Your Bounce Rate is that depressing Internet statistic that measures the proportion of visitors that look at one single page of content and then bounce away, immediately leaving your site.  Bounce Rate has to be one of the most talked about statistics of the year, and yet one of the least well understood or interpreted.

We all want to reduce our bounce rates, that is to say we want to entice visitors to look at least one more page of content on our sites.  And a high bounce rate is a generally accepted signal that something is wrong, whether it’s your website content, or bad navigation, or poor user experience, or lousy business proposition.  A high bounce rate means your site has failed to engage your visitor enough to look at another page, and it might be that simple design changes can often lead to significant improvements in your bounce rate.

But in my experience, small businesses actively pursuing a search engine optimisation strategy may well experience a rise in their Bounce rate.

You must keep in mind that  Not all Bounces are Created Equal. You need to look at your Bounces on their individual characteristics and merits, and decide which Bounce rates provide significant information for your business, and which need addressing as a matter of priority.

1.  Evaluating Bounce on a “Page by Page” Basis

Let’s start with your Home page.  It should have a low bounce rate, as it is typically one of your most visited pages, and it acts as a signpost to encourage visitors to explore further.   It typically will have a linear path of links encouraging people to click through for further information.

By way of comparison, your search engine optimisation activities will often result in a huge number of what Jakob Nielsen calls “deep dips” – visitors arriving on interior pages that are highly relevant to their search phrase.  Obviously, these pages should be of interest to your visitors because the page is exactly what they were looking for. A high bounce rate for these pages might be a reason to worry.

However, you may also find that your pages may also be ranking highly for search phrases that are not appropriate, or do not show intention to buy your products or services.  And so these visitors will bounce, and because they were never really a prospective customer, you just can’t worry about them.

The danger would be to start redesigning your pages based on this spurious visitor activity.  You need to identify a strategy to focus on the behaviour of your real potential customers, not the time wasters.

2.  Bounce Rate for Particular Key Phrases

Some of your phrases do indeed show intention to buy, and you will want to carefully monitor these specific phrases and have a strategy in place to drive the bounce rate down.

Use your Google Analytics to segment out these phrases, and generate reports that help you to keep an eye on them.  Lose sight of this bounce rate at your peril, because it is at the heart of both your search engine optimisation and customer conversion strategy.

3.  Bounce Rate for Entry Sources

Your search engine optimisation activities will result in visitors coming from sites such as Digg, or Stumble Upon, who may well be idly browsing the web, and to be frank will never become a customer. Their bounce rate may be high, and my advice is don’t worry about it.  If appropriate, segment this traffic out, and review their bounce rate separately from other traffic sources.

How about links from other websites?  Visitors coming in as referrals from other sites should have a lower bounce rate, after all it is a recommendation that led them to visit your site.  You need to determine if the inbound link is indeed a recommendation that shows some intention on the part of the visitor, or again is just driving in random traffic.

Visitors from search engines are showing a high level of intention:  they have searched and clicked through to your site, and they should start engaging in your content.  High levels of bounces from search traffic should be a warning signal.  Either there is something wrong with your landing pages, or there is something wrong with your search engine optimisation strategy.

And of course, for a Pay Per Click campaign, a high bounce rate means wasted money with serious repurcussions for the overall cost of the campaign.  Keep a beady eye on your paid traffic sources, whether PPC, banners or other forms of paid advertising.

4.  Loyal Visitors

What about all you lovely people who follow visit my website in order to read my blog postings using either the RSS feed, or my email  marketing newsletter.

If I were thinking purely in terms of Bounce Rate, then I have to say you disapppoint me:  you often read one article, and then you leave.

But you are loyal visitors to the site, you come back week after week.  And to be honest, I’m happy if you usually just look at a page or two, because I suspect you’ve read some of my other articles already, and I hope from time to time I’ll lure you into clicking on the shiny new courses I’m running.

And finally…

One of the best techniques for reducing bounce rate is to offer specific links to further information at the bottom of the page, and hope your visitors will be motivated to learn more:

Search Engine Optimisation Myths:  don’t fall for these scams (PDF)

What’s happened to my search engine rankings?

I am trying out a new free customer feedback service that provides an independent, unedited source of evaluations from my customers.  I can display this feedback on my website, helping to build business trust and credibility as part of my marketing strategy. And of course it provides a valuable feedback loop as part of my process of continuous improvement of the business.

Feefo is a  customer feedback tool being used by household names like the BBC and Charles Tyrwhitt, as well as number of small businesses ranging from retailers to service providers.

The customer review process is quite simple:  I provide Feefo with all the email addresses of my customers and details of what they bought.  Feefo invites them to provide comments that will be published, unedited, on the Internet.  I have undertaken to give Feefo all my customer addresses (not just those who I think will say nice things!) and also understand that whatever the customer says, good or bad, will appear in my reviews. And finally, I do have the ability to reply to comments as appropriate.

Best of all, Feefo keeps the evaluation process short and sweet, with just two questions:  provide a rating of your product and give a comment.  Keeping it simple seems to work well.

It is a British company, and they have been very helpful in providing support when it was needed.  I think there are some areas that still need refining, for instance the icons aren’t particularly intuitive, and the reporting is a bit ropey, but I have the impression they are open to suggestions and constructive feedback.

The first question is an open ended box to write in comments. I have used Feefo’s very simple editor to write the introductory text:

Feefo can take automatic notifications of the details of your sales direct from your website, in much the same way you send details of your sales to your credit card payment processing provider.  Alternatively, you an upload the details of your sales by creating a simple file using a spreadsheet.

It is a free service, provided you only need 100 feedbacks per month. If you require more feedbacks, or want to customise the service, then they provide the Pro version.

Be sure to take a look at my article discussing the value of customer reviews as part of your Internet marketing strategy.

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Successful websites need to get alot of visitors, and alot of your visitors should be coming from search engines, particularly Google.

I’m often asked why a site isn’t ranking well in the websites, or why they’re getting the wrong kind of visitors.

In short:  what’s wrong with my website?

I want to talk about 3 problem scenarios that are typical for small business websites:  that they’re not ranking well in Google, that visitors just bounce right off the site, or that they’re getting the wrong kind of visitors.

1.  I’m not ranking well for my key phrases

Google is constantly tweaking the search engine results, testing sites for their quality and relevance.  These quality signals are coming from the content on your site, where your website fits in the rich mesh of links that Google trusts, and the behaviour of the visitors searching for and visiting your site.

If your site is not ranking well, then you need to review these factors:

Check the content on your website.  You want to be looking out for these poor quality signals:

• Duplicate Title tags used across multiple web pages
• Duplicate Meta description tags
• Duplicate content, either duplicated pages, or pages with duplicated elements such as large menus
• Pages with little or no meaningful content
• Keyword Diarrhea, also known as keyword stuffing, which applies to Title tags, Alt tags, meta tags
• Keyword rich content contained in decorative graphic images
• No coherent keyword strategy, often referred to as keyword density
• Pure keyword stuffing, without using keywords within a meaningful context

Check that your inbound linking strategy is delivering quality, topical links.  You want to be looking out for these danger signals:

• You’re purchasing links from a link brokerage service
• You have a high proportion of reciprocal links
• Your recipricoal links are not with quality, relevant, topical websites
• You don’t have outbound links to those authorative, quality sites
• You have acquired a flood of inbound links, and then just as quickly stopped link building

2.  I’m getting lots of visitors, but they bounce straight off the site

Your web analytics software will let you know what proportion of your visitors look at just one page of your website, and then decide to leave straight away.  Your bounce rate is a good measure of what kind of first impression your site is making, and an indicator of the quality of your site.

Google make it clear that Bounce Rate is an important contributor to their AdWords quality score, and I think it is reasonable to assume (and I’m only assuming) that bounce rate is also taken into consideration when determining your search engine rankings.

So a bad (high) bounce rate is a double whammy:  you are losing visitors after just one page view, and their decision to leave your site may have an negative effect on your rankings.

You need to figure out what your visitor’s don’t like about your site.  Of course, it may be that your site is perfect and they found exactly what they wanted in a single page.  Bravo for you, and dream on.  For the rest of us, it means checking:

• that the design of the site reflects your business core values.  Does your website look professional, or home made?
• that your site looks trustworthy, someone I want to give my money to?
• that your site loads quickly
• that the navigation is clear and easy to use

3.  I’m getting lots of visitors, but no buyers

Once upon a time I wrote an article about the mystery canoeist who faked his death and went to Panama with his wife Pam.  I wanted to highlight the fact their fakery was discovered by a casual searcher discovering their photograph on Google Images, and the importance of image search.

My article, John and Anne Move to Panama ranks highly in Google for people searching for John and Anne, is the landing page for many thousands of Google searchers, and it’s even been translated into Russian.

But it hasn’t earned me a penny.  It’s a badly optimised page delivering irrelevant traffic.  But it is useful as an example in my workshops!

If you’re getting lots of visitors, but no buyers,then check your web analytics to see if you are receiving traffic for irrelevant key phrases.  If you are, then:

• amend the culprit pages to have more appropriate keyword rich text in the Title Tags, headings, body copy and all the other relevant places on the page
• generate more content relevant to your key theme
• work on getting high quality inbound links from appropriate websites
• and accept the fact that you will be getting a proportion of irrelevant traffic

So, if you are struggling with your rankings, your visitor behaviour, or getting the right kinds of visitors then these are some suggestions to help you out.

Good luck!

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I’m aware that my company website design is nearly three years old, and that the design is looking a little tired and is due for a website refresh.

Why not take a peek at the draft design of the new site. Your comments would be most welcome, keeping in mind this is a work in progress! The real site will not have my ugly face on the front, but it is a useful image to use at this stage!

The idea is to put a new “skin” on the site, retaining the existing file names in order to preserve all my search engine optimisation efforts.

I’ve worked closely with my graphic design partner to design something that looks corporate, and modern, and clearly conveys the key messages. I am also looking to include more Web 2.0 functionality, but I’ll let you know more about that later.

Further progress regarding the site development to follow-

I am in the process of designing a new “skin” for this website. The new appearance of the website will keep the fundamental content, but update the look and feel, and incorporate new functionality.

One question I’m asking myself is What screen resolution should we design for?

This site currently uses a principle called liquid layout, that is to say it stretches to fit the viewer’s own screen width. The layout isn’t frozen, but adjusts to fit whether the user views the page on a super widescreen monitor, or on a small screen Blackberry handheld device.

The new design will continue to use liquid layout, but which resolution should we be optimising for?

It has been interesting looking back on visitor data, and to see the march of computer screen inexorably towards the rectangular wide screen monitor with a resolution of 1280 x 1024.

Our visitors most common resolution is 1024 x 768 (35%) and indeed this is the resolution that usability gurus like Jakob Nielsen recommends.

However, more than 37% are viewing on some variation of SXGA, meaning a 17″ or 19″ monitor with a resolution of 1280 x 1024 or a close variation.

Indeed, only 3% of visitors used the traditional 800 x 600, often used by web designers as the lowest common denominator for screen resolution.

And there are significantly more visitors using very high resolutions, which might translate into 20″ or 30″ monitors.

Now, I know I have dumbed the screen resolution issue down a bit in the post (and I’m sure I’ll get in the neck from web designers) but it is worth interpreting the data, and planning the new design around the most common, and increasingly popular, high resolution monitors.

Update: I am happy to publish the following correction regarding the position of EMNET, as supplied by Tim Miller.

East Midlands Network Ltd has ceased trading. This is the company that was involved with the development and delivery of projects not the company that offers clients ISP services so the item on your web site is not quite accurate. Emnet Solutions Ltd is very much active and providing ISP services with the support of an international group.

What would happen if your web designer/developer went bust?

Nottingham based web company EMNET Network Solutions is no longer trading. Initially the website said “Following a number of difficulties EMNET has ceased trading,” whereas the website now describes their status as “restructuring.”

EMNET’s difficulties serves as a timely reminder to consider what arrangements you have in place with your web developer.

Communication at stressful times like this can be difficult; phones are unlikely to be answered, and information may be restricted to email.

In an ideal world there will be an orderly shut down of the business, with the hosting of your website continuing until you can make alternative arrangements.

In addition to web design, hosting and Internet connectivity, EMNET managed initiatives like the Anubis project which has very recently awarded £10,000 to each of 10 small businesses in the East Midlands, including GreenEnergy360. The Anubis project was funded by EMDA and the European Regional Development Fund.

What are the main issues do you need to consider in the event your web designer ceases trading?

1. Who owns your domain name registration?
Was your web designer helpful, and registered your domain name for you? If so, the ownership and contact details may be in the designer’s name, including logon access and renewal reminders. It can be very difficult to get your name transferred at stressful times, so get the details sorted now. And if you forget to pay your domain name renewal then you risk losing your domain name.

2. Do you have a backup of your website?
Your web designer’s decision to shut up shop may come quickly, so do you have a secure backup of your web pages that you can get access to if necessary?

3. Who owns the intellectual property of your website?
The intellectual property of your website should be yours, but that probably excludes any applications such as shopping cart software or other applications. If you are running web applications such as e-commerce shopping carts, content management systems, or forums then establishing ownership might be problematic. If you are using open source software, or industry standard packages then you might be able to move your applications to a new company.

If it is a bespoke solution, then the intellectual property might belong to the web developer and you should have a legal agreement in place stipulating what happens if the developer ceases trading. And at the very least, you need to have a utility to extract your data for the worst case scenario of having to create a new website.

4. What are your hosting arrangements?
Your web designer may have their own web servers, or may be renting space on your behalf on a shared hosting service. Do you have passwords, copies of invoices and other information that might help with the continuation of your services.

Changing your website domain name is a big deal.

Changing your domain name will result in immediately losing your rankings in Google, even if you keep the same content on the new domain name.

Cold Hanworth Forge teach blacksmithing courses, and found that their website was generating lots of course bookings. But the site was old, and the time was right to have a new website that the business could be proud of.

As part of their web makeover, the business owners were advised to get rid of their successful www.teachblacksmithing.com domain name, and use a brand new domain name with their company name in it instead.

And when the new website went live, their site disappeared from the Google results. Whereas they were previously in the top 10 for all their keyphrases, they now languished way down on pages 9 and 10 of the results.

And most importantly, they discovered their training bookings dried up.

The disaster was all down to changing their domain name.

We had a very quick discussion, Bob reverted back to his old domain name, and straight away he was back to getting bookings on his lovely new site direct as a result from regaining his high rankings in Google.

The mistake Bob made was not to plan for his domain name change. But to his credit, he spotted the problem, and quickly tried to figure out where things went wrong.

Google has provided a useful checklist for changing your domain name and they readily acknowledge that domain name changes are not easy.

And even when you have a member of staff dedicated to managing the changeover process, it will still take months (potentially) for your site to regain its rankings in Google. Take a look at TKG’s blog where they document their domain name changeover process.

There are times when domain name changes are desirable or inevitable, and just like any change in your business marketing, success is all in the planning.

The Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Chamber of Commerce have launched their new website, and my first impressions are a bit mixed, to say the least.

Let’s start with the home page navigation.

Vincent Flanders coined the phrase “mystery meat navigation” on his WebPagesThatSuck.com website. Unfortunately, DNCC’s site is a candidate for one of his infamous awards.

The navigation on the new website is a mystery: run your mouse over the various squares and watch menus flash around the page. Then try to remember what appeared where. Oh dear…

The point of Mystery Meat Navigation is that it may look cool, some might even use the word groovy, but it is a real hassle for the users of the site. The flashing squares are alarming and confusing.

A review of the user experience on a website should address a number of other questions, which might include:

1. Are the category and subcategory names clear and mutually exclusive?

The meaning of the categories of “Your Chamber” and “DNCC Members” is ambiguous. The meaning of “Business Support Services” isn’t any clearer. As a result the logic for placing information within those categories is not obvious and logical. And it makes it difficult to find what you’re looking for.

2. Does the Home Page provide access to the essential goals of the site?

I would have thought encouraging companies to join the Chamber would be a high priority of the site. But there is no Join Now call to action on the home page. And the Membership Application option is hiding away as the 17th menu choice within the “Your Chamber” section of the site. For some silly reason I thought joining the Chamber might be in the DNCC Members section.

Informing members of business issues and encouraging discussion of big topical issues like the proposed Car Parking Levy in Nottingham might be a big priority of the Chamber, but no sign of that on the Home Page.

3. Is essential information given priority?

I am a Chamber member. And I think the items given priority on the Home page are irrelevant to my business.

Does my business care about the Cinema Listings given priority on the Home Page? Nope.

With all due respect, as a company based in Nottingham, do I care about Derbyshire Community Information? I do not.

And do I care about the hot news in Caerphilly? Sorry, not relevant to me.

4. Does the keyword search on the website provide precise and comprehensive information?

I used the search box on the Home page to search for “Car Leasing”, a typical concern for small businesses. Unfortunately, The Computer Says No: no results. This is not good news for the 7 chamber members who provide car leasing services. As it turns out, you have to search the members database separately. If you can find the mysterious pink search box.

I then tried searching the Members Directory for the word “Internet,” hoping naively that I might find my business. Apparently Beeston Fields Golf Club is a better match on the word Internet than my business. Relevance does not appear to play a role in sorting the search results. Hey Ho.

I know it is easy to snipe from the sidelines, and that isn’t the point of this review. There is a lot of good in the new DNCC design.

But it is worth:

• ensuring you have a clear set of goals for your website
• producing a site that is intuitive and effortless to use
• testing the site with your user base before launch
• and learn lessons from other websites!

Getting a great web address is important to small businesses – and I was very pleased to be interviewed in a recent domain names article in the Sunday Times.

It is not that hard to choose a great domain name. Choose a name that is :

• memorable
• consistent with your brand
• easy to type, which usually also means short
• and if possible, consistent with your search engine optimisation efforts.

We know that British buyers prefer .co.uk domain name because it suggests the company is local, or more relevant to their needs.

And I don’t like dashes (or hyphens) in domain names. I think they are awkward to pronounce, and look like spam when typed. And usually looks like you use dashes because somebody else has the name you wanted.

An entire second hand domain name industry exists offering to sell you an existing domain, as well as waiting to steal yours out from under you nose if you forget to renew your name.

Professionally designed websites are a must for small businesses, but there are times when a simple, quick, and free little website would do the trick.

Read on for my review of free web creation tools…

It may be that you need you want to create a site for a new product, a new service, you want to optimise for a particular key phrase, or perhaps you want to dabble with affiliate marketing. These little websites are called microsites.

I’ve done a bit of an experiment with the free web building tools to see just how effective they are. And my definition of “free” is more accurately called “cheap” – because I want to have my own domain name attached to the website, if possible, so there will be some costs involved.

The Clear Winner: WordPress

WordPress is free web building software that also allows you to create standard web pages, although it is best known as blogging software.

In the matter of 4 hours and spending a grand total of £22.78 I built the new website Susan Hallam.

I’m not sure how you factor in the cost of my 25 years experience, but I’m discounting that for the moment.

I’m using the site to discuss this experiment, so read about my free web design experiences here.

WordPress ticked all the boxes I required:

• Search engine friendliness
• Easy to use
• Free design templates
• Extra functionality like contact forms
• Web statistics to measure if it is working or not
• Flexibility in terms of content and layout
• My own domain name
• Doesn’t look “free”
• Help when I need it

The Losers

My first loser is BT TradeSpace. It fails for most of my criteria:

• it is clearly branded BT Tradespace, and looks like a freebie website
• no use of my own domain name
• very restrictive design limitations
• very limited page content
• it doesn’t look very search engine friendly

My second loser is Google Page Creator. This is a free service offered to folk with a GoogleMail account. Again, I found the same limitations as BT TradeSpace as a web design tool in terms of limitation of design and content and use of domain names.

One particular strength of Google Page Creator, however, is the ability to design your pages and then upload them to the free 100MB of hosting space. If you’re looking for a place to store stuff on the web, then this might be useful to you.

Next week I’ll be evaluating two more services: Microsoft Office Live
and Yahoo Site Builder

If you want me to try out any other free services, then just let me know.