Elbows Music Blog Community

This is my first post so don’t judge me for making a few inevitable
faux pas.

I’ve recently been working hard on trying to bring down my sites bounce rate,
but I’ve been wondering if it really is that important and exactly what bounce
rate would be acceptable to me.

Analytics reckons my bounce rate has been somewhere between 60 and 70% the past
2 months, however i have been steadily bringing that down by gaining more
return visitors who actually browse around the site.

Were a new kid on the block and have only been around for 3 months so about
10-20% of our hits come from shuffler.fm, which might explain our high bounce
rate as people tend to use shuffler a little like stumble upon.

I know everyone likes to keep their cards close to their chest when it comes to
stats and all that lark, but it would be interesting to find out if anyone
considers this important and what rate you consider acceptable.

Tim

Bounce rate isn't something I look at to be honest - I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Ours sticks around the 65-75% mark.

Return visitors are important though if you are trying to build a little community...

BenMetrojolt

It also depends where your traffic is coming from. If you have a high amount of organix traffic, your bounce rate will be low (generally). If it's all coming from StumbleUpon you will have an extremely high rate.

apocketfullofseeds

Im not sure if im getting mixed up but ours is at 1-2%

Tim

apocketfullofseeds said:
Seriously? That sounds almost impossible?

Tim

Don't know what happened there...but still...Seriously?!

Only 1-2% of users tat find your site leave after reading just one page?

apocketfullofseeds

yeah it's 1.08% from since we started using Analytics about 9 months ago, average time on site is at 0:48 which i always thought was pretty low but maybe Im actually running a pretty tidy ship!

Tim

I have never seen a bounce rate so low. Congrats.

I'm amazed how the new visits and average time on the Walrus stacks up relatively similarly to you, but our bounce rate is ~70%. Seems I have a lot to learn from you!

LOOSELIPSmik

I've thought about Bounce Rate before, and I'm not convinced its an accurate predictor of viewer 'loyalty', per se.

Here's the way I see it: If you have an active and dedicated readership, who check your site on a regular basis (say a couple times a week), why would they need to 'hang out' on the blog, assuming they've been keeping up to date? In fact, my return-visitor bounce rate is higher percentage wise than my new visitor bounce rate, which makes complete sense to me. But they're the ones who are skewing my average bounce rate, which is around 80% (still high, but for argument's sake)

I know from experience, the few blogs I visit regularly I'm pretty fiercely loyal to, and don't feel the need to go explore past posts. Additionally, a lot of the sites I am loyal to (and my own site, in fact) are in the scroll-down format, so being on the main page allows me to view multiple posts at once without navigating away to any new page. Hence my bounce rate would be high, even though I visit the site regularly.

Catch my drift?

Am I wrong in this?

jason@indieshuffle

APFOS -- sorry mate, but I have to be skeptical about those numbers. They just don't make sense!

Anyway, for reference...our average time on site is 12 minutes and bounce rate is 64%.

chris

always a dick-measuring contest with you isn't it?

apocketfullofseeds

Slowcoustic

I didn't really monitor my bounce rates until I saw this post as I assumed (and pretty sure I previously saw on my stats) that I was "normal" somewhere around 70% as Tim indicated he is around.

But....my bounce rate is also suspiciously low - I think I might have an analytics issue? According to GA, it indicates for 2011 to date that my bounce rate is 5.15% with average time on site of 3:18 and 55% new visits.

Slowcoustic has a main page that doesn't allow for full post reading (click to read post, "read more" button) so it would naturally help lower a bounce rate and I don't post "hot, new, hyped" tracks, so that would probably help a bounce percentage for those damn fickle indie public media consuming types. ;-)

Still, I don't know if anything is wonky as bounce rates usually
are much higher, especially for an mp3 blog....I would assume. Weird, right?

S

tiana

I used to have a low bounce rate like 8% a year ago but now its higher as you can read most posts on the first page and my mp3s are hosted by soundowl and also a shufflerfm member. Now i'm around 75%.

I really don't like Google Analytics that much, I use Woopra to monitor stats. I feel you can see a more accurate reading of what goes on on the site there.

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