Just going to throw it out there your site somewhat looks like a generic "spam" landing page when you type in random domains. People may think that's where they've landed and move on.. Adding a new feel to your theme like others have said should help you out.. Get firebug to optimize your load times
To improve the bounce rate, you need to make your loading speed faster, add more unique quality content. And get more targeted traffic. That's the way to improve the bounce rate
Use google website optimizer to reduce the bounce rate. Create multiple pages and let your visitors decide what they like. If i where you i would test the page with a headline and move around the layout and see what works. Also a thing to consider is how you get people to your site. If your bounce rate is low it is like people saying "this is what i expected" So be consistent with what you write in your ads and show on the page.
site is taking too much time to page load .. and also put gud content on your site .. it will helps you lot .
Target your audience better. People are clicking through but not finding what they are looking for. If you are optimizing for generic terms make them more specific.
Hi Stu, This advice should make a lot of sense and help you out. I'm redesigning my homepage for some of the same reasons I'm about to give you. I love the idea of the box on the left for the Featured Content but the box is just too big. Also, you will want to put text above this box. People read left to right and will read the information as things load (if they have a slow connection). So some text above the content box such as a title of what's in the box would help, as well as making that box smaller so readable text is on the page when they first come there.
it seems that the main problem is loading of your site as it take time to load and lack of the material that people like.
Thx GameFriends. I've ditched the feature box for now. It looked good but just slowed the site down too much and also I agree that people need things to read. Now my site looks too boring if anything, although I still have to improve the logo. As for the content, the main page is always going to be varied, in order to keep a wider variety of people on the site. A large % of people come to an article page that is aimed at them so this won't be an issue. The main page is just for "everyone else". I mean, it is a broad topic, so I have to live with this.
Slow loading and un-attractive to the eyes. Looks like one big advertisement instead of any usefull content.
I started a thread a while back on a quick service online to help you pre-test your content at www.markiter.com: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1385597 Google Optimizer is good, but it is very time consuming, and it requires you to test with real traffic to your site. You could potentially be wasting this traffic if you are showing them less optimal content. Markiter is a service that lets you quickly pre-test headlines/images/video etc, and they find the respondents to provide feedback, instead of wasting the traffic that comes to your site. It's worked for me.
Sorry, the site looks more like a spam site than a real content site. If you want to reduce bounce rate, provide more better content. Your layout is very unattractive. Use so-called heat map (see here for heat map) to position ads and content blocks.
I'm pretty bored of this thread now. I change the site to speed it up and now everyone says it's ugly or a spam site. The content is great. It's genuine and insightful, people on normal websites tell us this all the time. I think DP people have just been exposed to too much spam. Thanks for the good advice that some of you have given, but I'm really not interested in hearing that it's slow and spam looking any more.
Perhaps the keywords are not the right match for your websites content. Just curious how many ads pointing away from your site do you have? This could also affect the bounce.
Bounce rate varies by type of site as well as referral source. To get a measure on how your bounce rate compares to others in your niche, use Google Analytics benchmarking feature. In some categories, a bounce rate of 40% is normal... The bounce rate can also have to do with how people are finding your site. Sometimes sites with lots of content get many visitors via long tail keyword searches that aren't exactly the audience you were intending to target. You can either dismiss this or try to revise the pages they are landing on. Good luck!
I visited your site through the index page. First impressions was that the top half of the page, i.e. above the fold it looked quite bland and there may have been a subconscious element that the colour scheme reminded people of some parked domain landing pages which are usually full of ads. I think the fact that you have an Adsense ad box on the top right corner reinforces that idea. I was also about to click away from your site, but out of curiosity I scrolled down, and that's when the page came 'alive' because I could see clear content now, real photographs, article headers, and I found something of interest and clicked through to the article and read it all. I liked the content, I found it quite helpful in one of my own situations, and I would like to ask if you wrote that yourself and if you did and were willing to offer some advice for a specific situation? Probably better in a PM though. Anyhow, I wouldn't take the criticisms personally - but what I would recommend is working on the design of the top half, to make it more colourful with distinct contrasts and more content at the top, i.e. featured articles, or a javascript slider that shuffles through the top5/10 pages on your site, with photos, to help people see what content is on offer. The blurb about what the site is about could probably be shifted to a thinner column on either side. Fresh content should be the first point of focus. Wish you the best in any case. Peace.
Thank you for the kind words Trazer. Nice point about the colours being subliminal, I'll look into that. Thing is that I've made a lot of changes to the page over the past week based on people's suggestions. It's not perfect but it's getting better and I appreciate the comments. I had a javascript slideshow but it just slowed the site down too much. It's currently about as optimized as I can possibly get it, and it's still right on the edge, so that javascript thing is a definite no no. Yesterday I had the recent content at the top and someone said that it looked like a spam site and that I should post decent content. Also I complained about not earning enough on Adsense (in another thread) and people said to move the ads to where they are now. Now people complain that it looks spammy. Talk about fine balance. Anyone reading this thread wanting to improve their bounce rate, you're seeing a real life case study, that's for sure! @ Trazer: As for chatting about the issue you read about, feel free to PM me. I co write most of the articles with another colleague, others are all mine alone and some are all his. We pride ourselves on good content.