Comments on: Web traffic checkup – part 1. Bounce Rate explained

By: Cindy Brown | Atlanta Wedding Photographer

Cindy Brown | Atlanta Wedding Photographer — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:39:49 +0000

Another item to consider is whether your home page has all the information someone needs to do what they want.
For example: a searcher looking for a chiropractor clicks to a home page of a web site, watches a video, sees the phone number for the chiropractor and makes a phone call. That would be considered a bounce, but would be a good result for the chiropractor with that web site.

By: Segmenting question queries for fun and profit.

Segmenting question queries for fun and profit. — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 12:16:05 +0000

[...] providing the information necessary to answer the question, and either convert – or prevent a bounce.What are question queries?Simply put, question queries are the direct questions that your visitors [...]

By: Paul Anthony

Paul Anthony — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:37:07 +0000

In part, I agree Henry

- however, Its worth bearing in mind that ,not every webpage out there is a sales pitch. When its not , the context of ‘what matters’ changes somewhat. Brand engagement and awareness also being an integral part of marketing and the sales process. You can’t treat those pages the same when analysing the metrics, because they aren’t designed to convert.

Paul.

By: Henry Gilbert

Henry Gilbert — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:29:36 +0000

@Mike

The ONLY metric that matters is : has the business increased.

Anything else is pretty irrelevant; mere ‘curiosities’.

For me a website should be just an advert; 10 seconds pitch – a mid stop before the client picks up the phone and/or makes a purchase.

Any info you add; you ONLY add to guarantee or speed up that process. That is true ‘optimisation’. Note this is applicable mostly to small / medium size business. If it’s a corporation; ok you may want to add fluff etc; because it becomes political – all about image; impression. etc – but even then inverted pyramid approach: the most important sought information comes first, or are very easy to find. Then loads of fluff to feed the hungry minds of followers / fans / business partners / own staff / etc

By: Paul Anthony

Paul Anthony — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:31:24 +0000

Yeah guys, you are absolutely correct. In many cases a blog, for example, will have a high bounce rate, especially when segmenting repeat traffic. New visitors may stick around, whilst repeat visitors hit the home page to see if there is anything new to see. If not, they bounce.

Paul.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 04:43:20 +0000

Really great points Henry.

So if someone is on your site fishing around looking for something and having to go from page-to-page, that to me would be more annoying then finding exactly what I need on the home page. I would much rather return to a site like that, then one I have to fish around to find things for.

But like all data, it has to be used in conjunction with all the other data. Time on site, where your traffic is coming from, and the most important has your business increased.

By: Henry Gilbert

Henry Gilbert — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:57:10 +0000

So much nonsense, I mean the whole SEO industry and Google in a way.
Bounce rate could easily be a metric for success meaning that page acted extremely efficient in delivering that one information that user needed and move on.
This is bad, if say Bounce Rate becomes more and more influential on search engine results. Because that will force BAD webdesigners and SEO’ers to waffle drible and hide that piece of important information to cheat the metrics. So you will need to jump many steps many different pages going uh-ha look at us we are “interesting” .. to get there. No, you are not necessarily interesting, in fact you are frustrating and boring and wasting people’s valuable time. How many of you have felt frustrated you couldn’t find the address? Or that important info?
I don’t care, I won’t conform. My standard is this – the LEAST amount of time a person spends on a website of mine indicates it’s efficiency.
Recently I redesign a hospital website. On the page “Clinic Times” the bounce rate is over 60%. So that should be reason for alarm right? When in fact means the website is so extremely efficient, that the data they are after is delivered optimally. Address, phone numbers are on the top page ver yfirst thing. The added benefit to that is streamlining traffic. Highly ideal visitors that end up in high conversions. So funny the SEO industry moves one direction, and I, possibly very alone walk completely against the flow. What I don’t get is how come it works for me? – when I do everything so very different what everyone else does, preach and advocate.

By: 6 corporate website fails to watch out for.

6 corporate website fails to watch out for. — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 12:46:17 +0000

[...] [...]

By: Common strategies and features of successful blogs

Common strategies and features of successful blogs — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 06:12:42 +0000

[...] [...]

By: Paul Anthony

Paul Anthony — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 07:44:44 +0000

Hi Patrick,

a URL would help understand this one – but very possibly. If they are obtaining the next “page” via AJAX Analytics has no way of knowing they have navigated to another page, unless you’ve told it during the AJAX request, so that could be messing your figures.

Regards,
Paul