Help needed with high bounce rate!

I was wondering if some of you could help me out here. basically my site has always had a pretty high bounce rate, its nearly always over 80% and i can not understand why. I doubt its my content as (well i think) the content is good quality and original.

The navigation of the site is clear and concise and the design is nice and clean. I would really love some feedback, maybe its something I'm missing.

One thing that puzzles me is that when i look at the content, visitors spend a good few minutes on average for most of the content, so have no idea why there reading the stuff then going.

Any insights or help would be massively appreciated. Thanks

www.blokebuddy.com

 

i think this should go to review site,
to me the site looks good.

 

Look at where the bounces are coming from. If they are coming from Google it may be that they are coming looking for one thing and leaving because it isn't what they thought. For example, you probably get a lot of your traffic for the term:
sexy mummy

I'm not sure, but it is possible that you wrote something about "sexy mummy" meaning a sexy mother. If a lot of people come to your site looking for pictures of attractive embalmed corpses they may leave once they hit your page.

Look at your stats and see what specific traffic sources have high bounce rates and which ones have low bounce rates. You may be able to find a pattern. Generally if you have an extremely high bounce rate it means people aren't finding what they are looking for. It can also mean that you aren't doing a good job of giving them other related content to click on.

 

The bounce rate may come form irrelevant keyword that may get you in google first page..
remove that irrelevant keyword and find your very specific keyword for your market.

 

Hey Adam,

I checked your website and it looks like it is not with the content ALONE. I see some good content there and the 80% bounce rate is really bad for any website. The best you can do it, open your google analytics report and drill down which page you have got the highest bounce for. Find the keywords that brought the visitor to the page and just think on how good you have presented for the content. Some may be really good and some..

I will take here an example. I came to your website looking for "worst album covers" The page open up with 60 % 40 % dimension. Ie.. Subject matter filled 60% of the page while the distraction factors in the side bar filled to 40%. When I click on any image there, it opens in a new window and I am finding it hard to go back. May be you can use some gallery light box or some kind of image popup which make the user easy to browse through the pics. The home page as well as the inner pages are too much crowded and does not keep anyones attention.

You can try a new layout and see how the bounce rate is coming down. Since I don't have the reports, I could give you some assumptions, but if you would like to me give more insights pls PM me and I am glad to help you.

 

check with your hosting service provider, are you using shared hosting or dedicated hosting servers, sometimes, hosting servers plays a role, like you know people comeing to your website not loading on time, people close it. it happens. check it

 

Hello Adam,

I've spent some time on your site and I can only come up with 2 possibilities:

1) As the others have mentioned, your keyword targeting may be off. This is very likely. When people search for a term or click on a keyword, there is a certain expectation. Their patience is extremely limited. If they don't find exactly what's been promised to them in the keyword, phrase or link, they're gone. It's too easy to hit the backbutton. If this is the case, and it might well be, the earlier suggestions on how to drill down and see if you are making a good connection between the expectations of the visitors, based on keywords and the product you are delivering, will help you.

2) This is more subjective. As I clicked around, I noticed 2 things. I didn't laugh or chuckle at anything, even though the intent of the content was to be wry and humorous. This is the acid test for me. I like to record a fair amount of standup comedy. If I'm not laughing, or at least chuckling in the first 2 or 3 minutes, I hit delete. Everybody has their own sense of humor, but I don't think your content is sufficiently engaging. There may be an audience or a demographic you can find if you stick to it over time. Meanwhile . . . boring. The second thing, as I spent time, I was aware of a feeling of agitation. This is related to the "not funny" part. I knew it was supposed to at least be amusing, and since it wasn't, I was wasting my time.

I suggest you spend time on similar sites and see if you can spot the difference between other sites that you think are successful and yours.

All the best . . . Carl

 

How do you traack your bounce rate? If you use Google Analytics, check so that you have installed it correctly. I had a site with 80% bounce rate and I edited some things, took away another javascript in the header/footer so the Google Analytics javascript was the only one. As it turns out, the javascript I edited out had been preventing Analytics to properly track visitors, so I went from 80% bounce rate to 14% over a day or two.

So spend some time, see how it's installed and if things are properly called and in what order. Also check that you don't have something blocking it, like colliding javascripts like I had.

 

Make sure your KWs are matching exactly what your visitors are wanting.

However, how is your conversion rate? I know of plenty of sites that have a 60 to 70 percent bounce rate but their conversion rate is really good.

 

Yes I too have a high bounce rate and was wondering how to send that number lower.

 

Seems your blog is down !! al i can see is cgi- bin..

The most important reason is asking reviews on digitalpoint. The visitor just sees home page and returns.. after all all he wants to give is a review.. !!!

 

I agree, the bottom line is the conversion rate. If you are getting new clients/customers, then the bounce rate is not a big issue.

 

I am really scared of such empty pages when I review websites. I once got a nasty trojan and LOTS of problems then (losing passwords, money etc), when clicked on a link to such an 'empty' page. though this one looks just empty...

 

its a very nice lifestyle website, but the articles don't really "pop", you need less junk content, and more of bulletin like articles.

 

i thinks it is because of your keywords, try another keywords it it still not working or changing this week. try to find keyword which is relevant to your site.

 

Putting up videos on your site can decrease your bounce rate.New readers will keep your site opened for a certain time before closing it and may even navigate to other pages.

 

this type of problem happen many times. I think, It may be due to raking your site first page in search engine. But it is not target your site business or content. I think your site rank with other keyword and content target other thing.

 

I agree, you need to optimize your keywords.

 

80% is not to high, but you can check by referrer what people search in google or other search engine before they come to your site, and then think - do they find what they looking for?

 

You mean, 80% not high bounce rate? Bounce rate should below than 25%.........