Well, it depends!

What’s a Bounce?

Basically, if someone visits one page of your website, and only one page, it’s classed as a bounce.

Typically, it will mean that someone has found your site via a search engine, looked at the first page they landed on, and then hit the back button.

You may find this thought horrifying – but there are valid reasons why Bounces may occur:

1. They are not in your physical area. If you’re an accountant, and someone from France manages to find your site, there is a pretty good chance they’ll never become a client anyway. Let them bounce.
2. You don’t actually solve their problem. Some keywords are not really good ones to chase – many are too generic. If you run mine safety training courses, you may think that “training” would be a good keyword. Except for all the people that search for dog training, sales training, weight training… Even though the keyword may be relevant in a generic sense – you may not be what your visitor is looking for.
3. Random keywords and search terms. To illustrate: back in 2004 I posted a short piece after Anna Meares won her Gold Medal in Athens (link). Shortly after, I noticed a lot if incoming traffic from people who had “googled” for her name. Were those people looking for our services at the time? Nope. They bounced. But that’s okay, we were getting traffic from a keyword totally unrelated to what we do.

So, you’ll see that you will always have some bounces. The number without context doesn’t mean much. Not all bounces are bad though – in these examples your website is helping to qualify your leads. If you can’t help them, you don’t want to be spending time answering emails and phone calls.

Killer Bounces

What hurts is a bounce from someone who lives in an area that you service (or can service) – and who has searched for a keyword that accurately matches your business.

How do you find this out? What can you do about it?

We’ll look at these issues next month!

(Haha – I feel like Eddie McGuire leaving people hanging during the ad break on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire!)

And if you can’t wait until next month for the answer – contact me to arrange an analysis of your website’s performance.

Why?

1. That particular page is likely to be themed towards that location, so someone searching for your business in a specific location will be more likely to find it via search engines
2. Finding your contact details is one of the main things visitors to your website will be trying to do. If you have this information neatly organised (and not hidden behind gimmicky forms), you give them a better experience, regardless of how they managed to get to your website in the first place
3. Even better – embed a location map on each page as well, so they can print it off and use it as a reference!

Really simple advice – but often overlooked.

• To tell people who you are
• To tell people how to contact you
• To reaffirm your brand
• To make it easy to ‘file’ you for future reference

What should your business card do?

• Inspire confidence
• Provide relevant, correct information
• Have a clear message – call me, contact me, email me!
• Save you money by getting happy clients to work for you…

How does your business card work?

The most important part to getting your card to work is to share it! Give your happy clients 2 or 3 cards and ask them to share those with people they know might require your service. If you clean carpets… if you design houses… if you fix cars… if you sell cars… encourage your happy clients to provide you with more happy clients!

Viral marketing, without the internet!

We know that we need the fundamental details like name, phone, email, address, web and possibly a short list (perhaps 4 points) of services/offerings.  That shouldn’t take up too much space, and if you have a double sided card, you could relocate some of the information to the reverse.

Make it easy for your clients or prospective clients to find the relevant information first – your name and contact. For the rest they can flip the card over.

What about the design? Although all of this is a personal choice, and depends on your sort of business, if we take a corporate or professional approach, here is one way to approach it:

1. How many fonts do you use?
2. How many colours?
3. How many elements?
4. How much contrast between colours?
5. How much rest or ‘white’ space do you need?
6. Do you need photos?

Let’s use Telstra as an example (seeing as everyone knows their brand) – this is how they use those 6 points:

1. One for all text and perhaps a second that is defined in the logo itself
2. Two
3. Logo and one item of branding
4. As much as possible
5. As much as possible
6. No!

If in doubt, use the ‘less is more’ tactic – and you will never have a design that is too busy.

So how do you make it successful? This very topic was discussed on a recent edition of BoagWorld, and I have summarised the main points here:

1. Your posts don’t have to be long. Only have a couple of paragraphs to write? That’s fine. (In fact, shorter posts may even be read by more people than longer posts.)
2. Keep a list of ideas. Often when it comes time to sit down and write, you struggle to come up with something. However, you’ll think of great ideas in the shower, or somewhere equally inconvenient. When you have that moment of inspiration, make a quick note of it somewhere. That way, when it’s time to write, you can just pull out that list and get started!
3. Vary the type of post you do. There’s a huge list of different ways you can attack your blog, including:
   1. Asking questions and inviting comments
   2. Doing an interview
   3. Case studies (don’t make it too self-congratulatory though – does it interest the reader?)
   4. Event reviews or previews
   5. Multimedia posts that include audio, video, or both
   6. Commentaries – posts that comment on something you have read elsewhere
   7. News – industry or sector news that would interest your reader
   8. Reviews – books, software, services, and so on
   9. Hints and tips – brief ones
   10. Tutorials – more in-depth
   11. Lists – everyone loves a top-10 list! (Don’t they?)
   12. Resources
   13. Predictions
   14. Debates – put forward opposing viewpoints and invite comments
4. Don’t be too critical of your writing. Obviously check it for spelling and grammar, but don’t be too much of a perfectionist or you’ll never publish anything!
5. Believe you have something of value to say! Even if you think everyone already knows what you’re writing, there is often value in getting a refresher. How often do you hear, “I already know it, but it was good to hear it again anyway.”

I may have to take some of this advice myself!

As the saying goes, “If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it”. And one of the most important things to keep an eye on with your website is how well you rank in search engines (especially Google) for your targeted keywords.

We offer our clients regular reports on this, and so if you’re already receiving these reports, here’s what to make of them:

1. Make sure that the keywords we are reporting on are relevant. Think to yourself, “If I was a potential customer, would I type this in to the search box in Google?”
2. Assuming we’re reporting on relevant keywords, check the numbers under each search engine. 10 or less means you’re on the first page of results. 11 to 20 means page 2, 21-30 is page 3 and so on. Really, you’re looking for a first page, or top 10 result. Page 2 may be okay in some circumstances, but page 1 is where you need to be.
3. Moving up and down a few places is completely normal. Google regularly tweak their algorithm, your website may have changed, competitors websites may have changed. Don’t stress about minor movements in either direction between reports.
4. If you don’t have a top 10 result for a relevant keyword – take action! It may mean revising some pages in your site, or seeking out some more inbound links. Contact us if you’re not sure what to do next.

Remember – this report doesn’t say how many people are actually visiting your website. It’s about maximising your site’s potential to get those people who are search for the things you offer.

Rumors have been circulating recently that Google is considering including the speed of your website as one of the factors it uses in ranking your pages in its search results.

That’s all speculation at this point, but overnight Google announced a new tool that lets you measure your website’s speed, based on data provided by people using the advanced features in their toolbar.

Perhaps they are gearing up for such a change, perhaps not – but importantly as explained on their blog:

Studies have repeatedly shown that speeding up your site leads to increased user retention and activity, higher revenue and lower costs.

It’s worth considering this the next time you’re thinking about large images and special effects that take longer to load. Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. “Would I really want to wait for this?”

(Image credit: Photo Monkey)

An article published by usability expert Jakob Nielsen recounts examples of how even a tiny amount of actual test data is better than guessing at what works best on the web.

We may think we know how hard or easy a site will be to use, but until we check with people who aren’t involved in the project you can never be sure.

Jakob observers:

When we actually study real users, we see how slowly they learn about technology and how little their ability to use fancy websites has improved. And, most important, we see how little users care about learning fancy Web techniques. People just want to get in, get their stuff done, and get out. They don’t want to learn.

Usability testing may cost a little more, but the payoffs can be enormous. Read the article here.

(Image courtesy of ChrisL_AK)

The author states:

I hate being held to ransom. And I’m sure you do, too. But that’s the scenario you’re creating when you hand over your website to a web designer or developer and relinquish control over when and how you can change your content.

And further:

That’s why I think it’s vital for small-business owners to use their own content management systems (CMS). My recommendation is to initially use a designer to create the overall look but after that you at least want to be able to change the text on your website whenever you want.

We firmly believe this too. And despite the authors assumption that support for the likes of Wordpress is hard to come by – we’re here to help you at any time! Even if you do need help at 2am we have a growing list of training videos available… (Please don’t phone me at 2am!)

We’ve been using Wordpress since early 2004 – you’ll have access to all that experience as well.

Are you unable to update your own website but would like that freedom? Contact us for more information!

(Image credit: Anirudh Koul)

The belief is that too much information means people won’t contact them.

But think of it this way: your website is often the first point of contact a customer will have with your business. If your website is helpful, you are being helpful. That creates a positive first impression, and first impressions count. The additional detail you provide can also eliminate enquiries from people who you really can’t help anyway, so that can be an additional time saver.

On the other hand, if the information on your website is overly brief and sketchy, a potential customer may well leave thinking, “That was a waste of time – it didn’t tell me anything!”

Having said this, every industry is different of course, but you really need to consider the end user’s experience. Will it be a good one or a bad one?

More specifically many have an issue with pricing.

Think of it this way: You’re walking through the supermarket and a certain biscuit company has all their goodies stacked up on the end of the aisle. It has cost them a fortune to buy that space for the week, not to mention the extra stock and the time spent in stacking it up.

But there’s no price on anything.

So, when you’re walking past with your trolley, do you put any of those biscuits in?

Chances are you won’t.

At the end of the day, people will want to know the price. So why make that information difficult to get?

And if you’re in an industry where pricing is a bit tricky or complicated, read this advice for a possible solution.

The recommendation?

Don’t let people walk past your site like a supermarket display without crucial information. Put enough there so they do stop, look around, and just maybe you’ll have a new customer!