon-powered, guided tour of their content.
The beauty of Stumbleupon is that like-minded people from StumbleUpon’s community of over 15 million members rate the site’s content, so your visitors get to follow along a path that engaged other people who have a similar outlook.
The result is more pageviews for the publisher and more engagement by visitors, which is good for both visitor and publisher.
Vachani noted that “Interestingly, we’ve observed users switch from clicking the Stumble button on their bar to clicking the StumbleThru button on a partner’s site, indicating that Syndicated StumbleThru can decrease the bounce rates some content creators experience with StumbleUpon referrals.”
Analytics show that Syndicated StumbleThru traffic sees 1.8 times as many page views per visit, and 2.1 times as much time on site than the rest of the site’s traffic. So on average, StumbleThru traffic is around twice as engaged as other traffic on a site!
Vachani cautions that actual usage of Syndicated StumbleThru on a site will vary based on look, feel, and placement of the button. But, he says, if you can get 10% of your website visitors to use the tool, it will drive almost 20% of your page views!
NewsBlaze already uses Asterpix to help visitors find another view of stories that interest them, and we have added syndicated StumbleThru too. You can see the button at the top of the story pages, so please try it out and let us know what you think. Current StumbleThru data shows it is an effective alternate navigation method for both publishers and visitors.
One of the first Syndicated StumbleThru partners was 1x.com, which features amazing photographic images – check it out! See the graphic above, that shows their original implementation – note the simple “Stumble 1x” button in their nav bar.
Visitors who used StumbleThru on the 1x website gave a range of very positive testimonials for both 1x and StumbleThru.
Needless to say, Ralf Stelander, 1x.com founder is very happy with StumbleThru. Stelander said “The overall traffic of the 1x site has increased after we introduced StumbleThru … I must say that the kind of traffic StumbleThru produces is terrific!”
Look up at the top of this page to try the NewsBlaze StumbleThru button
See Vijay Vachani’s StumbleUpon blog post to learn more about StumbleThru.