英国dissertation：影响网站跳出率的内在因素分析

网页设计和网页可用性：一个网站的页面外观是很重要的。如果网页设计是混乱的，五颜六色的字体对眼睛也不好，不停闪烁的Flash动画和一些其他的设计缺陷会使网站访问者感到很不舒服。需要注意的是，如果用户需要花时间去了解网站或理解网站提供的功能，即使这是世界上最好的网站，这个网站的跳出率也可能会偏高。
 

网站内容：确保所提供的网站内容对于访问者而言是有价值的，也要确保网站内容和信息的流动是足够好的，能吸引访问者在本网站连续浏览。有时候即使网站可能有好的内容，但如果里面没有自发性的写作或信息流不适当的话，用户看完第一页的时候会不明白下一个内容是什么，这时他们就会关掉网站。所以要确保网站内容写得好，并突出线索，引导用户下一步该做什么。网站就好比一个家，如果有人想让客人看到整个房子，那么他或她就需要环绕房子四周。当客人来到门口时，他或她就要邀请客人进来。所以要明智得利用网站内容吸引用户并满足他们要求。
 

Web Design and Usability:  Presentation is important. If the web design is cluttered, have some colors that really hurt the eyes, full of jumping flash animations or has some other design flaw that makes your visitors feel uncomfortable. On similar note if the users need to spend time trying to understand the website or comprehend the provided features, even if the content of the web is the best in the world, the bounce rate would tend to be on the higher side.
 

Website Content: Make sure the content adds some value to the visitors and also the content and information flow is good enough to carry the visitors from one page to the other. Website might have good content but if there is no spontaneity in writing and if the information flow is not proper, after reading the first page the user would think “what next?” This is the point they bounce off the site. Ensure that the content is written well and give prominent clues to the visitors as to what is the next step. The website is like a home, if someone want a guest to see the entire house, than he or she need to be taken around, when a visitors come to the door and he or she is not invited than they are likely to leave from the door itself. So use of content wisely to invite them in and keep them entertained.
 

Website Navigation: Navigational issues are one of the key factors that contribute to the bounce rate. If we want our visitors to move around our website, we need to provide them with a clear intuitive navigation structure. Don’t leave anything to their guess work.
 

Technical Issues: There can be a wide range of factors under this. Think if we land up on a page part of which shows some PHP code instead of the data that it was supposed to pull from the database. Aren’t we likely to feel bad about it? If we have got a fancy ActiveX component on our webpage that requires our viewers to download some other file to get it to render properly, how many of them do you think would do that? Most of these visitors would add to your Bounce rate figure.#p#分页标题#e#
 

市场因素对跳出率的影响———Marketing Factors Affecting Bounce Rate
 

Wrong Keyword Selection: Search marketing is one of the key avenues through which any website gets a large chunk of their traffic and the entire search marketing game is based on keywords. What happens if we chose the wrong keywords? Well if we choose the wrong keywords and start optimizing our website for the non relevant keywords or show up on search ads for non relevant keywords (which is very much possible) all we get are some non targeted visitors who are looking for something different from what our website has to offer. Result: High Bounce Rate.
 

Ad Copy:  Ad copies represent our website in the paid search results. If this representation is not aligned to what our website has to offer, it is definitely going to boost up our bounce rate. At times novice search marketers would create alluring ad copies to boost CTR and increase the number of visitors but if the communication in the ad copies is not in line with the content on the web page, we can’t retain them.
 

Page Title and Meta Description: We can say this is the organic counterpart of Ad Copies. Search Engines typically display the Page Title and Meta description in the organic search result snippets. If the message in page Title and Meta description is not in line with the content of the page, high bounce rate is a big possibility.
 

提高跳出率的外部因素———External Factors contributing to High Bounce Rate
 

Occasional Irrelevant Results from Search Engines - Irrespective of all the advancement that the search engines have done at times they still throw in a few irrelevant results and if the site is one of those results we will definitely get a few extra visitors but they will definitely be bouncing off. There is not much that we can do about this. We can still find out those unrelated keywords that are driving traffic and investigate the reason on how search engines are relating to your site for those terms and then try to eradicate the cause.
 

Improper External Link: A very rare situation can happen. If an external site links to the site using an anchor text that’s not related to the website, this link would drive traffic that come to the website with some expectations but would find different content – Result: bounce off.
 

总结———Summary:
 

Different traffic sources imply different reasons for why visitors might immediately leave your site. Design to keep deep-link followers engaged through additional pageviews.

The homepage is still important, and you should continue to ensure homepage usability for two main reasons:
 

The homepage is typically the single most-visited page, because the deep entry points are scattered across a vast number of interior pages.#p#分页标题#e#
 

The homepage is the orienteering point for visitors who arrive through deep links and then decide to explore the site further.
 

The bounce rate is defined as the percentage of visitors who turn around at the entry page and immediately leave the site. Such visitors "bounce" out and never see additional pages.
 

拒绝“访客”的因素———"Unique Visitors" Must Die
 

Given growing bounce rates, we must stop using "unique visitors" as a metric for site success. Site tourists who leave a site immediately ratchet up the unique visitor count, but don't contribute long-term value.
 

On the contrary, bouncers should be considered a negative statistic: the site failed to engage them enough to entice even a second pageview.
 

To measure site success, we should count only loyal users who return repeatedly. Or, if our site is such that most people will visit only once, at least require that they exhibit a minimum amount of engagement before you count them as a positive statistic.
 

Chasing higher unique-visitor counts will undermine our long-term positioning because we will design gimmicks rather than build features that bring people back and turn them into devotees and customers.
 

通过输入源分析跳出率———Analyzing Bounce Rates by Entry Source Segmentation
 

As with all quantitative methods, Web analytics is a dangerous game. If we measure the wrong thing, our metrics won't just be weak — they'll be directly misleading and might cause us to pursue an erroneous strategy that reduces our design's business value.
 

In this case, it's important to consider that there's no such thing as a single bounce rate; we must analyze bounce rates separately for the 4 sources of visitors (ordering the segments by their level of commitment to your site):
 

Low-value referrers, such as Digg. People arriving through these sources are disgracefully inconsistent and are probably not in our target audience. We should expect most of them to leave immediately, once they've satisfied their idle curiosity.
 

Direct links from other websites. These links are the equivalent of a vague recommendation: "We might want to check out the site." People who click such links haven't expressed a direct intent to engage with our topic to the same degree as someone who actively enters a search engine query. These visitors do have some degree of interest, however, so a high bounce rate is a symptom of a user experience problem.
 

Search engine traffic, whether from organic SEO or paid links. By clicking our link, these users have actively indicated an acute interest in the topic and should engage intensely with your content. If they leave immediately, it's a sign that something is seriously wrong with our landing pages.#p#分页标题#e#
 

Loyal users who return repeatedly to our site. On the one hand, we would expect the highest engagement from our biggest fans. On the other hand, this engagement might not show up on every visit if they visit often. As long as people keep coming back, there's nothing wrong with having them sometimes leave after a page view or two.
 

The following chart shows a rough visualization of the expected bounce rates from the four user-interest levels. The rates resemble an inverted checkmark:
 

多个页面浏览———Getting One More Page view
 

Depending on the source of visitors, our bounce rates might be high or low. But, except for low-value visitors, we should certainly strive for fewer bounces.
 

First and foremost, test our site with representative users. we'll almost always find striking ways in which we repel visitors through low-credibility design, fluffy content, or confusing navigation.
 

Second, expose some next steps for people to take if they're interested in the current page. There are two good approaches here:
 

A linear information path offering a single link to either follow-up information or a deeper treatment of the topic. Place this link at the bottom of the page, where people are (hopefully) motivated to learn more.
 

Contextual see-also links can provide multiple pointers to key places of interest to people who liked the current page. Specific links are vastly superior to generic navigation menus for this purpose.
 

Third, if we have a product or service that alleviates the pain point that motivated visitors to seek out the deep link, we should say so explicitly (and link directly to it), instead of hoping that people will find the right page by perusing your product catalog.
 

测量和改善跳出率———Measuring and improving Bounce Rate:
 

Getting users engaged with our content can result with a sale, subscription, bookmark and return visit. One of best ways to increase reader engagement is to make sure that the site architecture interlinks related content and displays them in a way which encourages the user to click around. If the first article doesn’t result in a subscription, the second might.
 

A term commonly used to measure visitor engagement is the bounce rate, which is the percentage of initial visitors who leaves your site after arriving at the entry page. These are visitors who ‘bounce away’ after arriving without viewing other pages on your site. You can easily find your site’s bounce rate by using stats tools like Google Analytics.
 

A low bounce rate means that visitors are exploring your website in greater detail. This can be inferred to mean that they are more engaged with your content. In a recent article, Jakob Nielsen suggested that the bounce rate remains an important metric.#p#分页标题#e#
 

Given growing bounce rates, we must stop using “unique visitors” as a metric for site success. Site tourists who leave a site immediately ratchet up the unique visitor count, but don’t contribute long-term value. On the contrary, bouncers should be considered a negative statistic: the site failed to engage them enough to entice even a second pageview.
 

Nielsen suggested that the bounce rate must be analyzed separately for four main different sources of visitors: low-value referrers, direct links from other sites, search engine traffic and loyal users. The reason for this is simple: visitors relate to your website differently, depending on their needs. The originating source indicates observable behavior patterns.
 

A loyal user might visit your site via a feed reader and exit after reading a new article because he/she is up to date with your archives. A user with a desire for very specific knowledge will visit your site through a search engine and can be easily tempted to click around. A casual visitor might hit one of your pages while browsing through social channels like StumbleUpon.
 

The point to note is that bounce rates will vary depending on the source and hence, they should be analyzed in comparison to previous sets of similar data and not across different sources. For example, the performance of search engine referrals should be measured against previous bounce rates and not against another visitor source like Digg.
 

测量网站的跳出率与目标———Measuring Your Bounce Rate Against Overall Site Goals
 

However, comparing the historical bounce rates across different visitor sources will show the value of the traffic you’re receiving. Assuming that low bounce rates result in purchases, subscriptions or return visits, you can find the best performing traffic source. The important thing is to ultimately plot the bounce rates for each source against your overall site goal.
 

Apart from the referrer source, several other issues influence variations in bounce rates. For example, the purpose of your website, its current design and the goal of the specific entry page. It’s difficult to determine a standard bounce rate to use as a yardstick, although analytics expert Avinash Kaushik does offer some suggestions in an excellent article:
 

Bounce rate is a metric you’ll easily find in all web analytics tools… It won’t have all the answers for you, but it will help you focus very quickly on what’s important, show where you are wasting money and what content on your site needs revisiting. As a benchmark from my own personal experience over the years it is hard to get a bounce rate under 20%. Anything over 35% is a cause for concern and anything above 50% is worrying.
 

Understanding that blogs are a little different from other static sites, Avinash suggests that a 50% bounce rate for blogs is somewhat normal and a 75% rate would be a cause for concern.#p#分页标题#e#

Yardsticks can be useful but as I’ve mentioned, its important to not just observe bounce rate alone but its movement and impact on a specific overall goal like conversion ratios. As you are unable to ascertain the bounce rates of your competitors or peers, you need to focus more on the historical performance of your own site and study trends to discern visitor patterns.
 

Are lower bounce rates resulting in more purchases or subscriptions? Which type of visitors often result in high bounce rates and are there ways to change that by manipulating on-the-page elements such as link placement? What are your high-traffic pages and how can bounce visitors from it to other conversion-friendly pages on your site?
 

提高跳出率并获得更多的页面浏览———Improving Your Bounce Rate and Getting More Page Views
 

There is much to write on this topic. Each website has different goals or requirements so I’ll not delve too much into details but talk about overall strategies. First of all, the bounce rate is very much influenced by what is visible to the visitor. They are much more likely to click to another page when they are presented with very relevant links, call-to-actions or information.
 

It’s all about optimizing webpages and connecting them into a unity which adds value for both the loyal reader and the visitor who’s coming in blind from a referral site or search engine. Assume that your visitor knows nothing about your site.

Nielsen suggests that a 2-step program to lower your bounce rates:
 

Test your site with a group of users. Ask them to enter your site from specific pages. Get feedback based on their experiences. This will give you ways to improve.
 

Expose next steps. Give visitors actions to take if they are interested in the current page. Add links to more information at the bottom of the copy or within content.
 

There are many ways to orient your visitors and the most important principle is to make the links highly visible and relevant to the current page. Let’s look at the BBC, a news site which I’ve always admired for their excellent interlinking practices. Here are screen-shots of individual story pages. Take note of the well positioned links on the sidebar: