Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim recently sat down with Ask.com’s user experience guru, Michael Ferguson. Topic of discussion? Ask’s awesome new three column search interface. Ferguson goes on to explain they are working towards gaining visitor retention; keeping their visitors on the site longer and coming back more often.
They have taken a bold step by displaying only 3 sponsored advertisements on results pages. The intuitive design displays relevant category based information in the left panel, the search results content in the center as well as additional content from relevant blogs and photo thumbnails in the right panel.
Ask has been testing this interface for quite awhile now and has happily reported quality monetization and great user experience. The big factor attributing to this layout’s success is the ability to free up more vertical space and allow more quality content to be displayed above the fold of a result page.
The room we used was dark, so you’ll barely see Ferguson, but you’ll see plenty of the new interface, and Ferguson shares some great info, not found on any other site. Another Marketing Pilgrim exclusive! :)
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