[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by Spinball

I have simplified our CMS (vBAdvanced) home page today. Will be interesting if that affects our bounce rate. I suspect it will make little difference.
I think if we need to reduce the bounce rate, we need something to entice them in on EVERY page. A welcome notice at the top for all new visitors which contains something to grab their attention.

FYI, the following might work for you.

I was able to reduce bounce rate about 4 or 5 percentage points around a year ago just by moving Similar Threads to the top of the thread view (showthread) versus at the bottom. This is because users that come to visit via search referrals will bounce off if they don't see something they like, and will go back to their Google SERPs.

The problem is that, on a long-time referral to a post, Similar Threads does not work in showthread_showpost (or I could not get it to work). Adding a cloud tag at the top is not very effective, or at least is was not effective for us.

We never had any luck with vBadvanced because 95 percent of the traffic is from long-tail search referrals. Home page direct hits are such a low percentage, that the bounce rate of direct hits are insignificant.

If your have massive traffic from SERPs, then moving Similar Threads to the top of showthread might work for you as it did for us.