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Overall bounce rate (or % of short visits) has increased

Learned so far:

  • Site conversions are down but traffic is not
  • Therefore, site conversion rates must be down
  • Part of the problem is an increase in bounce rates

Next question:

Segment the increase in bounce rates by traffic sources. Is the increase in bounce rates pronounced with your campaign visitors (e.g. PPC, display ads, email) or with direct visits (i.e. visits starting on home page)? (could also be both or neither)
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Why are we asking?

Aiming to identify where changes may have been made that caused bounces to increase



Comments and thoughts that have been submitted on this wizard page:


Name: Akin
URL: http://MultichannelMetrics.com
Comment:

On a similar question, i.e. "high bounce rates", Sameer Khan had following comments on the Yahoo! discussion board for Web Analytics:
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Here is how I would resolve the bounce rate and conversion issue-

1. What is the biggest source of traffic?
- In your case it is the direct traffic. This is something we cannot control directly other than updating website design. The second best is the CPC which can be optimized to the t.

2. What keywords are bouncing the most?
Using your cpc and organic search keywords reports I would identify the set of keywords with the highest bounce rate. Additionally, the landing pages corresponding to those keywords. I would redirected the paid search traffic from the highest bounce/high traffic keywords to most relevant landing pages. OR Design a separate set of landing pages tightly focused on the keyword niche and ad copy.

3. What is the exact cause of the low conversion?
Pathing analysis is definitely a secondary issue in your case because the core issue is high bounce rate. I would still run the pathing reports on your entire shopping cart funnel to identify the breakpoints in your funnel.

Entry page -shopping cart page1--page 2-- page3--order completion

Optimizing / replacing funnel leaks can immediately boost your shopping cart conversion.

4. Landing page testing

Here are some of the best practices based on my experience for landing page testing

1. Headline (relevant to cpc campaign ad copy)
2. Hero shot ( core product image)
3. Number of columns on the site (2 column landing page convert better than 3 column for most retail sites)
4. Bullet points listing benefits
5. Call to action
6. Trust establishing factors like hackersafe, trustee
7. Testimonials with links to social media profile of the testimonial providers.

Hope this helps.

Thank you
Sameer Khan
Rackspace SEO,SEM & Web Analyst
Author: KeyWebMetrics.com blog






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