I recently posted this on another site, but I thought I'd throw it up here too.
Scavenger hunts are a great interactive way to bring new users to your site, and make people more accustomed to navigating your content. So why don't more sites do it?
This past Easter, I ran an Egg Hunt promotion on my sites where I hid little egg images across my entire video game network (two sites and one forum connecting them both). As a result, for the day of Easter (which can be a very low-traffic day for many sites), I was able to grab substantially more pageviews than I average.
Average: 2.4k pageviews --- Egg Hunt: 6.5k pageviews (+170%)
![[Image: zwx1qu.png]](http://i41.tinypic.com/zwx1qu.png)
Do the pageviews convert well?
Naturally, because of the nature of the contest, your CTR will go down substantially for the day, although your total gross income from ads that day will likely go up (that's the tradeoff). This is more ideal for sites that sell products or provide some type of premium service.
Why do I want a bunch of shallow pageviews?
This really depends here; it's possible such an event isn't for you. If you are a young site looking to impress affiliates or advertisers, then having the boost in pageviews -- even if it's only aesthetics -- can help you a lot. While much of good promotion is conversion, we all know that perception plays a role in internet success. This can certainly help with perception.
It's also great for community involvement. While you may get more shallow pageviews initially, this can condition your users to navigate your content more freely, and help establish a community feel which is great for the long-term health of your website.
You can start a Scavenger Hunt on your site in three easy steps
1. Pick an Event
Come up with an occasion that is worthy of the extra effort for the contest. This can be any holiday you want, with the only limitations being your own creativity and implementation techniques. You can even do this for newly released products, rather than just holidays.
You can do scavenger hunts, or "find it" games year round depending on your niche and what you want to do.
Examples:
Easter: Easter Egg Hunt
Thanksgiving: Turkey Hunt
Halloween: Ghost Hunt
Christmas: Present Hunt
St.Patrick's Day: Leprechaun/Pot of Gold Hunt
Valentine's Day: Heart/Chocolate Hunt
Independence Day: Fireworks Hunt
New Product Release: Coupon/Free Product Hunt
2. Decide where and how players know where to look
Traditional: You can do a traditional hunt in the true spirit of scavenger games, by providing specific hints/puzzles for figuring out each item location.
Frenzy: By doing a frenzy-style hunt, you are providing tips only on occasion at your own discretion, and instead letting everyone run free on your site(s) with a checklist to try and find all the stuff.
Bread Crumbs: A crumb scavenger system basically involves an item behind a passworded page, forum, or redeemable only at an email address of some type. Players find items through "crumbs" otherwise known as tips throughout the site. Tips are usually bits of information, that when put together, help you decipher the code/what you need to do to get the product (if there is one).
Plug-and-Play: If you have a MyBB forums, and don't mind the lack of visuals with manual placements, you can optionally download the Easter Egg plugin or similar items. Simply plug in the thread id(s) where you want the eggs to be hidden, and you're ready to go. This isn't as good as manually posting and recording in terms of the whole visual experience, but it's a great way to get the job done easily.
3. Come up with a reward system for finding items
Products: Ideally your site has some kind of product or coupons that you can give away.
No-Products: If you don't have any products to reward players with, then don't worry! A simple checklist for people to print off will do just fine. Players want to feel a sense of accomplishment and progression, and this will do the job.
Who Wins?: You can decide who wins prizes based on a number of different things. This can be the first person to find the item and report it (leaving the item up so others can enjoy the finding aspect of the game), by finding sets of items, or even to be the one that finds the most.
If you have a forums, then you can optionally create reward icons or signatures to be displayed for the grand-prize winner of your hunt for a set period of time, or until infinity.
How To Promote Your Website Event
Promotion for "find it" events is really easy to do, and there are a few ways to do it.
Viral: Instead of just going right out there and telling everyone about the event, you can choose to initiate the contest virally. For example, on Easter I made a twitter account for an Easter Bunny, and routinely sent out tweets on Twitter of the bunny hopping around with tags like #Easter #Contests or whatever is relevant.
Then, once people are curious, I tweet "hop...hop...hop... *jumps in hole*" followed by a link and the proper tags for maximum exposure.
People are curious at this point. They just spotted the Easter Bunny! And he jumped in a hole. Well, the link they click on can lead them right to your contest, where you are "in character" so to speak (as if it has nothing to do with the site, and it's just the bunny being devious). And you can explain the nature of the contest through that. This can work for most character holidays.
Traditional: Let users know about your event in advance. Promote the contest on your site to begin at a certain time, and make use of social bookmarking and social networks. This is one of the times where these types of promotion tools become very useful, because it's really your target audience for the event -- casual people looking for something interesting.
Scavenger hunts are a great interactive way to bring new users to your site, and make people more accustomed to navigating your content. So why don't more sites do it?
This past Easter, I ran an Egg Hunt promotion on my sites where I hid little egg images across my entire video game network (two sites and one forum connecting them both). As a result, for the day of Easter (which can be a very low-traffic day for many sites), I was able to grab substantially more pageviews than I average.
Average: 2.4k pageviews --- Egg Hunt: 6.5k pageviews (+170%)
Do the pageviews convert well?
Naturally, because of the nature of the contest, your CTR will go down substantially for the day, although your total gross income from ads that day will likely go up (that's the tradeoff). This is more ideal for sites that sell products or provide some type of premium service.
Why do I want a bunch of shallow pageviews?
This really depends here; it's possible such an event isn't for you. If you are a young site looking to impress affiliates or advertisers, then having the boost in pageviews -- even if it's only aesthetics -- can help you a lot. While much of good promotion is conversion, we all know that perception plays a role in internet success. This can certainly help with perception.
It's also great for community involvement. While you may get more shallow pageviews initially, this can condition your users to navigate your content more freely, and help establish a community feel which is great for the long-term health of your website.
You can start a Scavenger Hunt on your site in three easy steps
1. Pick an Event
Come up with an occasion that is worthy of the extra effort for the contest. This can be any holiday you want, with the only limitations being your own creativity and implementation techniques. You can even do this for newly released products, rather than just holidays.
You can do scavenger hunts, or "find it" games year round depending on your niche and what you want to do.
Examples:
Easter: Easter Egg Hunt
Thanksgiving: Turkey Hunt
Halloween: Ghost Hunt
Christmas: Present Hunt
St.Patrick's Day: Leprechaun/Pot of Gold Hunt
Valentine's Day: Heart/Chocolate Hunt
Independence Day: Fireworks Hunt
New Product Release: Coupon/Free Product Hunt
2. Decide where and how players know where to look
Traditional: You can do a traditional hunt in the true spirit of scavenger games, by providing specific hints/puzzles for figuring out each item location.
Frenzy: By doing a frenzy-style hunt, you are providing tips only on occasion at your own discretion, and instead letting everyone run free on your site(s) with a checklist to try and find all the stuff.
Bread Crumbs: A crumb scavenger system basically involves an item behind a passworded page, forum, or redeemable only at an email address of some type. Players find items through "crumbs" otherwise known as tips throughout the site. Tips are usually bits of information, that when put together, help you decipher the code/what you need to do to get the product (if there is one).
Plug-and-Play: If you have a MyBB forums, and don't mind the lack of visuals with manual placements, you can optionally download the Easter Egg plugin or similar items. Simply plug in the thread id(s) where you want the eggs to be hidden, and you're ready to go. This isn't as good as manually posting and recording in terms of the whole visual experience, but it's a great way to get the job done easily.
3. Come up with a reward system for finding items
Products: Ideally your site has some kind of product or coupons that you can give away.
No-Products: If you don't have any products to reward players with, then don't worry! A simple checklist for people to print off will do just fine. Players want to feel a sense of accomplishment and progression, and this will do the job.
Who Wins?: You can decide who wins prizes based on a number of different things. This can be the first person to find the item and report it (leaving the item up so others can enjoy the finding aspect of the game), by finding sets of items, or even to be the one that finds the most.
If you have a forums, then you can optionally create reward icons or signatures to be displayed for the grand-prize winner of your hunt for a set period of time, or until infinity.
How To Promote Your Website Event
Promotion for "find it" events is really easy to do, and there are a few ways to do it.
Viral: Instead of just going right out there and telling everyone about the event, you can choose to initiate the contest virally. For example, on Easter I made a twitter account for an Easter Bunny, and routinely sent out tweets on Twitter of the bunny hopping around with tags like #Easter #Contests or whatever is relevant.
Then, once people are curious, I tweet "hop...hop...hop... *jumps in hole*" followed by a link and the proper tags for maximum exposure.
People are curious at this point. They just spotted the Easter Bunny! And he jumped in a hole. Well, the link they click on can lead them right to your contest, where you are "in character" so to speak (as if it has nothing to do with the site, and it's just the bunny being devious). And you can explain the nature of the contest through that. This can work for most character holidays.
Traditional: Let users know about your event in advance. Promote the contest on your site to begin at a certain time, and make use of social bookmarking and social networks. This is one of the times where these types of promotion tools become very useful, because it's really your target audience for the event -- casual people looking for something interesting.
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