Getting a pageview is good, but getting a site visitor to scroll the entire length of your page is even more valuable.
A recent study by content engagement platform AddThis investigated just how important scrolling is to both publishers and advertisers. AddThis tracked the scrolling and content engagement behavior of 50,000 unique, anonymous web browsers across a variety of websites.
Here are some of the more interesting findings from the study:
Operating systems matter: The report found that Apple iOS users were 17% more likely to scroll and explore the length of a page than Windows users. This makes sense since mobile operating systems are designed for more vertical scrolling than Windows-based PCs.
Social referring isn’t the best for engagement: 65% of website visitors bounced after a one page visit when arriving from a social media referral. That means social media isn’t the best place to promote content that requires more than one page. However, or people who like to scroll, Facebook was the platform of choice when it came to sharing content, with 46% of them more likely to share on the social network. By contrast, scrollers are 33% less likely to share content to Twitter.
Google referrals have higher engagement: Referrals from Google search are 10% more likely to lead to scrolling and viewing more than one page, compared to when the referral is from a social network or social service. This shows how people searching for content through search are more likely to actively engage with it, rather than content discovered on social media. As AddThis writes in its report: “Consumers that click on links within social networks or social services may signal interest but may not have intent.”
Deliver your ads to pages optimized for engagement: Turns out a page optimized for engagement not only promotes more views for the content, but also for the surrounding ads. In some ways, seeing a social sharing button legitimizes a website, and hence legitimizing its advertisements. Ads delivered on landing pages or sites that have tools for sharing and content engagement have an 85% higher viewability rate compared to pages that did not have such tools.
Don’t waste your time after work: You might think people like to browse and scroll more when they’re not at work, but as it turns out, the opposite is true. People engage with and read far more content during work hours of 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM on weekdays. In addition, scrolling behavior is 55% more likely to occur on Tuesdays and Wednesdays compared to weekends.
Business is better than fashion is better than entertainment: When it comes to scrolling, business and finance related content received high engagement rates. In addition, scrolling is 45% more likely to occur when landing on style and fashion content and is 25% less likely to occur once landing on entertainment content.
