What To Do When Improved Site Speed & Layout Result In Higher Bounce Rates & Lower Time On Site
-
We launched a new Bootstrap 3.0 site template 2 weeks ago. The site loads 5x faster and has a much improved layout (utilizing most common above the fold recommendations ). It's only been two weeks, but our bounce rate has increased 5-10% and our avg time on site decreased by 10-18%. Here is the page for one of our most common products so you can see the general experience: <a>http://www.jwsuretybonds.com/surety-bonds/commercial-bonds/auto_dealer_bond.htm</a> (here is the old version: <a>http://199.119.123.134/surety-bonds/commercial-bonds/auto_dealer_bond.htm</a>)
We spent two months implementing the new design and working on a speedy load time. We had anticipated a drastic improvement, not mild downturn in user behavior.
I'm hopeful that the Analytics metrics aren't showing the true picture on the keywords we care about (can't see anymore due to "Not Provided" listed as most keywords now. Argh!) and perhaps some of the more important/accurate user behavior metrics that we can't see are improving.
We know our industry and our clients needs VERY well. We THOUGHT our new content/layout was perfect so it will be tough for us to try to make improvements at this point. We believe our best plan of action now is to add more content on each page and A/B test it along with other subtle changes. The problem is that our new content is very concise and hits on all of the primary visitor intentions, so additions of content could be redundant and making concise answers more "fluffy", which is what we tried to get away from.
What do you think? Is there reason for panic? What would your plan of attack be if your "sure shot" new design didn't provide the improvements you "knew" it would?
-
The placeholder text on the ballpark estimate tool is using an html5 attribute which isn't supported in ie 9 or earlier. You can circumvent this with placeholders.js which will allow the attribute to work properly in browsers that don't normally support it.
-
Nice analysis. It is smart to look at performance by resolution.
I would collect more data. Some people may visit your site several times before taking any action.
-
Good thoughts, but the data is conflicting when I look at it by resolutions of the users.
Oddly enough tablets resolutions appear to have better results with the new site. Our best performing resolution on the new site is 768x1024. We're seeing a 25% increase for time on site there, compared to being down 18% on avg across all resolutions.
Larger desktop resolutions are worse with the new site.
Mobile resolutions are seeing an improved bounce rate, but less time on site.
All of the data appears to be so conflicting. As stated, we are only 2 weeks in to the new design and saw just under 10,000 sessions in this time period. Is that enough data to begin obsessing or should I wait a bit more?
-
I'm a bit perplexed as to why you feel there is less content above the fold now though.
I usually view webpages on a 1600 wide monitor. When your new page loads it spreads to about 1100+ pixels wide. However, most people view webpages in a smaller browser window - especially those who view on tablets. So, when I grab the edge of the browser window and start to narrow it, at about 1000 pixels of width both of your right columns disappear and the design collapses to a single column that has a very different presentation - with a small fraction of the clickable content options.
Try narrowing your browser window by hand and watch what happens. I have not looked at your site on a tablet but it might not look like you think.
-
It has yet to be seen of the if the "cash register is slowing down". We changed our primary focus to collecting estimates (mini-conversions that take 15 seconds) in larger quantities rather than requesting everything we need for a formal quote (5-10 min process). It appears to be on par with the old site for now, but I anticipate it possibly increasing in the coming weeks, as we are focusing further down the sales pipeline, which will take a bit for it to populate the end (sales). So far, it's promising.
Thanks for the candid assessment on the two sites. I agree on the contrast. We'll have to look into making some edits to our css to improve this.
I'm a bit perplexed as to why you feel there is less content above the fold now though...The tabs used (General, Gov Requirement, Costs, Ask An Expert) are something that I feel provides more to do above the fold. Can you elaborate?
Thanks again EGOL. Much appreciated.
-
So, bounce rate and time on site are down. Is the cash register slowing down?
About the designs. I am not surprised that the original design had a lower bounce rate. When someone lands on that page they had lots of content and navigation options above the fold. And those options were highlighted with contrasting colors (blue top nav, green calls to action, three cartoony links on the right). Your original site was toploaded and high contrast.
Your new site is low contrast (hard to find nav and alternative links because everything is white and nav links are teeny tiny type. That reduces the visibility. Also options for alternative content are now way below the fold. Furthermore, what the visitor sees changes with his monitor width. As the width of the monitor window decreases lots of above the fold content options disappear from view. When monitor window gets below 1000 pixels options to click are tiny and the design becomes much less effective. What does it look like on tablet in portrait format?
My vote is for the old design on producing a lower bounce rate, generating higher time on site and getting visitors to explore your content and products..
-
Thanks Dean. Those were some excellent finds/tips. It appears IE8 & IE9 make up 10% of our visitors collectively so a decent amount are affected.
To my surprise, IE visitors have our best bounce rates and time on site. The items you listed still need addressing, but boy are these stats baffling!
-
Hi
Just did a very quick test via saucelabs.com using windows 7 ie9 and the client logos get messed up, more importantly the 'ball park estimator' does not display any input information in the actual field. ie where you have the $Bond Amount text this is not displayed on the tests I did.
Signup for a free account (30mis of testing I think) it would be well worth it. There are other cross browser testing sites out there so any will do the job.
-
I updated the original post with a link to the old site template for comparison as well.
New: <a> http://www.jwsuretybonds.com/surety-bonds/commercial-bonds/auto_dealer_bond.htm</a>
Old: <a>http://199.119.123.134/surety-bonds/commercial-bonds/auto_dealer_bond.htm</a>
-
That's correct. The original url I posted uses the extension .htm
Chris typed html in error.
-
I can see it on auto_dealer_bond.htm rather than auto_dealer_bond.html
Have you done cross browser testing with something like www.saucelabs.com Check your analytics for the most popular browser you visitors use and test against that, also check if certain browsers are resulting in more bounces.
-
Hah! Yes...as luck would have it, immediately after making the post, our server crashed! We're up 99.9% of the time, so I don't think it is related.
We're back up now.
-
http://www.jwsuretybonds.com/surety-bonds/commercial-bonds/auto_dealer_bond.html gives me a 404 which might be a good bounce reason
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Retina Sites
What's the best way to make a site retina ready? Just code one site with retina resolution graphics or rather serve up two different sets of graphics depending on what comp is being used on the other end? Thanks in advance. I appreciate the input. Stephan
Web Design | | stephanwb0 -
Site as one page - SEO implications
We may be inheriting a site and will be asked to do SEO for it. We will have control over the development of the site, so this structure is what it is. My question is - how significant of an impact do you think this is going to have and can you think of any workarounds that may help? Basically, the user experience of the site will feel similar to multiple pages. However, this site will, in essence be one page and pull various content through javascript from different locations. I have not seen the site yet (and believe it is still in development), but this is how it has been explained to me. Any thoughts? My first thought was to add a blog to add page depth to the site and expand the content. Any other thoughts are welcome and appreciated. Thanks. (I know this is limited information, I'm sorry. It's just about all I have to work with right now, and I was a little concerned and was hoping for a second opinion)
Web Design | | AdamWormann0 -
Does Google penalise for alot of advertising on your site?
I look after the search side of a decorating website on which we carry a large amount of advertising from external brands as that is our business model. Do you know if we would get penalised for having too much advertising - would it be deemed to affect the user experience? Many thanks for your help on this.
Web Design | | Pday0 -
Changing Links that Show Up when I Google Brand (Site) Name
Hi SEOmoz Community, A quick question for you all. I've added an attachment for reference. When I google my brand name, say for example, Applied StemCell, I see six links as well below the description. Oddly though, these links seem to be chosen at random, or at least I'm not sure how Google decides on them. When I click on one of the links that is the company's name, Applied StemCell it brings me to a PDF document! Is there any way I can choose which ones to display there? Thanks! OF2oVVN.png
Web Design | | swzhai0 -
How many sites on one hosting account?
How many sites is safe to house on one hosting provider? I use BlueHost and they advertise unlimited domains, but I'm not sure what the negative side effects might be from hosting too many on one hosting service. If it matter at all, I'm using WordPress to build my sites. Pros and Cons?
Web Design | | leafndrop0 -
Mobile Web Sites
Hi I have started offering customers a mobile app view of their existing websites using sencha touch which works well. On visiting the website if a user visits via a mobile device they access the mobile app view of the site. I am looking for some best practice please - as many of the customers already have hosting with their existing website so would it be possible to use a subdomain of m.theirdomain.com which will point to the mobile website which will be hosted on our servers in the cloud. Or is the only alternative to use a subdomain for their mobile sites because they are hosted with us in the cloud of businessname.ourdomain.com ? Many Thanks
Web Design | | ocelot0 -
PSD to WP Coding & Plugin Implementation?
Any recommendations? I am looking for a company that can do it to a very high standard. Need a review plugin implemented as well, which works with the theme. Clean coding, correctly named divs and clean comments. Thanks guys
Web Design | | getbigyadig0 -
Will my site structure provide decent SEO?
We have an ASP.NET MVC website with a view that can dynamically display each product we offer. The product name is hyphenated in the URL, and this is what we’re using to pull the product from the database. So an example URL would be: http://www.mysite.com/Products/Florida/Sample-Product-Name We have another view that dynamically lists the products offered for each state. This page would contain links to the URL for each product offered in that state. The URL for Florida would be: http://www.mysite.com/Products/Florida We want to make sure that when we enter a new product into the database, the product is indexed by Google the next time our site is crawled. I know that Google will crawl through the links in our website, so the new product should get indexed as long as we have a link to it. In this case, the link will be on the view that lists the products for the corresponding state. I have 2 questions: 1) Is my understanding correct that Google will index the product page as long as it can find a link to it somewhere in my site? 3) To get Google to index each URL for content that is generated dynamically from a database, is having links in my site for each URL the only way to do it? Is there something we can do with the site map? Thanks in advance everyone! -Alex
Web Design | | dbuckles0