Few things are more frustrating than a high bounce rate. That rate means a whole lot of people visited a site - imagine a crowd of shoppers entering a store - but quickly left without purchasing anything. Fortunately, Microsoft, which has quite a lot of experience with online matters, saw fit to pass on some tips about reducing bounce rates.
Dimitris Zoto, an editor at WebSEOAnalytics.com, was recently allowed to publish a guest post on the Small Business Blog from Microsoft. In it, he first suggested that small business owners "[u]se a nice web design/layout" to reduce bounce rates, which makes sense.
Zoto's next recommendations - "[k]eep the size of your pages low" and "[b]uild a user friendly navigation (menu)" - are then perhaps something fewer people would think of on their own.
Next, Zoto stressed, it's important to "[c]reate well written texts," "[o]ptimise for the correct keywords," "[s]tart a PPC campaign on the most important keywords," and "[g]et quality links."
Finally, after all this, Zoto believes small business owners shouldn't spend too much time just sitting back and patting themselves on the back. He suggested, "Study the reports." Then it's possible to tweak everything again as necessary for the sake of improving the bounce rate some more.
These tips should have a pretty substantial effect the first time around, though, so don't avoid following them for fear of a long-term commitment.
Good luck reducing your bounce rate and preventing potential customers from leaving your site.
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Comments
get 'em and then keep 'em!
Hi Doug, Great article. Microsoft is right to offer these tips. I think too many webmasters focus too much on getting traffic and not on keeping the traffic they get. It's one thing to get people to your website... It's another thing to keep them there! Retention is critical. This applies not only to "small biz" but also medium and big biz too! :) Frank, trade show writer
Video's can help
Take care that the video doesn't stop the Call for Action, buy now etc...
Anti-Bounce Tips
People fret over bounce rates all the time. Having a high bounce rate doesn't mean people didn't do what you wanted them to do at all - it just meant they didn't visit another page at your site.
If you have landing pages from PPC or send trafic to a special product page offer from organic traffic then having a high bouce rate maybe okay. Like all things you need to look at CTA rates or profit numbers. A high bounce rate with low CTA is evidence of an issue and ime to look at the reasons for it, and what you may need to do.
Cliff
Thanks
I think that its great that a company like microsoft is wiling to share these great tips with the public. There are a lot of companies that just get a lot of traffic and rarely sell anything, this could be a good thing once they learn how to close the deal.
Microsoft Relays Small biz
I see this regularly as well where we do not have any protection for Exchange. When i say protection i mean a third party messaging security system, like message labs or trends IMHS. What you are seeing is the result of spam relay attempts, trying to authenticate to your server and failing. The usernames will vary, if you check the security logs.
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