High Bounce Rate on traffic generating area of our site

[ChrisHolgate]

Hi,

Our eCommerce site currently includes a blog section known as Igloo which we have filled with unique and helpful content that is useful to a fair few people, not just customers of ours. It currently attracts a large number of visitors (more than the actual eCommerce side of the site in actual fact) organically who aren't currently customers of ours.

Very few of these turn in to paying clients so it's not really a money spinner but it has worked quite well from a linkbait perspective / traffic generation perspective and undoubtedly a few of these people do end up making a purchase on the actual shopping end of our site.

We're look at ways to encourage these people finding help on this free resource to take a look at our homepage and hopefully make an order but in the meantime I am worried that there may be a few downsides to us creating this content:

• Google may see us more as a help site than a shopping site. Since selling products is where we make our money this could ultimately be a bad thing.
• Our bounce rate is REALLY high (I'm talking around 94%) on the help site versus around 20% on the eCommerce site. I guess people land on the article they want, read it and then disappear. Would this bounce rate skew our entire site stats and ultimately result in decreased performance in the SERPS.

I would appreciate your opinions and, in the event you do feel it may be hurting us overall perhaps some suggestions on how to mitigate the effects?

Many thanks!

[ChrisHolgate]

Hey,

Those are several very good ideas.

We are going to develop a little plug in which allows our content to pull products out of our catalogue. For example, 'Epson Stylus DX4450: Printer Basics' would display cartridges for the DX4450 alongside. Hopefully this will result in an element of cross selling and decrease our bounce rate.

Since around 70% of the traffic is outside of the UK and a lot of these people (by the very fact they're researching these articles) have broken printers I can't see our clickthrough increasing dramatically but every little helps.

Most our products are a little too run of the mill in order to provide interesting and impartial reviews for. A review of one of our cartridges would be incredibly self serving!

I certainly agree that cross selling is something that we have to concentrate on over the coming days. Thanks again for your help.

Chris

[TimHolmes]

Hi Chris,

Unfortunately I think you have hit the nail in the head about the blog leading to a high bounce rate. Having had a quick look over the content it does seem to be very much aimed at helping the user rather than engaging with them, but the content is really great so keep on creating it, that is maybe alongside some new ideas below.

Your current blog posts are just a one hit wonder where people get the information they need (possibly about an error or fix to their printer) and then leave. Have you considered trying to mix these articles with cross sell or upsell elements to make the user either consider buying new/cheaper ink or upgrade to a new model printer.

In each article maybe highlight that models ink cartridge range or peripherals such as paper etc, or specific deals etc. If the article is about a particular outdated printer maybe have a cashback deal on a new version funded by any manufacturer rebates etc to help promote it. In the right hand sidebar maybe have some offers or deals tabs etc.

Finally, rather than just having a content strategy about older fixes why not start to add in product reviews about new products you have to sell.

Hope that all made sense