Crappy bounce rate...

Hey all, just wondering why my bounce rate has never been very good... it's almost never been below 50%, and averages around 70%, with peaks up to 83%. Any tips on how to decrease this?

I realize that I'm just going to give myself even more bounces by asking this (lol), but here's my homepage.

Is your organic bounce rate very different from your referred bounce rate ? (look over at least a 6 month period).

One idea: those on a slow connection may be annoyed by the amount of photos on that first page.

Also check landing pages. Your homepage should have a lower bounce rate than, say an article on your blog. A lot of times people are searching for a specific topic, land on my blog, see that it may or not pertain and they get what they wanted and leave.

Thanks guys, I'll check into that. I think what i was looking at was my homepage though, which is disheartening to say the least.

Well this thread will make it worse!

haha that's what i was saying.. figure this one is more temporary though

Christopher Steven b wrote in post #15487765
One idea: those on a slow connection may be annoyed by the amount of photos on that first page.

There are an insane amount of photos on the first page. About 50 too many. All he needs is the ones that scroll through up top. Doesn't need any of the others on the bottom. Move those to a different page.

it's a prophoto blog so i think that's sort of standard.. not sure there's a way to do a landing page with just the banner. about how long is it taking to load 100% for you guys?

Takes 11 seconds from when I click, but the top part's visible much faster. I'm in New Zealand, on a high speed connection, but latency means our connections are slower than inside the USA.

Loads pretty quickly for me. Like 2 seconds tops.

Loaded fast for me.

Thanks guys.. yea, even on 3G mobile (which my site currently isn't optimized for) it loads decently fast for me, so i figure it's alright.. my workflow is saving for web in PS at 55 quality, but the current post has more images than typical

Before assuming it's your content ask yourself:

Where are my referrals coming from (that bounce the most), i.e. if the most bouncers are coming from low relevancy sites (i.e. Disney world.com) then it's to be expected.

More importantly, look at what devices are being used with the bounces. The site loads fine on a pc but what about an ipad on a subway train via 3g? It's really important to realize that mobile devices are overtaking pc's for web access.

That's probably the reason for the bounces, not the content...but still 50-70% is a normal number.

awesome, thanks for the great input, Chris.