Barbara Hart Radisavljevic
Anyone who has been active at Virily for very long has noticed some new features as you read and comment and share posts. The first one we noticed at the end of May when the site was updated to comply with new GDPR regulations. That’s when the new checkboxes appeared beneath our commenting boxes. Most of us are used to checking those boxes by now, and we realize they or something like them are necessary.
However, there are some other new additions I am not so neutral about. I wonder how you feel about those. The first is that new ad appearing at the bottom of the screen that one can’t seem to close. At least I’ve not figured out how to close it. If you have, please share in the comments. There are pros and cons to an ad like this. It’s obviously designed to trick people into clicking it even if they are only trying to find a way to make it go away. It makes reading our posts harder and attempts to take people away from reading to follow the ad link.
On the other side of the question, if people click the ads and do what the ad wants (make purchase, etc.) Virily will make more money to keep going and pay us maybe a bit more. Do you think this outweighs making our posts harder to read? Knowing each side of this, do you want the ads at the bottom to stay or go away.
The other new things are the new share buttons on the side and at the very end of our posts before the block ads and comment boxes appear. I’ve been playing with those share buttons. I clicked the G+ button on the left and it did put my post on Google Plus, but it did not contain my referral link. In fact, none of the Shareaholic buttons I tried appeared to contain it. Twitter was my primary test for all buttons. The referral links for Twitter and Facebook show up clearly when I use the big red or blue buttons at the very top of a post or just under the reaction bar at the end. The red Pinterest button in those locations did not produce a referral number, but I was able to add it by editing the link in Pinterest. I hope it sticks.
The takeaway from this change seems to be that the new Shareaholic buttons may be good for bringing more people to the site because they are easy to find and click on. But if Virily members use them to promote Virily posts, they may not get referral credit. But you still may get more guest visits. I have never personally liked the sidebar sharing icons, but at least on this site they stay put and don’t cover up any of the post like that annoying ad at the bottom does.
Now it’s time for you to express your opinion below. If you are a Virily writer, try to picture yourself as a guest visitor arriving at a site with these features. How do you feel about how they affect the look and the use of the site by visitors, as well as your own earnings here.
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Question of
Do you think the new ads at the bottom of the page improve the appearance of the page?
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Yes
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No
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It doesn’t matter to me.
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Question of
Do you wish there were a way to click something to hide the ad when you’re reading a post?
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Yes
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No
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It doesn’t bother me so I don’t really care if it’s there.
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Question of
Do you think the new ad at the bottom will help increase earnings for Virily members?
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Yes
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No
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I have no idea.
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Question of
Do you like the new sharing buttons on the left?
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Yes
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No
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I have no real preference.
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Question of
Do you like the colorful new sharing buttons right at the end of the post?
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Yes
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No
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I have no real preference.
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Question of
Do you plan to use the new buttons on the left side or right after the post to share content?
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Yes
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No, I will continue to use the older large red and blue buttons.
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I never share anything from Virily.
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Great features added on Virily. Love the blogs on technology. Though there should be some security updates on the website and a few articles on internet security would be good. There is an issue was facing while logging in. My Norton Antivirus was showing some random error code and I was unable to login and had to disable it. Norton Support suggested me it was an site issue. So a few blogs on internet security and why such errors occur would be appreciated.
I think many of the bugs that used to concern me here have been fixed. At least for now.
I have learnt to not notice the ads, so as long as there are no pop ups, I don’t mind them.
The bad one that popped up at the bottom appears to be gone now, and I’m glad. The others don’t bother me.
I haven’t even heard of a lot of the share options. I had a StumbleUpon account so I tried that only to find out that StumbleUpon is either changing its name or merging with something called Mix. There is no Mix option.
StumbleUpon is transitioning to Mix. I wrote a blog post about it last week. I like it much better than StumbleUpon. It has a neater interface. I shared it on one of the Facebook groups. But I’m not sure it will accept shares from Virily. I haven’t tried because I’m still trying to delete Niume links from Flip and Pinterest, and on Mix it is difficult, if not impossible to delete links. I’m only posting links there from my own sites or sites with a long history.
I just noticed that the offense ad at the bottom is not at the bottom of this page as I type. I hope it won’t reappear. I wonder if the stats showed it wasn’t helping or that the bounce rate was higher since they added it.
I’ve noticed that, if I share a link from Virily, Mix works just fine. If I share a link from ClickASnap, the image doesn’t display, just a white square. If you click on it the link displays, however.
I haven’t shared much from ClickASnap lately or been there. It’s too hard for me to navigate the way I’m used to since they disabled the right clicking. I understand why they don’t want us right clicking on images, but I used it to navigate so I wouldn’t lose my place. I liked to right-click on profiles and then go explore the profile without losing my place on the original page. I only wanted to open the page in a new tab. If I could still do that, I’d return to ClickASnap.
So much to say. I believe the site is moving to Sharaholic as their publisher. This makes sense for the other changes. Not everyone gets referral views. It only works with some accounts, but such is life. I share stuff unless the site has massive down times and then I stop. (I hardly ever remember to mark the box so I get to come back!
Where did you learn that Shareaholic is a publisher? I think they just supply promotion tools like sharing buttons.
I don’t mind them trying to trick us into accidentally clicking, but what is happening here is that if we enlarge the screen (a necessity for smart phone users and people trying to keep a safe distance from their screens) the ads enlarge more than the content and cover up the places we need to click in order to function on the site. This happens on my computer screen as well as on the phones and tablets. In my book that is not just a design flaw it is a bug. But I have confidence they will work it out. But in the meantime anyone who is even slightly visually impaired is not going to be able to use the site at all. I’d like to see this wonderful site become more accessible.
Another reason I don’t use a smartphone to do anything online except in emergencies. The only ad I’ve had trouble with is that one at the bottom. I can scroll around it, but it’s a pain. Which means I’ll probably go start my blog post that’s due on Wednesday. I’ve been procrastinating, as usual.
This does not happen with other sites on the smart phone! I use mine online all the time. Had to when I was at my friend’s bedside 24/7. Virily just needs to fix this.
I agree they need to fix it. So far today I haven’t seen that bottom ad. I hope they ditched it.
I just got on, but haven’t see the bottom ad yet either, and guess what, because of that the site is now working on my smart phone. Yayyy, Virily, I just hope it lasts! I love this site already and sure do not want to see it fall by the wayside (and lose all our “stuff” on which I was keeping a photo journal that got wiped! It was like having your scrapbooks all burned in a fire! Remember?
My reply to your longer comment landed on top of it instead of under it, so I hope you saw it. It may not have triggered a notification.
There is a whole world of IT professionals (UX specialists) that work on building and designing the UI so that the rest of us can enjoy it.
That said the ads are as you pointed out good and bad. Bad in the sense that they are hard to miss sometimes (and I’ve accidentally clicked them 4 or 5 times in the past weeks). But good in the sense that they represent ad revenue which eventually trickles down tot he rest of us.
Nice article!!!
You’re right that you can try to share in more places, but that doesn’t mean that just because the button is there those places will all accept Virily links. I haven’t tested all of them yet, but some sites won’t even accept posts from Blogger. A button simply means you can try to share a link at a site. I’m sorry I missed your post. I tried to see if anyone else had written about this, but it appears I didn’t find everything in the places I usually look. Is your post also a poll?
Most sites that have bottom ads also have a way to click something to get rid of them and make it easier to read the post. I’m afraid guest visitors will give up on this site if the changes cause slower loading and make the site look spammy.
I noticed that this morning, too. Maybe when the admin looked at the stats they saw a higher bounce rate after the ad was added. Anyway, I hope it’s gone for good or will have a way to close it if it reappears. I hope it was just temporary. Now if the site would stop bouncing around while we try to read and answer comments….
Yes. You’re right about that. I’m hoping all the ads, especially the one at the bottom, don’t drive people away.