Thanks Vladimir!

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.

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.

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

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/

Thanks

http://i29.tinypic.com/352f76a.jpg

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

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).