Bounce rate

[vijayvasu]

Hello, I am kinda looking for experts who have dealt with the issues of Bounce Rates.

Site : www.gunshotdigital.com

Problem : High Bounce Rate

SOLUTION : PL HELP FELLOW SEOMOZZERS thank you all in Advance. I love our community!

Let me know if there is anything I can do for you - esp in design /branding/ PSD conversions etc

best regards,

Vijay

[alexhoug]

Have you thought about incorporating video into your message. This is a great way to keep the visitor on the site and have them do what you want them to do, like fill out a form, go to another page, etc. Video combined with autoplay, works great. After seeing many tests done on autoplay, it actually works. Anyways, suggesting that you add video was a bit off topic, but I thought I'd suggest it.

[richgreenwood]

Some great comments here so will try not to repeat what has already been said. I will say that 55% bounce rate is nowhere as bad as you might think although there is still room for improvement.

Here are a few thoughts:

Seek to understand how others view and use the site. You could try using http://www.trymyui.com/site/home to get video feedback and survey responses from real people testing your site. In addition, adding Click Tale code to view actual user activity may also help. That would get you some real world feedback.

To give my honest personal thoughts and feedback:

• The featured image slider is too large - I don't want to have to wait to see all of these to figure out what you do

• Your homepage content is too vague - what services do you actually specialise in? Graphic design, web design, SEO? Make the core service offering more obvious from the homepage

• Design elements such as 'Our Methodology' down the side and some other imagery looks a bit dated and 'stock photo' like which was a big turn off for me. I probably would have been in the 45% bouncing off just based on this alone.

Take a look at this agency site http://www.scamperbranding.com/ - the design is clear, conveys what is offered, provides a call to action and clear path to conversion.

• Internal pages are very text heavy and should be broken up with clearer formatting and better examples of your work. For example, on your branding page I would expect to see clear examples of your branding work.

Hope this helps.

[Sangeeta]

Vijay, here are some of the questions our company asks itself to analyze the bounce rate.

1. is the bounce rate from organic, direct or referral traffic?

2. if it is from organic what keywords have the highest bounce rate? Are the visitors finding the correct page for the keyword? If yes, use multivariate testing via Google optimizer.

3. If it is from a referral site you need to analyze your referral strategy. Is the reference relevant for your business? If it is would it be suitable to send them to a more specific page or should you redo the page.

From our experience we have found that relevancy and loading time are the two mantras to reduce bounce rate. Even an badly designed website that has relevant content can hold visitors. Conversion is a different issue though.

[AdamThompson]

Or better yet, like chocolate ice cream and hot fudge sauce. Mmmm.

[jcolman]

Just wanted to second everyone's good points made thus far and add in my own reminder: SEOs shouldn't design sites or write content for search engines at the expense of people (actual human customers).  When we do this, we might earn (temporary) high rankings, but will be responsible for driving a high bounce rate because people can't actually use the site or understand how it helps them succeed at their goals.

Ideally, SEO and UX design are like chocolate and peanut butter: two great things that go even better together.  

[tylerfraser]

Your intro and call to action should happen faster. I would have the call to action show immediately. Also check to make sure you're not getting poor traffic that isn't interested in your product or service.

[AdamThompson]

Well, 55% isn't that bad of a bad bounce rate, so don't get too discouraged. I think you can definitely make some improvements, though, as noted above. Also, I would encourage you to focus more on other metrics, such as conversion rate, conversion funnel abandonment rate, etc. Best of luck!

[vijayvasu]

for the last 3 days its been 54.72 % ..

[vijayvasu]

thank you - I appreciate it Adam.

[vijayvasu]

thank you ! yes, we have GA set up and also in the precess of changing the home page

[AdamThompson]

Just wanted to second basically everything Cyle said. Your design is great, but your sales copy and messaging are very generic and vague - you need copy that grabs visitors attention and tells them exactly how you're going to help them get what they want or need.

As Cyle said, conversion/bounce rate optimization is not a quick fix - it's working with a lot of different factors and testing changes to improve results.

[AdamThompson]

Vijay, what is your site's bounce rate?

[Cyle]

After looking at your site for about 5 min, I am still not sure what you do.  A lot of info about your site is below the fold, and I don’t think people will scroll down to read it.  In general you have 10 sec to convince your customer that your site is relevant to their search quarry.  My guess is that your site is not convincing people that you are relevant to their search.

I would start testing this by looking in your analytics software and seeing what term is driving the most traffic to your site and making changes that will help communicate relevance for that term.  Try to make the path to your conversion goal as simple and easy to follow as possible. You can use Google Website Optimizer to test these changes: <cite>www.google.com/websiteoptimizer</cite>

There is no quick answer to your problem; this will be process of digging into your analytics and testing new idea to see if they are helping you achieve your business objectives.

Also, I didn’t see any event tracking set up on your flash banner.  I would defiantly set that up so you can track how many people are clicking on your flash banner and which images they are clicking on.  If you are using Google Analytics here is a link: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/eventTrackerGuide.html

If you are using a different Analytics software, just contact your provider and ask them about this.

I hope this helps,

Cyle