Keeping down bounce rates on a Wordpress video blog - strategies?
 

So I'm noticing at a video blog I've started that people come to the site, watch a video and then leave, so the bounce rates are high even though they've interacted with the site and spent a few minutes on it. I'm sure as the site ages and there's more things to browse that would help, but curious if there's a strategy to counteract this effect?

Maybe replacing the video player with an image that looks like a video player that reloads the page and autoplays the video or something? Seems a bit convoluted...

The Senator already told you this... You must have been drunk.

http://www.iseekgirls.com

Notice it kind of has a featured videos type of index page. Each goes to a blog page with the video... Makes bounce rates a thing of the past... granted they come in through the front door...

What's a normal/acceptable bounce rate? My blogs seem to hover around a 50-60% average bounce rate...can't it be good to have a higher bounce rate as well because it means people are clicking through to sponsor?

You've never seen me drunk in your life. I categorically deny any such insinuation. :disgust

Google doesn't give a shit... but then it probably does...

It would be better to have a bounce rate below 30%... SERP's placement wise...

50 to 70 is normal for a blog...

I see what you mean! Hey Senator if you applied a bit of my logic you might even decrease it further by making your thumbs look like video players by overlaying a translucent play button persnaps. People might click it thinking they're mini video players.

In Drupal I show the same content in different ways using a module called Display Suite (though I think it may be a standard Drupal thing as well) where you setup different displays for: Full Node, Teaser, Sticky, RSS, Video Reference, Search Index, Search Result, and Token.. That way you can choose what fields get displayed in various parts of the site on a per-content-type basis.

What's the wordpress version of that, or is that something you have to custom code?

It's a selling problem.

The selling on the site will dictate whet the traffic does. How attention grabbing is your blog, how interesting is it, how much desire to get more does it have and how good is it a getting the right action out of the surfer?

I guess it's as simple as using:

<!--more--><!--noteaser-->

?

Socks did you look at the bounce rate javascript I linked?

Sorry I ctrl+clicked it and then neglected to revisit, very interesting.. I wonder though, if someone leaves the page open in a tab all day, will it then show them as being active for 22 hours?

Also would it hammer the server by keeping apache threads open perhaps? I'm not technical enough to understand the possible consequences. I'll try it out though, seems great.

nice one, will try this out, thanks for sharing ;)

I threw it into footer.php and now I'm watching myself using Analytics real-time feature, so I'll see if it keeps me as an "active visitor" on the site as long as I keep the tab open and in the background. Looks like it's been 4 minutes so far and is still showing me as active.

I think it's both the responsibility of the affiliate AND the sponsor to convert the surfer into a paying member. I can entice the surfer to check out the sponsor from a blog but then in my opinion it's up to the sponsor to actually sell the membership by having a good tour, good content, etc.

i'll check back on my stats on friday if it helps in overall...

Javascript is browser... not server... So the surfers CPU does all of the work...

Unless you are using an application in AJAX... but that is a whole other ball of wax....

I reduce my bouce rate to 45% easy after add a related image im my posts...

http://www.pornsitefan.com/hornybirds

Anybody know of a theme or technique for WP to make a WP blog function like a Tumblr blog like this? Smartphone Smut

Single pic leading to full post. Continuous scrolling. etc.

My bounce rates are way lower on my Tumblr blogs that are set up this way than my traditional WP blogs.

The question is if google see your site as having better bouncerate and more time spent than if you don't use that script or is It just the reporting of It on analytics that changes?

Related posts helped me. There's a few plugins out there that do it alright...

longer videos. videos that are actually interesting.

If you read the blog post it explains that it isn't so much that people aren't staying on your site, it's that the analytics code can't detect that they are still on your site say 5+ minutes later (watching a video) if they aren't clicking around. The javascript just helps report to analytics that the user is actually still on your site and hasn't bounced.

Another blog that goes into it, and links to the original blog by Brian Cray.
http://mindtheproduct.com/2011/08/da...ite-are-wrong/

So It has no impact on your actual bounce-rate and how google see's It, It just makes analytics report a more true bouncerate for my own stat wanking?

Right, at least that's my understanding. It doesn't change or exploit the bounce rate, it just reports more accurately.

Ok, too bad :upsidedow

I put this script on one of my more "quality" blogs and bouncerate went from 60% to 40% average today and I oly had It there for 1/3 of the day. The last hour and a half my average bouncerate on this blog is 10%. Is this script really dependable?

On the site I reported adding it to in September, my bounce rate is now 19.27% according to Google Analytics. Previously, it was hovering around 75%.

Really makes ya think

i would start with a 2-3 design concenpts, and so some split testing

excellent strategies :pimp

How's the bounce rate looking today?

Put that code in and my bounce on a tube dropped from a pretty steady 52-53ish% to 36% today.

need to read this in the morning

Solid around 16% Today on the blog I put It on.

So with that java code, my analytics bounce rate plummeted down to 9.25% in two days from 52ish % on a tube.

Thanks for this. I've put it in my portfolio site. I've got an 87.5% bounce rate as of now...we'll see how it goes.

FYI...I stuck the code in my header, and my bounce rate is in the low teens.

worked out nicely, however I've analytics only on one site :)
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/t/wk5ui.jpg

forgot about this. the one site I put it on as a test it did something odd to comment submission so I removed it. need to have another look.

if you want a plugin to rotate themes for split testing and setting a analytics id for each let me know i can pass one on your way.

Cool. :thumbsup