Page View Goals Completed, Now I Am After the Bounce

It hasn’t been a month since I posted Turning the Weakest Link Into a Winner, but I can’t stand it anymore. Besides I accomplished my goal. My goal was to get my total page view count to surpass my industries benchmark for page views, and I had one month to do it. See how you can use Google Analytics to find those numbers. I also had set a personal goal of total page views in thirty days which I accomplished as well. I’m done trying to get more page views, at least for now.

Now I Am After The Bounce

Expecting a sunny July to be a downer for my total visitors, I was pleasantly surprised to have it be one of my best months. Traffic has always been slowly increasing for this site, but lately it has been kicking in to high gear. Page views are obviously up, and my bounce rate even went down a percent. Typically, you can expect a bounce rate to go up with an influx of new visitors, but I managed.

With the number of new visitors increasing, now is the time to seize the moment, and keep them from bouncing away. I must turn those new visitors into regulars, and really get the numbers shooting up. So far this year 15% of my visitors have been returning visitors, and generated nearly have the total page views. In July alone, I received 1,000 more new visitors than June. Think I don’t want to capture a huge chunk of that?

The best way I can gain more returning visitors is by killing the bounce. I need to get those new visitors to start interacting with the site right away, and turn that return visitor percentage into 35% instead of 15%. It’s a huge goal, but what I am really trying to do is beat July numbers by the end of August. This July, my return visitor numbers are 23%, so a 12% increase should be achievable. I do like knowing that at least one out of every four or five people that visit my site come back for more. Now it’s time to make it one out of every two or three. A 12% change will also move this out of the number one trouble maker bracket for this site using my benchmark check.

My Plan to Reduce the Bounce

Attack the Main Offender

The first thing I will do reduce my overall bounce rate is attack the primary offending page. I will look at the top five entry pages, and decide which one will benefit me the most by reducing the bounce. I will target just one, but if they all need help, and it’s relatively easy to do, I will attack each one of them.

Delete the Junk

The next thing I will do is shine my favorite keyboard button, and get ready to DELETE. I will watch a few users on my site, use stats to see what is not getting used, and start deleting the items that are getting ignored. I won’t go to crazy with this, but I want new visitors to only have to focus on things that I know have captured the attention of the return visitors. Hint here, I will be looking mostly at return visitor analytics.

Using the delete button is the facts of life for a website or a blog. Things get dated, and templates get crowded, often with junk.

The Layout

The last thing I will try to tackle is the layout of the site. With this, I don’t plan on any major changes if any. I know my introduction text box I have on the home page has always bugged me. I might try working on that even though my home page bounce is pretty low.  I want to keep my changes very minimal, only fine tuning maneuvers. I will also look for methods to increase the authority value. They are many ways you can do this, and for different reasons. It’s not just authority, it’s trust as well. An example would be adding a phone number to the header of an ecommerce site.

A final thing I may work on is targeting the good ones. What I mean by this, is that I have set up my RSS links to be tracked by Google Analytics. That means, I know where my subscribers are coming from. Reducing the bounce is not all site design. It’s also chasing the right audience.

Bouncing blog readers is a common scenario, so I have my work cut out for me, but having a clear plan usually does the trick. I think I can do it. Oh, and feel free to not Stumble me this August, it will kill my bounce!