Monday, November 1, 2010

How to reduce your blog bounce rate

Have you installed Google Analytics? It is a great tool designed to give you statistics about visitors to your blog or website. One of this statistics is Bounce Rate. Now if you are new at this you might be asking yourself, what is this?

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors heading to another site instead of visiting other pages in the same blog or website. A high bounce rate could mean you really have to work on your site or in other circumstances, it could mean nothing. It just depends on what your site is about. Take the Wikipedia for example, they have a very high bounce rate largely because they provide information. Once you get what you need you dont need to linger on, do you? You got what you needed after all.

However, if you have a blog like mine and you are having a high bounce rate (say 60% and above), there could be something you are not doing right and you might need to reevaluate your site. Some of the reasons include:
  • Poor design-If your site is designed so poorly it looks like patchwork, you will be scaring your visitors away. You should also ensure your background is white as readers are used to that. Black or other colours strain the eyes and will have your visitors running away. Limit the number of widgets you put on your site. I see blogs with widgets for every other site they have joined. Forget about other sites and focus on yours.
  • Too many ads- You might have heard of less is more. It is really true. Actually having too many ads on your site doesn't make you more money. The few visitors who can tolerate them are likely to become ad blind. I see so many sites littered with ads everywhere, especially in between blog posts. If you are trying to build a great blog you might want to limit ads to the sidebar, while you get readers first. Putting your readers first is what makes a successful blog.
  • Poor site navigation- Make it easy for you visitors to navigate in your site. Show your pages at the top, give a list of your older posts. You can also use inbound links to drive visitors to other posts in your blog. Make it easy for them to remain in your blog by giving them every reason to do so.
  • Blinking banners- Some animations are O.K. I understand you are trying to make money from your affiliate programs, all the best. However, choose your advertisement banners carefully. A banner that blinks faster than my eyelids is no good for your site. So many people are irritated by them.
  • Too many pop ups- You might be promoting your e books or other products but if you love your blog limit your pop ups. Also make it as easy as possible for readers to close them if they are not interested. 
Look into the above if you have a high bounce rate. You might be chasing you visitors away without your knowledge. However, it is never too late to make things right.

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