Hi Everyone,
This is going to be a valuable (and fun) post. Get a hold of (and reduce) your bounce rate and your income will grow EXPONENTIALLY!
Over the years, I have had conversation after conversation with my customers about "Bounce Rate" and 90% have asked me the same question.. - "Bounce Rate? What is that?" What are you talking about Joe?? Bounce Rate???
Here is the simplest way I can describe "Bounce Rate".. It is when a visitor hits the homepage of your website, does not navigate to any internal pages, and leaves your site to go elsewhere. 
With the proper website statistics software, you can go as far as to know the following:
1: Where did the visitor come from.
2: What search engine did they use. This is the "Referrer" page... Could be the same as "Referring Search Engine"
3: What keywords did they search for in the search engine. This is called "Keywords", or "Keyphrases"..
4: What was the "Entry" page ... (what page did they first hit on your site) This is called the "Entry" page.
5: How long (in seconds) did they stay on your site. This is called "Visit Duration"
6: What page were they on right before they exited your site. This is known as the "Exit" page..
Ok, when you UNDERSTAND, and CONTROL your bounce rate, your income can double.. REALLY DOUBLE! Mine did.
Now, many of you are scratching your heads and saying "HOW CAN I CONTROL THIS?"..
I used to ask the same question till I started really ANALYZING my site logs. I don't mean taking 10 minutes and scraping through your logs and saying "Great, got that done" NO! I mean ANALYZING them from TOP to BOTTOM, and EVERYWHERE in between..
Now, the info listed above is very important, but you actually have to look at it in somewhat reverse order..
1: Was the "Exit" page the same as the Entry page? If this is the case, you have little to NO business.
2: How long did the visitor stay on your page, and on what page?
3: What were they looking for (Keywords/Keyphrases?
4: Did they get to the page in your system that satisfies those keywords?? Did they find what they were looking for?
5: What search engine did they come from (You may need to target other keywords in other Search Engines).
6: Most of the time, I don't care where they came from, but for local services this can help to know.
Ok, now the practical reason this is all important.
I have one site (it is REALLY UGLY), but last year I did 2 things to it.. I aggressively SEO'd it, and I aggressively went after my bounce rate. This site sells just one service (I install commercial grade email servers for internet providers).
Year before last, I did about $20K worth of business that I knew I could attribute directly to that website. After a good long look at my statistics for that site, I found I needed to make some adjustments. Here is what I did, and here is how it affected my bottom line. I made it impossible for any visitor to not know how to buy from me. I put my main product right in their face. Keep in mind that I made these changes in late December.. Guess what happened?? By March of 2011 I had made multiple sales (almost $90K worth).. Remember in the previous year I had done a total of $20K from this same site.. Get the picture friends? Now lets take a few minutes and talk about bounce rate and how to fix this problem..
When bounce rate is high, there are several problems that could be working against you..
1: Your visitors are not finding what they are looking for.
2: Your site is SO wordy that people get overwhelmed and click away.
3: Navigation is poor
4: Too many choices
I have a friend at Hayneedle, several years ago, he and I were talking and he said to me "Joe, do you know how long the average website visit lasts?" I jokingly said "Till they leave", he said "you better find out cause their money is leaving with them". The reality is that hayneedle did a study and found out that the average life of a website visit was less than 8 seconds. That is the time it takes a potential customer to decide whether your website is worth staying on, or whether they are moving on.. Interestingly enough, Google.Com feels the same way, and they have decided that one of the factors they now use to "rank" your website is your "Bounce Rate"....
Ok Joe, get to the point.. The longer your visitors stay on your website before clicking away affects your overall SEO rate. The longer your visitors stay on your site also affects whether they end up using your services or not.
Take a look at my business website at Nebraska Networks and think of yourself as a potential customer. Where did your eyes first go? Ok, did you find out something about my company there? If your eyes went right to the image in the upper right portion of the page. You see the services we offer there.. Then you start scanning the page for info on those services. Right below that image, you see 3 boxes that take you to pages about the key services we provide. Take a look at Dell's Website. See any similarity? Take a look at my site Sell Your Home which focuses on Real Estate Resources, where do your eyes land? See the 3 points below the main image?
Google knows how long a visitor stays on your page, they know which page the visitor first went to, and they know where the visitor was when they left. You need to get your "Bounce Rate" under control. Now many of you are saying "Ok Joe, I don't even know my bounce rate, let alone managing it" Never fear.. Your'e in good hands! Here is what you need to do.
1: Contact your hosting provider, and ask them where your web stats are accessible at. If at all possible, have your hosting provider install "Awstats" for you. This stats package works great for these purposes.
2: Go to your stats pages, and make an investment into your business by figuring out how your stats work, and what info you can get from them.
3: I don't want to overwhelm you right now, so just focus on 4 points.
- Keywords (keywords they used to find you)
- Entry Page (what was the page they came into first)
- Exit Page (what page were they on when they left)
- If #2 and #3 are the same, you have a problem.
Now that you have this information, go to your website, have your friends go to your website. Ask them for their honest opinion of whether they would use you if they needed your service. Ask them if they were able to navigate your site without confusion. Ask them where their eyes landed when they first went to your site.
Make the adjustments necessary and monitor your stats daily. You may say I don't have time to do all that, I'm trying
to sell houses, or I'm trying to sell a product.. Ok great, start by learning how to keep visitors on your site so you can capitalize on the one resource you have... TRAFFIC!
I could go on and on.. Enough of my rambling for this post..
Have a great evening, and here's to your great success!
Joe
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