Following posts here and there, and on Mirjam’s and Bryan’s blogs, about Bounce Rate and how it was important to keep it to the minimum, I just had to speak out.

Commentators were comparing their bounce rates and speculating about what was wrong with their blogs. Basically, everyone were striving to bring it down below 40%, but the truth is that there are blogs that aren’t built for these bounce rates and never going to get there.

Moreover, It makes me mad that authority sources are making very hard claims about it. This is a quote from Wikipedia:

Google.com analytics specialist Avinash Kaushik has stated, “It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying.”

It is important to understand that he is referring to static sites, not blogs. Static sites present you with one main page with links to the relevant pages on this site. If no one clicks through, there is something wrong with the site or with the traffic (not targeted properly), obviously.

Blogs are a different story.

My Bounce Rate

When you’re new to blogging you harvest lots of information from various sources and change your blog without even stopping to think why is that so, or at least seeking a second opinion from another authority source. I’ve been there, I know.

I was reading ProBlogger, DoshDosh, John Chow, etc., and implementing just every little tweak that supposedly would have helped me improve my blog. I felt that those guys have made it and know what they are talking about, and they usually did.

When first discovering Google Analytics, I also discovered Bounce Rate and was amazed that it was on ~80%. Reading that it was supposed to be below 50%, my face was becoming longer by the minute. Wow, I thought I was doing something really wrong, and went to make myself a really hot cup of tea to cope with the horrible news. Only during the following days I managed to see the true meaning of bounce rate.

I realized that my blog was showing full stories on its main page and that most of the readers at the time weren’t bothering to click through. I set out an experiment with a post with a ‘more’ tag, and oh joy, my Bounce Rate went down on that day.

But this didn’t make me change my main page settings, I’m still using full stories and I believe this is the most convenient way for my readers. I personally hate to click through to read the rest of the story, unless it is really intriguing.

Simply now I know that my blog has an average global Bounce Rate of 75% and consider it a natural state. There is no way to compare your Bounce Rate to another blog unless it’s exactly the same blog. I am beginning to suspect that the global Bounce Rate is rather useless.

What I think is useful is the comparison of Bounce Rates of specific traffic sources. I often use Bounce Rate is to compare referrers and to analyze its traffic behavior. When comparing StumbleUpon, Entrecard and SiteHoppin traffic, for example, that arrives not to the main page, but to a specific post, I know that the lower the Bounce Rate it would mean lower hit-n-runs and that readers take interest investigating around a bit.

Lowering Your Bounce Rate

As your blog matures though, you have to try making your blog more sticky, making your visitors visit more content on your blog. Several advice pop into my mind:

• I noticed that after setting up my archives page, my Bounce Rate went down a few notches. People like when it is easy to access other posts on the blog and obviously have been using it. I also notice my very old articles being dusted off, thanks to that page.
• Using one of the available Related Posts plugin, This would present a list of related posts at the end of your current post.
• Linking to your other posts in the context of the article. I try to give examples from my older posts and link to that post. That arouses readers curiosity and lets him know that this blog is covering useful subjects.

Conclusion

Do not take it too bad when you find that your blog has a high Bounce Rate. Instead, try to think what properties of your blog create it and you will often realize that it not a problem that needs your attention, but rather the natural state: your content does not suck, and you don’t have to rethink your future as a blogger.

- Alex

Technorati Tags: bounce rate, lowering your bounce rate, google analytics, problogger, john chow, doshdosh

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Current post was originally posted on:

An Ode to Bounce Rate

I went through a lot since starting blogging. The emotional stress during the initial period is understandable. You cannot help yourself but to wonder if it’s all worth it when you see you visitors count suddenly decrease to 12, and your 6 subscribers that you excitedly told your wife about a day earlier, just plummeted to one.

But then there is the physical domain as well. There were days I thought there was no way I was going to find a subject to write about. My routine was all over the place, I spent my entire free time blog hopping, checking my stats every 5 minutes to see what has changed, and when I finally got myself to write anything it usually took me 3 hours because of all the distractions.

Today I am going to share the three tools that increased my productivity during the last couple of weeks.

Recording Ideas As They Come

This is the best thing that ever happened to me. I noticed that during the day I would come up with numerous ideas for articles, but if left unattended those ideas got forgotten rather quickly. I started to use a notepad to write down the ideas as soon as I had something on my mind. When using my computer I use a sticky-note widget to stick those wonderful yellow notes on my desktop. That way, by the end of the day, I go through my notebook to choose that day’s subject, and with the sticky notes I am always reminded of everything when I glance on my screen.

I’m trying to get used to Google Notebook, with little success. Nevertheless, I will continue trying as people report it is a very cool tool for keeping track of things.

Dark Room

I mentioned earlier that I got distracted a lot when finally settling down to write an article. This is due to constant flow of information that you just have to check out, leaving everything for later.

Lately, I found a cool little program that lets you write without distractions. It opens in full screen, blocking everything out, except the simple green-colored Courier font.

I find it great. Finally, when I write I am able to finish the whole first draft of the article before going to do some further research or whatever. Just for comparison, when using Word I was writing one, sometimes two paragraphs before deciding to give myself a mental brake and check my stats or stumble some sites.

So I highly recommend this tool. You can download here: they.misled.us/dark-room. Note that you will have to install the .NET Framework if you don’t have it already. You will have a download link for this on their site as well.

Google Analytics and Google Benchmarking

Being the stats addict that I am, Google Analytics is the tool that I spend many hours using. It takes a while to realize what exactly you want to look for when using it, but once you do have a plan you’re on the right track. It takes 5 minutes to get the current picture and know that certain things have to be improved.

The parameters that are important to me are the referring sites, top content and keywords. I note the bounce rate and the time on site for each of the above. I also briefly go through the visitor trending and visitor loyalty menus. The Site Overlay in the Content menu is cool, it will show you how many times links were clicked on your site.

A relatively new development is Google Benchmarking. It is a tool that compares the stats of your site to the average in the industry. The number of sites participating is steadily growing and the data is becoming more and more accurate. That adds another important tool to help you know what are your strong point and where you are limping behind. Very recommended.

As my quest continues, I am sure that those 3 things are not the last. I’m constantly learning new techniques and discovering new tools, and be sure that once I find anything really useful you will know about it.

- Alex

Technorati Tags: productivity, dark room, google analytics, google benchmarking, google notebook, stats addict, visitors, subscribers

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

The 3 Things That Increased My Productivity