Do you monitor your web statistics regularly? Have you noticed that some of your posts have a higher bounce rate than others? Do you want to encourage your visitors to read more of your posts? If so, the following tools and suggestions will help.

Before we review some of the things we can do, let’s define what a “bounce rate” actually is, and see which tools can help us determine  our bounce rates.

“Bounce rate” has two definitions. According to Google (analytics) it refers to the act of a visitor entering your blog (or web site) and leaving within the first five seconds. More commonly, we understand it to mean the percentage (or number) of visits to your blog, where the visitor enters and exits the same page without visiting any other pages on your blog. Evidently we want visitors to remain on our blogs.

The top two tools I use to compare and find bounce rates are:

1. AWStats. AWStats is robust and is a standard statistics gathering system on most web servers.
2. Google Analytics. Is an online analytics service operated by Google.

Both of the above tools will help you determine your bounce rates. Personally I favour Google Analytics for ease. Additionally, I’d recommend reading Jacob Neilsen’s post “Reduce Bounce Rates: Fight for the Second Click“. In that post he discusses the trend where “…ever-more users are arriving deep within websites rather than entering them through the homepage…” and that your home page should really be your “orienteering point” (from which visitors can access to explore your blog further). He goes on to explain that we should focus on reducing bounce rates for Loyal users. Again, it’s a good read (and short).

What steps can we take to improve (reduce) our bounce rates?

• Provide links with which they can subscribe to your RSS feed (appearing on every page).
• For those who prefer notifications of new posts (and comments replies), provide the link or feature that enables them to subscribe. Two plugins that can assist you providing such features are: Subscribe To Comments and Subscribe2.
• Provide a feature that will inform them of similar content that they may be interested in (further reading). One plugin that can help with this is Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
• Remember that visitors do not always arrive at the home page, so it will also help to ensure you have a search feature (to enable them to narrow down their search on your blog).
• Ensure you retain reliable web hosting services. If a site takes too long to access, visitors will move on.
• Highlight your feature or your most popular posts in the sidebar of your blog, (some of them may capture further interest).
• Ensure your blog is catering to your targeted niche. If your blog is about food and it visually looks more appealing to car enthusiasts, your bounce rate will increase.

The above reduced the bounce rates on my first blog by about 5% on average. Upon review I noticed that the bounce rate was also effected by the types of visitors I was receiving. For example, Stumbleupon campaign traffic incurred a lower bounce rate than traffic from Digg (which for me, had a super high bounce rate – 85%). Why? In my opinion, Stumbleupon visitors were visiting because they were more targeted, whereas my perceptions of Digg traffic was of a less “targeted” nature. As such, the issue that raises up again is the niche focus of the blog.  A blog that has posts with little relation to each other is going to have a higher bounce rate than a blog where the posts are naturally related to each other.

What are your thoughts on this? What are your experiences? Feel free to comment and add your input!