In last week’s blog, I promised you a second eye-opening real example that answers the question “How easy is it to do business with you?” – and how to take that information to improve your business. One of the ways you can measure that is your bounce rate. In this case, the bounce rate on your sign-up box.
Why is your bounce rate important?
Your bounce rate is a measure of how many people are interested enough to come to your webpage or blog, but then leave because you don’t clearly explain how you can help them. [Okay – some percentage would leave anyway, but your bounce rate is an indicator of how easy you make it for them to understand what you offer]. The example below from the telesummit is a text-book case; people knew they wanted the free gift offered, but then changed their mind.
Here’s how we measured bounce rate:
We installed a free WordPress plug-in called Pretty Link Lite, then used Pretty Link to create a customized free gift link for each of our telesummit presenters. Every time someone clicked to download a free gift, Pretty Link kept track of it. [In most cases, the link took the clicker to a sign-up form on the presenter’s website.] We sent the click statistics to each of our presenters. Here’s the response we got from a presenter:
If I’m reading this correctly, according to your figures 99 new people opted in for the free gift (99 new names for the data base). I use MailChimp and they send me a separate email every time someone opts in along with their name & email address. I only have 22 of those during the telesummit. What might that mean?
And here’s my response:
99 is the number of unique hits on your free gift link on the telesummit website. That would take them to your sign-up page. If only 22 completed the sign-up on your page, you have about a 75% bounce rate, so you might want to look at the description of your free gift & how clearly it communicates the benefit of what someone would get by giving you their name & email.Also, not sure if you have a double opt-in with MailChimp, but, if so, some people never click the confirmation email to be added to your list.
The take-away here is to measure your bounce rate. If it’s not as low as it could be, look at the description of your free gift & how clearly it communicates the benefit of what someone would get by giving you their name & email. If you were a stranger seeing it for the first-time, would you give your name and email? Make changes to your copy and offer, and see if you can improve your bounce rate. Remember, your mailing list can be an important money-maker for you, and it’s important to be sure you collect as many email addresses as you can. Of course, this assumes you have a way of collecting emails on your website or blog- I worked with a client last week who was missing this key piece and losing out of a lot of sales.
There are other ways to check the bounce rate of your sign up forms. If you use AWeber, for instance, they keep statistics of the conversion rate of your sign up forms (# displays/#submissions). You can think of your conversion rate as the opposite (inverse for the math majors out there) of your bounce rate, i.e. a higher conversion rate is better.
Remember, measuring your bounce rate is the first step to improving your cash flow – because getting more of the right people on your mailing list means your offers reach more people.
If you found value in this, it would mean a lot to me if you shared it with your LinkedIn contacts!
I don’t have an opt-in form but this is a great resource for measuring how well a free gift/download is really doing. I’ve often read the issue with having a double opt-in and you’re right, many times the user won’t confirm their email.
Paulette – I visited your website, and kudos to you for making it so clean and easy to understand what you offer. Since you have a blog, you might consider adding a sign up form so you can email people when you have a new post. And/or create a short auto-responser series of emails to educate prospects about one of your specialty areas.
I don’t use my blog for profit, but I do check my bounce rate regularly. I want people to read a post and be interested enough to read more. I’m often discouraged to see people spent less than one minute on a page and then left. I believe it is because I write a religious blog and occasionally someone lands there that is absolutely opposed to my content.
We can’t please everyone, but I’ll keep trying to improve my bounce rate!
Carrie Ann-
You are right, you can’t please everyone – and if you are trying to, you are probably pleasing no one! Taking a stand on what you believe is the best way to engage people.