There are many reasons we make websites but if you are doing it professionally then the primary reason is to make money. Everyone knows that to make money you need visitors and keeping them on your site viewing page after page filled with paying advertisements is your goal.
Unfortunately some sites suffer from what is called high bounce rates. A bounce is when your visitor views a single page or no more then two or three pages and then leaves quickly.
This is not always a bad thing if that visitor finds what they want and then returns later for more of the same but if you have a high bounce rate and low page views it is important to find a cure for it to improve your performance.
Reasons People Bounce From Your Site
1) They found what they were looking for. This is fine if your site provides a single resource such as a whois lookup or a color picker but you should consider adding additional related services to increase page views by unique visitors.
2) Your site uses offending JavaScript. If your site uses script to hide content then you are likely to lose visitors. People just don’t want to enable script on sites they have not grown to trust but many developers use this trick to require loading of their ads. The fact is people can still block your ads and enable your content so be friendly.
3) You browser check and restrict access. Some developers get so hung up on browser wars that they restrict access to large groups of visitors who will not install a new version or different browser just to see your content. They will just hit back in their browser to view the next google result.
4) Your keywords are attracting the wrong people. If your site is not optimized to be search index friendly you may be attracting people who are looking for something completely different then what you are offering.
5)Your content is not organized. If a visitor has a hard time finding content related to their initial search then they will believe that the answer is not to be found on your site. Using a CMS product will allow you to sort your posts into categories for quick browsing.
6) Your content is not good. Many SEO cookie cutter sites dump thousands of pages of garbage on their site in the hopes to attract visitors for only one page view. Other sites provide some information but do not provide solutions to problems in enough detail to really help the reader. We have all visited HowTo Sites where they describe how to replace an engine in a vehicle and it is two paragraphs of nothing. If you don’t know the topic then find one you can write about.
7)Your Advertising is offensive. If you are feeding popups and unders or expanding content that takes over a page then you are likely to lose return visitors no matter how good your content is. People don’t mind advertising if it is related to the content they are viewing and it is not extremely distracting but some ads just chase people away. This is bad for you and for your advertiser… they should learn this too.
8) Your site is generating a large number of 404 errors. When a visitor comes to your site through an outside link they expect to reach the content that was described in the search engine result or on the trackback link someone was talking about in their blog. You should provide redirects for content when the number of 404’s warrants it but remember to resubmit your siteindex.xml after any changes to your link structure.
9) The design of your site looks unprofessional or generic. Your site may actually have some interesting content but if your visitor believes it is an unprofessional resource they won’t trust you for information. The exact opposite idea of this is copycat sites of banks or commercial websites… a visitor will completely believe that a fake site is real because of its look… So you kinda understand that if you want to be accepted as a resource you need to act professional. This does not mean copying any style .. some people wear Gucci others wear Wrangler Jeans … as long as you are appropriate and well done your visitor will accept you.
10) They click one of your ads. Yea… lets all hope that this happens a lot.
