Over the last week I’ve been trialling the Wibiya Toolbar on my photography blog.
For those of you unfamiliar with it it is a little toolbar that appears at the bottom of the browser of those who visit your blog which allows them to do a variety of tasks. You can see it in the bottom of the screen shot below (click to enlarge).
The toolbar is customizable so there are a variety of applications that you can add to it.
On my toolbar I’ve enabled a number of applications including:
- Search – allows readers to search your blog (or the web) via Google
- Recent Posts – when clicked it shows the latest posts on the blog (while not as useful on the front page where these posts are already displayed it can help increase page views from single posts.
- Real Time Users – shows readers how many others are online and what they’re reading
- Random Posts – when clicked it takes readers to a random post on your blog
- Link Menu – allows you to add in a variety of key links on your site (like a little navigation menu, I have mine pointing to key categories and sections)
- Digg This – allows readers to digg your posts from the toolbar
- Subscribe – allows readers to subscribe to your RSS feed
- Smart Share – allows readers to share your posts via a variety of means including on social bookmarking sites, twitter, facebook and via email
- Facebook – allows readers to see your facebook fan page without leaving your site via a popup
- Twitter – allows readers to see your twitter stream as well as tweet a link out about your page without leaving your page
There are quite a few other applications/tabs that you can choose from and a number of options within some of them to different features.
You’re also abe to choose a color scheme to suit your page.
There are a variety of ways of installing it into your blog including via a WordPress plugin for those using WP.
The Results
I’ve been testing the Wibiya toolbar for about 10 days now so it’s time to look at the ‘result’ and stats that they provide publishers to see what impact (if any) using the toolbar has had.
Here’s a quick screenshot of the dashboard having selected stats for the last 7 days:
The top section of stats provides stats for each of the ‘tabs/applications’. You can drill down a little more on each one like this one for the ‘latest posts’ tab:
Worth noting – the stats in the first screen shot above do look a little more impressive than the reality as can be illustrated by the ‘latest posts’ stats which show that 586 people clicked the ‘latest posts’ toolbar tab but only 83 clicks on other posts were recorded (meaning less than 1 in 7 of the 669 people who clicked the latest posts tab actually visited another page). This is true for almost all of the other tabs. Here’s some examples:
A few comments about these results:
- people were clicking on the toolbar a lot without doing anything. I suspect this was partly a ‘curiosity factor’ at play as the toolbar is new and people are still working out what to do with it and how it works.
- considering the traffic of the site the ‘actions’ were pretty low. Wibiya doesn’t give you any stats on how many times the toolbar loaded (that’d be handy) but as the blog area of dPS (the area it was showing) does over 146,000 page views per day (over 1 million per week) I was a little surprised by the low numbers of actions. They recorded about 3000 actions in the week but considering that most of those were simply clicks on the tool bar the real conversions were not super high.
- the stats could be a lot more insightful – perhaps Wibiya will be adding a premium model where you pay for more detail but I didn’t find that some of the stats that they gave were that insightful. For example:
- it’d be handy to know that not only 83 people clicked on latest posts but to also know which posts they clicked on
- it’d be great to known which links in the navigation links tab were clicked
- It’d be handy to know what those 255 searches were for
- similarly it’d be cool to know which posts were Dugg
- it’d be great to know which posts were shared
- the other considerations that I need to take into account is the fact that I also had reader feedback during the last 10 days about the toolbar. In fact we’ve had a number of threads in our forum area talking about it and the feedback has been mixed. Originally I had the toolbar installed in the forum area as well as the blog – but I removed this after members complained at a ratio of about 9:1. On the blog area I’ve also had both negative and positive feedback about it (something I’ll keep monitoring. It seems that those complaining about it just don’t like anything popping up or obscuring any part of their browser (not surprising – even though the toolbar is pretty slim and is on the least unobtrusive part of the page).
There have obviously been some benefits from having the toolbar. I’m not complaining about having new followers, subscribers and more page views…. however the question I have to ask is whether the results are enough considering the page views and interruption of readers.
I’m going to run it for another week to see what happens when the curiosity factor with readers dies off a little more before I make any final decisions.
Have you experimented with the Wibiya toolbar (or similar ones) – what impact has it had on your site?
From my experience, the curiosity factor lasts for quite a long time, and all-in-all, Wibiya is a nice addition to my site.
I did have performance issues with the toolbar in the past, and I took it down. After a few months, I made another test. After seeing that performance significantly improved, I let it run, and I’m pleased. It isn’t amazing, but it’s a positive addition.
Darren,
I’ve looked into that tool bar before and was considering it for my blog, but wento for the twitter and facebook icons right up at the top of each post instead. I believe that people are more inclined to forward things that are in front of their face, instead of going to the bottom of the screen at the end.
The upper left hand corner of the screen is the “hot zone” for most people’s vision and the first place that the eyes hit on a web page, as well as being above the fold.
However, now that you have done this review, I am definitely going to give it another look before I give up on it.
Joshua Black
-The Underdog Millionaire
I can’t wait to give it a whirl. Thanks
Hey Darren,
Thanks for reviewing this tool. I will check it out to see how it will benefit me.
Chat with you later…
Josh
I used it for about 6 months or so (started back when you had to email the developers to get in on the program) and stopped using it a few weeks ago. I found conversions were not very high and the complaints were showing signs of a degraded experience.
I think it’s a great idea and the development team are really passionate about their product; however, it just wasn’t a good fit for the site on which I tried the toolbar.
Hey Darren,
I heard a lot about wibiya toolbar, many people says that it’s an awesome toolbar. To be honest i haven’t tried it yet, but i’m planning to try it.
The results are great buddy.
I am definatly going to try wibiya on my blog. Thanks for sharing your insights. :) !
Thanks,
Dev
Cool to see your thoughts on the toolbar too. I’ve had it installed on my primary travel blog for about a week now, and while I think it looks good and unobtrusive, I also am a bit surprised as the low percentage of people clicking on the toolbar, and then not taking a follow-up action.
As far as toolbars and pop-ups go though, I find it unobtrusive now that I’m use to seeing it.
Hi! My website went up about 4 weeks ago and I immediately installed this tool bar. I loved it until I realized it deactivated the coolest feature on my blog, the sliding headers. I don’t know why it interfered, but something had to go and it wasn’t my theme :) So, sadly, I can’t use this. Enjoy though! I have no problem reading blogs that use it.
That’s interesting you wrote a new post about Wibiya. I just discovered their toolbar the other day off another blog. It looks interesting and certainly there is potential and possibly long term could help viewers find exactly what they want in your blog. If only it would integrate into Google analytics to track the clicks and see where they are going.
I just might try it out soon myself thanks,
aBlogger
I LOVE IT! I’ve already installed it. So great for blogger!
I absolutely love this toolbar and have been using it since beta. I have seen increased on site time as well as more user engagement
I believe readers initially find it little fancy and might just play with it. But afterwards, they tend to simply ignore it. I think traditional blog design still works much better.
I am just amazed that you had 444 people on your blog at the same time, I am lucky to get that in a whole day.
I like the toolbar, keep it there!
Thanks,
Brian M. Connole
Installing it right now. Having a little trouble with getting it to display though. Followed the instructions but still nothing.
Hey, real good post.
So, to my mind not many people can use that bar right. Sometimes i hate Samthing like that.
From my point of view, blog shoud be wery simple
Hi Everybody,
First I would like to thank Darren for the post, both ProBlogger and Digital Photography School are great websites!
We have a some really exciting releases coming up in June that we have been working on for the last few months which we are sure publishers and their users will love. I won’t revel too much but lets say we are taking our “Social in a box” motto to the next level.
In regards to Darren’s post, we will introduce improved analytics and new tools to increase the usage of apps that are most important to publishers if its to Increase the number of followers/fans, increase page view, enrich content, etc as we understand different websites have different needs.
We will continue to work hard in helping websites of all types to easily integrate applications and features into their websites without the need of writing any code.
We will be happy to hear your feedback at [email protected], don’t be shy..
I was one of Wibiya’s first blogs to use the toolbar. That was about a year ago. I had it on for a few months, but I decided to take it off for a number of reasons.
First, my readers complained about it. It was too much of a distractions. They didn’t want any more stuff cluttering up the blog.
Second, I found it actually slowed down my site. Sometimes, you’d have to wait a bit for the toolbar to load.
Finally, people just didn’t use it. Like Darren, people would click on the toolbar itself, but not really end up using the features.
So, in the end, the cost outweighed the benefit. Besides, you can do most of the stuff with the toolbar without the toolbar by integrating features directly into your blog.
The problem I get with people sharing my content is that most of my readers are not part of the whole Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter community. They may have Facebook, but they aren’t into the rest of the stuff, so I choose not to even add the buttons. I’m testing with a Twitter icon but that’s about it. Wibiya isn’t good for me now, but great review.
This is a nice strategy into getting your readers more interested with your blogs. People enjoy blogs which offers many features and the page does not look so boring at all. Also, the toolbar is an instant access and an easy way for readers to share your blogs and be read by people who are of the same interests online.
Lol, I read ‘worth nothing’ instead of ‘worth noting’. This was also my first thought when I say the toolbar as in my opinion it adds to much clutter to the blog.
I already have enough plug-ins running and I know how tempting it can be to install another ‘big thing’ if a successful blogger is doing it. But I skip this one.
Has anyone checked out the Apture Search Bar on http://goodlifezen.com. Seems like one people should also checkout.
Disclaimer: I work for Apture :)
Andrew
We are also using the toolbar for the last few days and the figures look amazing, but as Darren points out, spend some time and look deeper, people are just experimenting with the new features and figuring out if they want the toolbar for their site. Slows page load time if you load up a lot of widgets.
Used this toolbar on a business school conference website last November: http://conference.mccombssema.com … and there are 2 things I noticed that may help to reduce complaints:
1) Less may be more, so just having maybe Twitter, Facebook, and 1 or 2 other features instead of many available features might make it less taxing on your visitors’ brains
2) Found a CSS fix that allows you to change the width of the toolbar to match the width of your website content, which gives a more pleasant, cohesive, and integrated feel to the combined look of your content & the toolbar:
#wibiyaToolbar_tbl{
width: 960px !important;
margin-left:auto !important;
margin-right:auto !important;
}
… So maybe these can improve perceptions
Like Rich and Brett commented, I also tried the plugin — and blogged about it after two weeks as you did above. People commented, and there were enough complaints that I deactivated it. Have a look: http://ariwriter.com/enrich-your-blog-readers-experience-with-wibiya/
I’m always slightly annoyed when I see the toolbar on a site, but not as much as when I see the sign up to to my news letter pop up before I even get into the site. Sometimes those things work though.. always worth a test.
Ya, Brett McKay brought up a key aspect in the load time of off site scripts like this. I wonder if anyone has tested it with Yslow or any other load time tools.
I was very much on the verge of testing this on some of my top sites before reading this Darren, so thanks. I think it may be prudent to run it on some smaller sites first. The 9 to 1 ratio of bad feedback was surprising also, I found the toolbar to be useful when I personally encountered it on other sites.
I ran a similar toolbar (different brand but very much the same functionality) on Herbivoracious.com for a few days. I only do about 3k page views per day, and percentage wise I was getting the same results you are reporting… pretty much negligible. I decided it wasn’t worth the visual clutter and additional page load time so I killed it pretty quick.
I’ve tried the Wibiya toolbar on several sites and was decidedly disappointed by the lack of user interaction. What I thought would be a really cool addition to the site, turned out to be just ho-hum. I never had any user complaints, but ultimately decided to keep the toolbar on only one of the sites I manage.
Site A: is a local news site with everyday people who love FB and don’t pay much attention to any other type of social bookmarking. I removed the Wibiya toolbar and moved the FB links to the top.
Site B: attracts a more tech-savvy audience who spend a lot of time online and are trained to ignore marketing messages. They don’t do too much with the toolbar, but they don’t complain either. So, the toolbar stays.
I figure if I save a few visitors each day who would have clicked away to see the twitter stream then it’s a good thing.
Have to go the Javascript route in order to install it on my wordpress blog but now it is working fine. Very cool. I’m already seeing the benefits.
Have you tested the Apture toolbar? I use it on my site and this post makes me wonder whether or not it’s better than Wibiya.
Apture offers different things though (and some similar).
So if you ever get around to testing it too, I’d love a post on it. Comparing the two maybe.
I am not a real fan of social media toolbars. They get in the way and my fans also don’t seem to care for them.
So they are providing details but not full one or you may say half hearted.
If they want to be successful than certainly they should and must look at the suggestion which you added above.
Here I found good policies for gaining a huge traffic and provide readers with more interesting material. Its better to provide something enjoyable and interesting which can gain the reader’s interest. I think toolbar is a good technique to share your material.
however, i haven’t seen the benefit yet
I tried it on one my blog. It sometimes slow down the page load process. I am bit curious if is there any hack to solve this.
One of the neat tools that I found on the wibiya bar was the ability to add a Flickr gallery to it. I run an embroidery blog, and we have a Flickr group associated with it. It’s great to be able to bring that group onto the site without having to write a bunch of code.
And having a Random button is a cool way to get people digging deep in the site.
I like it!
So far so good. I like the real time stats and have already noticed an increase in rss and facebook subscriptions, and extra page views (from the random site button).
No complaints yet and it doesn’t seem to slow down my site at all so I’ll continue to use it unless viewers tell me otherwise.
I look forward to checking out the new features coming in June.
Yes I have noticed that some blogger use this toolbar on their blog. Well your review is very nice. thanks.
I have tried it on my blog and took it down cause it was lowering my blog upload speed. Also, I did not find it very useful.
It may be something to look into in the future.
Right now I am currently trying to speed up the page loads on my blog without changing hosting plans and I feel that the Wibiya Toolbar may slow it back down again.
Like I said, it may be something to look into in the future but honestly it’s not something that takes my fancy.
I hadn’t heard of it until reading this article, but I love trying out cool looking bloggy gadgets. I have no idea how readers will respond, but I really like it!
To the person who said the placement of the toolbar won’t get readers to share links and interact, I’d suggest they implement the “badges” available that can be added anywhere on the site and trigger the Facebook, Twitter and photos feature.
Hmm… I’m off to investigate it now. I’ve seen it but I pushed it off like so many other things. Thanks for posting!
My initial response to this post was to give the toolbar a go, but after reading the review and the subsequent comments, I think I will give it a miss. Partly because it doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression with many people, but also because there seems to be a bit of technical tinkering to do to make it work efficiently. And, for the time being, I have had enough of tinkering.
I agree with @Stephen 100%. It seems to be an attractive item on a blog and it will even make the blog look more professional but in the end it might not be that useful. In my case, I have seen this toolbar a lot of times but it is good to read more about it.
I tried to visit the site to feel the sense of visiting with the toolbar exists and yes, you are right – it’s about curiosity.
However I found that the toolbar got variety of useful actions as well. As a visitor, I love this as it makes my visit and navigation easier. Maybe I’ll try on the webmaster’s side later but in the same time I do hope it could be handled better with some improvements as you had mentioned.
Hello Darren.
Thanks a ton for sharing this option. I really wanted to know how people were using that bar over their blogs :-)
~~ Sarah ~~
Hi Darren…. I loaded the tool bar on my blog earlier today after reading your post… it took a bit of time, installing it on my mac system was not quite as streamlined as it first appeared…. but after all was done… i tested it, and then, finally removed it. Too distracting, and I am unsure of the benefit. I still have the plug in and can activate it later… perhaps….
I have been playing with it for months. I installed it before my site had any real traffic (its now over 200+ uniques a day). I find that the impact is minimal, and that the “dig” feature slows down my site a bit. Its a mixed bag, I need to test different modules with the bar. My decision is up in the air right now.
Darren,
I had the Wibya Toolbar loaded for a short while, then removed it. My blog is new and i have no metrics for my decision. But, here is why I removed it.
1. Seemed to clutter my blog
2. Distracted my attention
When a visitor first visits my site, I’d like them to have a clean and uncluttered experience. With so many other blogs searching for the next great monetizing idea or widget, I’d rather buck the system and standout visually.
Not to say the Wibya isn’t great for some blogs, just not mine.
Instead I use “Sexy Bookmarks” plug-in, which is heavy on design ascetics and light on functional fluff.
Hi Darren,
It looks like an interesting toolbar. Personally, I will put this in the wait and see files to see how it catches on .
Thanks,
devin