What is your Bounce Rate?

[Zachariah]

Domain since feb 2007
Who goes the the front of a website when you have search ?

Sep 1 - Sep 30

http://www.szone.us

92.29% New Visits

6.58% Direct Traffic
10.60% Referring Sites
82.77% Search Engines

82.48% Overall Bounce
65.92% Main index (portal) Bounce
16.67% Forum index Bounce

2,020 pagess were viewed a total of 25,169 times

1. /forums/ | 12,427 page views | 87.47% Bounce
2. /gallery/ | 10,323 page views | 58.92% Bounce
3. /forums/index.php | 170 page views | 16.67% Bounce
4. / | 539 page views | 65.92%% Bounce

[Princeton]

Originally Posted by nexialys

if you have a portal with too much information, people do not visit anymore...

absolutely correct - I'm with you here.

But, the problem is not "too much information". The problem is too much junk information.

A lot of admins forget that the "portal" (main index page) is not about them...
the portal should be about converting new visitors and redirecting repeat readers. I say this because a lot of vbulletin sites (with portals) have a lot of "junk" blocks on the main page - which are always ignored. I guess some admins think it's cool. (IMO, they use it as a filler - and, it just hurts conversion)

Originally Posted by nexialys

the portal is for newcombers, not regular members who already bookmarked their prefered part of the site...

Bookmarking inner pages wouldn't affect bounce rate on portal.

Anyway...

Are you assuming all members bookmark a specific section of a site?

What's wrong with bookmarking the main index page? That's what most people do. My bookmark to this place is http://vbulletin.org - what do you say about that?

Unless your site is about 'WEB Development', it's safer to assume that a visitor DOES NOT understand how to bookmark OR what it is.

Originally Posted by nexialys

having a portal with a high % would be good for information portals, not communities.

arrgghh, I can't believe that came out of you

there's nothing good about a high bounce rate

A portal should be utilized to:

• stand out (in our case, from millions of other forums);
• grab attention;
• provide a snapshot of what's going on;
• cause action;
• and redirect to inner pages.

(I'm sure we can add a lot more to the above list. For now, that will do.)

A portal with no ads should have single digit bounce rate.
If portal contains ads, bounce rate should not exceed 10-20% (safe number).

If portal bounce rate is high - you should seriously consider a major overhaul.



NOTE
The term "portal" is used loosely to represent the main index page (root) of a site. In terms of a vbulletin site, this would include a page other than forum index.

[Zachariah]

Site launched Aug 4,2008 - still in dev (need a new image scroller/rotater and rss feeds re-done)
Domain since 2001

Sep 1 - Sep 30

http://www.chatsworthchamber.com

82.36% New Visits

24.47% Direct Traffic
13.66% Referring Sites
61.87% Search Engines

54.37% Overall Bounce
36.09% Main index (portal) Bounce
16.67% Forum index Bounce

550 pages were viewed a total of 8,632 times

1. / | 1,382 page views | 36.09% Bounce
2. /gallery/ | 1,336 page views | 45.61% Bounce
12. /forum.php | 107 page views| 16.67 Bounce

Originally Posted by Princeton

arrgghh, I can't believe that came out of you

there's nothing good about a high bounce rate

I did not say " it have to be that way "... i say it is what we regularly see... from experience, i see a lot of sites like cnn.com or espn.com having a ton of bounce because their home page is rotating a load of content, you do not even have to visit internally... and they have a lot of external links on their sites so you bounce just by checking the content...

i'm with you about the over-usage of the portals on vb sites... because the script have blocks doesn't mean you have to activate them.

[Princeton]

during these economic woes, it's important to fix high Bounce Rate...

for some, traffic will increase in their 'field of interest' - these are the people who have the most to gain (or lose)

to ensure that you are not on the losing end, your main page should have a low bounce rate

if your main page has a high bounce rate - it's time to make some changes

What causes high Bounce Rate?

• content (quatity, quality, formatting, placement, etc)
• bad interface/layout (choice of style)
• bad choice of color (choice of style)
• linking to external sites
• ads (ie. Adsense)
• marketing (false or misleading advertising)*

When linking to external sites or using ads one should consider at least a 5%-10% increase in bounce rate.

With that said, main page bounce rate should be in the single digits (no ads/external links).

* false or misleading advertising will cost you money and will increase bounce rate ... I see this a lot with people using Adwords - their ad variations are not specify and lean towards misleading

[Terrie]

My bounce rate is:

Site 9.63%
Main page 7.98%
Forum index 13.63%

[Sawa Dee SohL]

Can someone explain where to find this at? I have Godaddy hosting if that helps >_<

[g1L4_0n]

nice info

[Lynne]

Originally Posted by Sawa Dee SohL

Can someone explain where to find this at? I have Godaddy hosting if that helps >_<

I have Google Analytics installed on my site, so I got my info from there.

[EWGF]

Frontpage: 16,26%
Forum: 19,01%
Some directory with exclusive information: 74,36%

Also funny: /forum/register.php 0,00%
Not that many people click that link the last couple of weeks :erm: