Regular readers of my blog will note that a staple of the articles I produce on here include roundups of Top X jQuery Plugins. I’ve done these for form usability, charting, Google APIs and most recently for HTML Dropdowns. The format is pretty simple, a screenshot, some blurb about the plugin, and usually a code snippet on how to implement, with download links.
Usual behavior by users is quite predictable. Plugins in the top positions, 1-5 or 6 get the most click throughs, the rest usually tails off, as we can see from my Clicky Web Stats in the chart below:
Example Stats from a previous Top 10 Article
Yet in my HTML Dropdowns article things were different – very different.
Sex Sells
So its a given in this day and age that sex sells – we all know that. However usually we presume that to be a busty brunette holding an iron or something equally strange. We don’t usually associate it with textual sex-marketing. My Dropdowns article has proven that in fact, you don’t need a good looking humanoid to sell your product, it can look pretty lame, just name it right.
The Preview
Sexy-Combo Plugin Preview
The plugin itself I didnt find that interesting visually. It was a tough one to sum up in a screenshot, so the best I could do was take a screenshot of the dropdown in action. As you can see, it’s not all that engaging compared to some of the others featured. What’s different about this plugin is it’s name – “Sexy Combo” (link). Here’s the stats:
Stats for my article featuring "Sexy Combo"
As you can see, the stats say it all. Just by simply naming this plugin “Sexy” has driven far more traffic to their site than any of the other plugins I featured – around 25% more than the second most popular. In fact, I could have probably gotten away with not featuring a screenshot at all, as the one I did feature was pretty meaningless in the first place.
Conclusion
So what do we take out of this? Well, quite simply – you don’t need a piece of UI brilliance to draw in the punters – just give it a sex-orientated name, something like “Sex Kitten jQuery Plugin”, it’s guaranteed to get eyeballs! 
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It would be interesting to see the hits on this article vs. others based on the title.
I don’t think your conclusion is warranted- just because you found the word “sexy” got you more traffic for a FREE plugin, that doesn’t mean using the word will sell more of a product. It will depend on the market.
The other plugins in your test had almost identical, boring names. Perhaps the conclusion should be that names like “item1″ are a bad choice.
Firstly, I do not suggest that using the word “sexy” will sell more of a product in my conclusion, I simply state by having it as part of the name will draw more traffic as the stats clearly show.
Secondly, the other plugins were not called “Item 1″ etc… that was there as an example of placement within the page… also explained above.
Edit – oh and thirdly, you could say my article title suggests selling a product by using the word “sexy”, however having an article title like “Sexy” will give you more hits, I have the stats to prove it doesn’t really roll off the tongue!
Um… I beg to differ. I found this plugin on the JQuery site and decided against using it simply because of the name.
@Jeroen: The stats prove that you’re a minority.
I’m pretty much just reading this page because it has “Sexy” in its title.
The word “sexy” in particular has a meaning quite a bit different from the sexual connotation. It is used especially in design to mean sleek, stylish, or even effective. In other words, mentioning a “sexy blog template” has a _totally_ different meaning from “blog template (sex here)” And, I dare say, it would attract an entirely different demographic.
Ill have to see how well sexy works for one of my future posts.
Is it bad that I only read this post because it had “sexy” in the name?
Link popularity is very important if you want your website to rank high in any search engine.,’.