I'd like to do an experiment with WordPress themes to determine which have a low bounce rate (or generate more pageviews - making the user stay longer on the site).
Often overlooked this is one the most important metric for a site. I don't know of anyone conducting this kind of an experiment before.
Let me know your suggestions for themes to include in the test.
Also send page views/visitor that you are getting with your current theme.
To start with my stats are not to shabby: high bounce rate of 75% and 1.8 pages per visitor (google analytics data). If I put aside sometimes my boring content, it has to be due to the current theme (modified Hemingway). The last theme (my own Blue Grace) featured much better bounce rate of 55%.
I intend to gather a list of potential themes and place them on a test site with minimum of 1,000 visitors per day to get actual measurable results.
Need more info on bounce rates before you engage? Check "Fight for Second Click"
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29 Comments
I had made a comment on this post about 1 1/5 years ago and still concur that the theme certainly has a lot to do with bounce rate.
Recently, I have discovered that call to action links (or images) and how content is written certainly plays a big factor
Since my last reply, I have tried a couple of themes and the bounce rates were fairly consistent between 60% - 60%. Which is higher, of course, than I would like.
With the latest theme I designed, I include better call to action links on the home page. The biggest thing that help reduce my bounce rate though was directing visitors to a second page for my downloads.
I have a few themes that I have created that I allow for downloads and those pages are ranked well. Originally, you could download the theme from that page. Visitors would come, download and leave.
Now, when they land on the page that is ranked well, they have to click a link on that page that directs them to a "download" page.
Now my bounce rates are in the low to mid 50%.
I would love to be a part of the "test group" but unfortunately, have no where near 1000 visits per day.
Thanks.
The biggest gain will be made by optimizing top 3 landing pages that receive traffic, you do not have to optimize globally, but the results will be a global decrease in bounce rate.
For example if most of the visitors land to your wordpress theme design page, it would be useful to have your portfolio links (the most clickable items obviously) lead to a static page on your blog (where you would talk a bit about the project) instead of linking out.
Great advice. I appreciate the tip. I will be doing that as soon as possible.
Thanks Vladimir!
I am curious as to the results of these tests as it does seem that the theme does have a lot to do with bounce rate. I've recently changed my theme and have seen my bounce rate jump from the mid 50%'s to 85%.
Well thats a pretty good implication on the quality of theme. Perhaps you should study why has the bounce rate sky rocketed?
I have two sites using the same theme with drastically different bounce rates. I created both sites in May-June 2010. The content is different health vs. fashion; the general layout is similar. The LOW bounce rate for LivingPainFree.com is not an error.
What do you think is responsible for the difference in bounce rate?
Thanks a Million,
Violet
Modified Theme Atahualpa 3.4.9
Wordpress 2.9.2
http://living-painfree.com/
July 11-August 12, 2010
287--Visits
1,138--Pageviews
3.97--Pages/Visit
5.92%--Bounce Rate
00:02:44--Avg. Time on Site
63.07%--% New Visits
Modified Theme Atahualpa 3.4.9
Wordpress 2.9.2
http://wearwhatshewore.com/
July 11-August 12, 2010
434--Visits
1,061--Pageviews
2.44--Pages/Visit
73.04%--Bounce Rate
00:05:03--Avg. Time on Site
81.57%--% New Visits
Minimalist, clear designs with big fat ass call to actions FTW!
Recently tried and tested - went from a dark theme;
http://themeforest.net/item/the-other-blog/19503
to this light, simple (but nice big call to action boxes;
http://themeforest.net/item/atlantica-wordpress-premium-portfolio-template/49034
... I think it helps because readers can actually... well, read my text easily now! ;)
Oh... and of course, it is hard to say it was down to this, as it wasn't a clinical test (never can be with SEO!), but I'm averaging a 52% bounce rate now, where as it was around 70%... and traffic/KW positioning increased... but of course, that would make sense to have an increase in rankings.
However, let's remember that bounce rates aren't all bad.
See my comment on this blog here;
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/website-high-bounce-rate/11223/
Hello there I was using your theme - amazing grace but I had to give up on it 'cos I wasn't able to publish banner ads or adsense on it. I am a newbie and frankly I don't know much about blogging. I setup my site based on 30 Day Challenge. Anyway I am writing 'cos I would like to be on your bounce rate team if you are setting up one. There always something new to learn in my opinion. So if you are having this team let me know.
oops sorry, can you merge those two and delete this guy ... (I know you are too much into this getting down as three pages in google... but well .... please merge these three into one)
Thanks
Well you are filtering ext comments I think.....but here's another try to post the link of that pic at tinypic
http://i29.tinypic.com/352f76a.jpg
I have used both your themes earlier, and am using a few of your plugins. So, I think I shoulda put much better response than what I did.
Here is my bounce rate chart from google analytics, since the start of Explainstuff on Mar - 27th 2009. The latest theme I installed is giving me a 7% bounce rate way too good from the last few 70-80% My avg views for the last two days is 2.4/visit.
May be it is too early but over 600 users in two days, I think it might be reliable. Also, may be because I'm not scaring them away with all the ads, and shabby mess that I did with atahualpa two weeks back :p
For the past thirty days, I have...
Bounce rate of 57.78%
2.22 pages/visit
I am using my own (Son of Blue) theme which is better than the original theme I was using but not much.
What seems to have helped my bounce rate was removing older content that was not necessarily related to the services I offer.
Thanks Vladimir for you site. I love it. (By the way, I just bought your book on developing plug-ins and very much looking forward to it).
Stephen R, I agree. Having the comments in descending date order is counter-intuitive. But, that's the standard for blogs. Though, in all fairness, I've experienced annoyance at the opposite (the correct setup). I've clicked on old forum threads and then had to click all the way to page 6 to read the most recent comments.
I am using free WP theme that I tweaked a lot. But how can check my Word-press site "thinkflick.com" Rate...?
Nice covered study,
this is my first time visiting your blog and I enjoy it so much ^_^
I will check my bounce rate and will post it here. great post indeed
This is good!
It would be interesting to see how bounce rate relates to a specific theme. This seems hard to measure unless one is using the same content with 2 different themes..
amazing blue grace
58,88 bounce rate at 2,41 views
currently 500 visitors a day
Heh I read you. When comments go forwards you have people who will leave a comment just so that they are in the first place. Also when you have more than 100 comments (common thing on my blog) you need to scroll down awfully lot to get to the freshest one.
Somewhat off-topic, but am I the only one who is turned off by comments that go backwards? Pages such as this one make it very hard to follow the conversation because comments keep referring to earlier comments I haven't read yet....
Very annoying, an makes me much less likely to read them or leave my own.
On my site http://pm-sherpa.com I am using a modified Thesis theme and for the past month here are my stats from Google analytics:
4,134 -- Visits
19,640 -- Pageviews
4.75 -- Pages/Visit
38.90% -- Bounce Rate
00:05:05 -- Avg. Time on Site
70.00% -- % New Visits
The site is "Quantified" so you can verify the traffic:
http://www.quantcast.com/pm-sherpa.com
HTH.
What about bounce rate x time staying on the site. If a user is logging out of a site in the first seconds, they may of made a mistaken click...if they are staying on the page, reading the content and bouncing out - that means something else.
* 2.60 Pages/Visit
# 59.24% Bounce Rate
# 00:01:46 Avg. Time on Site
Valid from Apr to June
I've got a 46.38% bounce rate with 2.47 page views(last 30 days).
I also did a redesign a couple of months ago, and it improved from what it was.
I'm using a custom built theme and tried to keep the user interested as much as possible.
PS: I can't visit other peoples websites that commented on this post. Is this normal?(Clicking on the names sends me on this same page.)
rarst: your numbers are inline with mine, and I can see why - we both use minimalist designs :)
Milan: very good numbers, thumbs up for freshnews
ozh: in my case search engine visitors stick around the most. it can be your content is ranking for wrong keywords? :)
Andrea_R: nice numbers. thats studio blue theme right?
Vladimir, the posts from Cristian and Andrea_R are very similar. Looks like comment spam? There is no way 2 site would get the exact 2.47 page views. The structure of the posts are almost identical too.
I've got a 59.47% bounce rate with 2.47 page views. I did a redesign a couple of months ago, and it improved from what it was. People are staying longer and reading more.
I'm using a theme from Elegant themes that I tweaked.
Interesting study indeed.
My stats for last 30 days according to Google Analytics:
72.18% Bounce Rate
1.86 Pages/Visit
Behavior depending on the type of visitor:
Direct Traffic (18.92%)
67.60% Bounce Rate, 2.85 Pages/Visit, 00:02:46 Avg. Time on Site
Referring Sites (52.09%)
70.73% Bounce Rate, 1.74 Pages/Visit, 00:01:55 Avg. Time on Site
Search Engines (28.97%)
77.79% Bounce Rate, 1.45 Pages/Visit, 00:01:06 Avg. Time on Site
Stating the obvious: people from search engines are more bouncy and leave quick.
I admit I've never really tweaked anything with this in mind, though.
Definitely looking forward to reading more on your study :)
I use tweaked FreshNews from WooThemes. Bounce is at 41% with 3.6 pages/visit.
My stats in last month:
78.59% bounce rate
1.52 Pages/Visit
I am using free WP theme that I tweaked a lot. Since I am not much of designer I guess it doesn't capture attention of visitors who are influenced to stay by purely visual appeal. :)
Currently making (slowly) new theme (child for Hybrid framework) and what I want to try is using new taxonomies system to provide more relevant information on posts. For example for software review show list of all posts about software by same developer, for same task, etc.