Bounce rate is a metric to indicate how many visits to your website were only to one page before the user exited. It is not to say that if a user only visits one page and then leaves that there is something wrong with the website. The user could have found the information looking for or may have followed a link from a site to another. Affiliate marketing sites will not so much look at the bounce rate if the user came in via a search term, but rather where the user went from the page. If the user clicked on the link leading to the landing site it will indicate success.

Another instance where the bounce rate will not matter that much is the first page of a blog. The user may have read all the posts on the main page and then leave – not an indication of poor website performance, but rather that the user has found the content useful, provided the time spent on the first page was enough to read through the various posts. In this instance you will look at the time spent to measure website performance as part of internet marketing rather than the actual bounce rate.

How to measure the bounce rate as an indication of website performance related to internet marketing

The bounce rate is obtained by looking at the number of visits to the page. The formula for the bounce rate will be number of one page visits divided by the number of persons entering the website through the specific page. Google Analytics is an excellent tool to use if you want to identify the bounce rate. Many of the website analytics and statistics tools normally found at the website control panel also provide the information without having to do complex formulas to get to the answer.

Why is the bounce rate so important for measuring website performance as part of internet marketing?

Often when clients approach an internet marketing company because their site is not performing as desired, the internet marketing company will first use an analytics tool to discover flaws in the site and thus identify areas that can cause poor website performance. The bounce rate is one of those metrics used simply because it is such a good indicator of what is transpiring on the website. High bounce rates universally give an indication of poor website performance except for the cases already discussed. If someone lands on a page and then leaves without visiting another page or taking an action it indicates that the person did not find what they were looking for or it was their perception.

When is the bounce rate high and thus an indication of poor website performance?

Above 90% normally indicates that there must be some kind of technical difficulty while a bounce rate above 70% can indicate a problem with keywords or content and information structure including navigation. The range between 30-60% is rather difficult as it can indicate a bit of a problem, but not enough to give a clear indication of what the problem area may be. In this respect you may want to also check where the visits originated from and analyse whether the links to your site were not relevant. Below 30% means your website performance is excellent and you are at least getting part of the internet marketing spending back. Keep going on this track!

Internet marketing companies will also look in-depth at the website performance to see whether there is a problem with content, specific types of traffic or technical problems which may cause high bounce rates at specific pages.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

Always keep in mind that Internet users don’t read the website content from page one through to page 80 as would be the case with a book. Every article should thus be written to be able to stand alone without the reader having knowledge of the other pages. All the content must be related to the main topic of the website as to prevent confusion. Rather create another website for topics unrelated to the main subject if you have a diversified subject field.

All of the above taken into account you will still need to create coherent website content even though each page must be able to stand on its own. The relationship between the various pages must thus be obvious. The Internet makes it possible to jump from one page to another and to other websites. It is thus imperative that the relationship among pages will be noticeable.

You cannot for instance, have a website about flowers and then have an unrelated page about dog training among them unless you can show the relationship between a dog and flowers. To create relationship you will have to show in the article how dog training can help prevent a dog from trashing your garden.

When writing website content you will also have to keep in mind the pages read before the user got to the present page as well as the pages that the user will visit directly after reading the specific page. If you for instance, write about furniture selection for the dining room, the user most probably read the page of furniture selection for the house or furniture selection for the lounge first and may probably read the page about furniture selection for the bedroom or the study next.

Navigation can become tricky on the Internet

With the user being able to click on a link within a web page and then suddenly jump to another page in the website, you will want to create continuity so that the user can still see the relation between the page jumped to and the page jumped from.

Keep in mind that the user will not always get to a page through the same path. The user could have landed at the web page through a link from another website, banner ad, organic search results, affiliate marketing site, a referral from a friend, a direct link placed in an email or from pay per click advertising. The user could have reached the web page from the main page of your website, the sitemap, a link in another page on the site etc.

The solution

The secret is to help the user see immediately where they have landed and what the relationship to the other website content is. The best way to do this is to have each of the pages on your website start the same with a headline and introduction to help them understand what the page is about and how it is related to the rest of the website content. Also guide the users at the end of each page to related pages with links for further reading.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

Navigation as part of the website design is not only about the navigation bar and links, but every part of moving through the website from one page to another with ease. It includes the links in the footer, the back and next links, the home page; contact us, the sitemap, the text links and the ordering information. It also includes the overall structure and thus complete flow of information on the website.

The lay-out of the information can ease navigation as part of website design. You for instance, need to make it as easy as possible for the user to find all the information about the product at the site and should help the user through the buying process with detailed instructions on how to go about for ordering, how long it will take for delivery, and more. Don’t confuse the user with thousands of buttons. Clear and concise information will go a long way in online marketing and you should thus pay close attention to the website design and overall navigation features of a site to help the user.

More often than not people think that online marketing is only the way to get traffic to the site. It is however, also what the site appearance is, the information available on the site, and the general experience of the site for the user. The information and links should follow in a logical manner. You need to test the site from a user perspective and thus need to ask other people to go through the site as it is often difficult to see mistakes and navigation difficulties when you are the designer or website owner.

Only a small proportion of websites on the Internet pass the tests of ease of navigation in their website design. It seems that a lot of website owners spend loads on online marketing for nothing. It is important to consider that each user visits numerous websites and each of the websites is unique. It is thus a total new experience every time the user navigates to a new site. Never assume that the visitor is already familiar with the website design and information structure of your site. As such it is imperative to make as many things as possible familiar for the visitor.

How to create a familiar website design for the easing of navigation

Think about it. You have spent many hours in creating content as part of online marketing. You now need to make the content as accessible as possible for the user to get a return on investment regarding online marketing. By underlying all links throughout the site you will create familiarity. All the links must be in the same colour or underlined in the same colour. Blue for instance, is the most recognized colour for links. By creating blue underlined links in the text you help the user to navigate through the website.

What all the above boils down to is that the user will look at the professionalism of the website design in terms of navigation, logical flow of information, and buttons as part of your online marketing when making a buying decision. Make the efforts count by creating a user-friendly website design that will promote easy navigation and thus give value for your online marketing.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”

Managing bad publicity on the Internet

It does sometimes happen that a disgruntled customer can trash your company or website on the Internet at a site with a high ranking for keywords relevant to your website. One disgruntled customer can cause huge damage. Damage control is part of online traffic building. First don’t ignore the customer and never engage in flame wars. As with any customer complaint, handle the situation carefully and try to turn the customer’s complaints into something positive. In terms of the Internet, the best strategy is to create content with the keywords that bring up the page where the customer complains or trashes your site or company, as your main keywords. Keep creating keyword rich articles until your pages push the complaint page off the first two or three pages. Most of the users only scan the first two pages of search results pages and hardly ever glance over pages beyond those two.

Use images as part of an online traffic building strategy

In the past images had very little effect on the overall ranking of a website and although ALT tags helped, the search engines didn’t give much attention to images. If however, you have images on your site today with correct ALT tags, the images can land on top of the search results page when a user types in the relevant keyword. Flickr is the missing ingredient here. By sharing photos on Flickr relevant to specific keywords and thus your business you improve overall visibility of your website. For every image shared on Flickr, indexing will follow by the search engines. This in turn will help in the online traffic building efforts as ranking will be pushed up for the image and more visibility will follow.

Create incoming links through Social Media Sites

Incoming links create a stir with the search engines. Search engines see many incoming links to a website as other site owners perceiving your site to be important. With that in mind, the search engines will rank a site higher when there are many incoming links. Social Media is an excellent tool for creating the sought after incoming links and should be used as part of online traffic building if you want your site to stand out on the Internet. The first step however, is to create valuable content on your site. If the content is interesting, valuable, humoristic or helpful and even controversial, you will get the bloggers to link to it. If the blogger’s view is valued then links to your content will also be valued. The end result is incoming links, higher ranking, more internet visitors, and better sales.

There are also forums, business blogs, writing articles at article sites linking back to your website, using affiliate marketing sites to link to your site, and numerous other methods which should form part of your overall online traffic building strategy to improve the visibility of your website on the Internet.

“Intoweb Marketing offers internet marketing solutions for your website in South Africa. Contact us for a internet marketing quote today.”