Full disclosure, we'll be featuring A Better Place and The Inheritors until the end of next Friday. We'll be traveling to New York for meetings and wanted to showcase these two series in particular.
Because of this I'll just report of this months findings a little early. It's still the 22nd, so I'll be keeping the data proportionate (i.e. we're not measuring based on 30 or 31 days). I'll also talk a little about projected data for the remaining days of the month at the end. Cool stuff, right?
Okay, so this month, we saw a slight decrease in subscribers and click throughs compared to last month. However, for this month, we saw a proportionate increase in growth compared to August (September was just a really good month for us).
The big highlight in performance for this month was the number of episodes read for MED by Mr. Nohman (link). Part of it might be due to the high density of episodes that the series has, but readers typically consumed more episodes per session for MED than any other series featured this month.
It's first day featured saw a total of 39k views, with subsequent days at 26k and 12k. However, what's interesting to note is that on the fourth day, when it wasn't being featured, it still retained 7k views. Pretty good!
Oddly enough, all of these views only netted ~600 subscribers (comparatively to last month, Rock and Riot garnered roughly 4x that subscriber count). But MED out performed Rock and Riot in the views category. So the question is, are readers less prone to subscribing to series that have been completed or not updated in a while? MED was last updated on April of this year.
We wanted to experiment by showcasing a series that had been previously spotlighted but with a different banner design. The Black Bull of Norroway by Kit and Cat Comics showcased a darker banner that reflected the most recent story arc (seriously go read it, here).
That banner is so gorgeous!
So how did it perform the second time around? The overall number of views and subscribers increased this time around but had a lower click through rate. For comparison, here's what the previous banner looked like:
Wooo. Still gorgeous!
We were trying to go for darker themed banners for the month of October because of Halloween. Themed banners is something that I've always wanted to try out. But it turns out, scarier comics aren't super conducive to click throughs!
But, the silver lining is that once they DO click through to the comic, the comic usually wins the readers over, as was the case with The Black Bull of Norroway.
We're projected to exceed the number of episodes read for featured banners, but will probably fall just short of surpassing the click through, subscribe and share rate compared to last month.
That being said, we've gotten the MOST complaints for this month in terms of featured banners. Lots of people e-mailed in saying they were scared of the banners we were featuring - which I guess sort of accomplishes the goal? Anyway, that's sort of why you saw our systems spazz out earlier this week as we attempted to introduce faster rotates to mitigate turning users away.
That's not to say we'll shy away from featuring long form comics that delve into darker themes, we'll just try to frame them differently with the banner designs. This is both to accommodate readers, who's age skews younger, but to also increase the overall click through rate. Think about it, we saw a much lower click through rate this month, but saw similar retention (subscribes) and consumption (episodes viewed per session) compared to last month (which let's be fair, last month was pretty awesome). So something should be said about the nature of banner designs.
That being said, I loved this month's banner line up. Like MED's banner doesn't even look like a banner for a comic, it looks like something you'd see graffitied on a wall or put on a poster with some anti-establishment slogan written on it. It's so graphically intense, and remarkably beautiful. Also, Kristintipping7's banner for SCARY (link) was so cool.
Just look at it! It's so strange and amorphous, but makes total sense once you read through the series. I just love how unnerving it makes me, it's slightly difficult to tell what's going on and that's what makes it work! Again, another banner that doesn't immediately shoutout "comics!" I also love that her series banner on the episode page is the inverted version of this, that was a really cool experience clicking on the spotlight banner and it immediately being flipped.
Also, huge shoutout to Nothing Here by sh.Liu, who has been enormously patient with me. I was going to feature them two months ago, but held off until October because I wanted to push for a more thematic cohesion between the banners.
Their banner got the MOST complaints, but well done. Super creepy. LOVE IT. You can check out their work here (link).
Also, huge shout out to Gallaher & Ellis, who were featured earlier in the month for their work on The Only Living Boy (link). They tabled at New York Comic Con, and let us know that a lot of Tapastic readers came to their table to buy merch!
For November, we won't be pursuing any theme in particular, but come December, I'm thinking of a Christmas themed banner rotation? Hopefully, we won't be getting too many complaints on that one!
And now, I'll leave you with my favorite comic about Halloween, it's done by Cole Ott (I have a huge art crush on him). It's called Dare House and captures all the things I love about constructing a story. Read it here (link).