Comments on: Understand your site’s bounce rate

By: Farrhad A

Farrhad A — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:08:59 +0000

Earlier when Webmaster Peers was new, the bounce rate was 75% now it has come down to 50%. I guess now that it has members and some activity is the reason people continue browsing.

By: George

George — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:15:43 +0000

To be honest, I’ve never checked out what bounce rate is for a website because I’m simply running a business and put my experience online as a blog, that’s it. I’m sure that if the website’s content is unique and useful, earlier or later the visitors will come and if a blog owner won’t promote the content, Google will help because it favours the unique and useful content.
I don’t want to say here that the bounce rate is not important but rather to say that the beginner bloggers should not get hooked on it. If they work hard enough, they will be rewarded with high bounce rate automatically as more and more people visit their website.

By: Online Revenue

Online Revenue — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:30:01 +0000

Thanks for writing about this topic. I’d like to hear some more about tactics to reduce bounce rates.

In my experience, including relevant links at the bottom of a post really helps moving the bounce rate in the right direction. Writing content that should be relevant to the page description should be a no brainer of course.

By: Martin Reed - Blog Author

Martin Reed - Blog Author — Sun, 25 May 2008 14:59:06 +0000

Adil – I have heard good things about Mint, but haven’t seen the point in using them when Google Analytics is free. What does it offer that GA doesn’t?

By: Adil Seo

Adil Seo — Sat, 24 May 2008 01:23:16 +0000

It again boils down to the same basic factor – Content. I use Mint to track my website’s bounce rate. What I like about Mint is that it gives you an hourly and page-by-page details of visitors bouncing off your pages. I edit and improve the contents of the pages which have a higher bounce rate. After doing this the bounce rate has reduced for those pages.

By: Martin Reed - Blog Author

Martin Reed - Blog Author — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:31:31 +0000

jonathon – I don’t think Webalizer offers such information as it doesn’t give you specific information about the time each user spends on a given page of your website.

Why don’t you want to install Analytics? It is really easy to copy and paste some code into your site.

By: jonathon

jonathon — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:31:34 +0000

is there a way to work out the bounce rate in webalizer, i don’t wish to use googles Analytics because of the input code.

By: Martin Reed - Blog Author

Martin Reed - Blog Author — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 10:30:20 +0000

Wally - Thanks for giving us details of your experiences from a user's perspective. Your description certainly explains why sites such as StumbleUpon tend to hurt your bounce rate. I think what you say about a site needing to be captivating within the first few seconds is a universal requirement these days.

By: Wally

Wally — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 04:54:30 +0000

I’ve experienced the same with using StumbleUpon. Also being an user of StumbleUpon, I often find myself keeping my mouse pointer on the “Stumble” button on the toolbar. If the site isn’t catchy in the first few seconds, I just click and stumble to another site!

And if the site doesn’t load immediately, I’d just stumble again. It’s so easy to just click and see what’s going to come up next. The landing page needs to be something *really* attractive, unusual, or captivating for me to stay for more than a few seconds.

By: Martin Reed - Blog Author

Martin Reed - Blog Author — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 10:01:02 +0000

How To Wake Up Early – Thanks for your comment (what is your real name by the way?!?). I have used StumbleUpon’s advertising system to send traffic to this blog in the past; I found my bounce rate went through the roof – not a good thing!

I still question the value of being ‘Dugg’ or ‘Stumbled’ – it seems the traffic is very short term indeed, but I guess exposure is still exposure nonetheless!