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.

The redesigned Haycroft Workplace Solutions Website featured more than just a visual refresh. We looks at the previous website statistics, analysed what pages people were visiting, and compared that to what Haycroft really needed them to do. We then re-engineered the structure of the site to better fit those goals.

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)

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!

But someone has taken a different angle and posted a bottle of “genuine” flood water on Ebay.

With about 3 days left on the auction there are already 18 bids!

It just goes to show: if you’re quick enough, there are opportunities everywhere!

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a woman in the US has been sued US$220,000 for sharing 24 songs through a file sharing service called Kazaa.

That’s a lot of money for 24 songs, which ever way you look at it. Whether you agree or disagree, it makes you think twice about what you do online!

The Lesson

We recently attended a conference in Sydney called Web Directions, and one of the points made was that people will use the web in a way that they see fit. Not necessarily how you or I would design it for them. The record companies here are doing their best to resist the change that the internet has brought, instead of adapting to it.

Is that something you can think about regarding your business?

If it’s you against the world (which is pretty much the case when you’re talking about the internet) you can’t really successfully fight it. Instead of saying, “we don’t want our website to work that way”, think about how your customers want it to work. And enable them to do it. Because whether you like it or not, they will find a way. Maybe via a competitor.

It might mean some changes, but you’ll reap the rewards on the long run.

In the words of the Borg, “resistance is futile”.