Bounce Rates

[Greenier]

Hello,

I posted a question a while back, and really appreciated the advice that was submitted (thanks!). I wanted to ask about bounce rates, is there advice on how to drive down this %? Looking at my site, I am not sure if there is something that may be turning away potential customers(i.e. background color, etc).

Thanks!

Sanrda

[Greenier]

Sorry, I guess my URL would be helful.. www.theeuroboutique.com.

[veikoh]

Nice site. Nothing wrong with your background color, I just assume that you need to get more targeted marketing. What kind of Internet Marketing Strategies are you using?

[roban]

In the SEO business I find bounce rates to be a very unreliable indicator of anything. I work on many sites and as the number of visitors increase, so does the bounce rate. A much better indicator would be the site wide navigation. If you are using Analytics, set up a goal for yourself and then set up the funnel navigation that a visitor would go through to get to the goal. In this way you can see where your goal is being abandoned and you can make changes.

[fionix]

The site looks pretty good and is somehow easy to navigate to what ever your customers look for.

As already mentioned, then you will need to drive some traffic to the site, then it should be able to increase your revenue.

[Greenier]

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate the advice. We have some PPC campaigns running on both Google and Yahoo, and now we are working to tighten up our key words, etc. We have solid rankings on most search engines, something that we are pretty happy about. I still wonder if there isn't something obvious that we are overlooking to push us forward just a little bit more, but hopefully we will see the traffic/revenue boost with some upcoming campaigns.

[veikoh]

What kind of keyword reserach tools are you using?
I'm using both Wordtracker and Trellian KeywordDiscovery. Trellian is easier for me as I own Trellian SEO toolkit license.

[econcepts]

Hello,

I posted a question a while back, and really appreciated the advice that was submitted (thanks!). I wanted to ask about bounce rates, is there advice on how to drive down this %? Looking at my site, I am not sure if there is something that may be turning away potential customers(i.e. background color, etc).

Thanks!

Sanrda

Sandra,

There are a number of ways to drive down bounce rates. What I always tell people though is you have to find the right place to start. Focus first on those pages (not the whole site) which have the highest bounce rates (pick the top 5 to start with). You can find this information out by looking at your analytics.

If you don't have a good analytics package that reveals this information, then I would suggest you look into adding Google Analytics. It's free and it's powerful. Provides you all the tools you need to get the job done.

In any event, after you pick the top 5 pages with the highest bounce rates, you'll want to take a good look at those pages. Focus on making subtle changes that address your customers needs and watch your analytics some more.

Once you get your top 5 pages bounce rates lower, you can move on to the next set.

One area you should also look at would be your checkout process (if and when they get that far). It is a critical point and one that can't be overlooked. But, before you do that, you'll need to get the users through to those pages.

You do this by working "backwards" into it -- starting with the top 5 pages and moving on. Pretty soon, you'll have right elements in place to lower your bounce rates.

Hope that info helps. At least it should provide a "starting point" for decreasing them (a focus) if nothing else.

[topout]

Do you have the ability to do A/B testing? If so, take Eric's advice and start testing.

If you can't A/B test...gain the ability to A/B test. Until then, you want everything but the changes you are making to be static. Pick combinations of pages with the entry method (preferably a specific search term where you consistently rank #1. Different position in the SE results, result in different bounce rates). Try to improve on those you can best measure.

On the front page, look at reducing the header height to bring the other elements further up on the screen. And see if you can make the navigation choices you'd like chosen (the girl, boy, baby group?) more prominent.

[chocolate101]

great site! your kid models are soo cute too!!

i agree with topout and eric, you should get an A/B testing!