Micro-site no more – Clearing the Digital Kudzu

BOUNCE RATE . . .killer of web ROI. When we think of measuring effectiveness of our interactive campaigns we tend to focus on impressions and click-throughs, but the real underlying indicator is bounce rate. Regardless of your success in attracting eyeballs to your website, if you consistently maintain a high bounce rate, you’re actually likely doing more harm than good.

“Bounce Rate” can have a highly technical definition, but in layman’s terms let’s just say that a “bounce” is essentially a visitor that lands on your website doesn’t stay there any significant amount of time. Sometimes this is due to user error – clicking the wrong link, entering the wrong address, etc. However, more often a bounce comes as the result of a user not relatively immediately finding information that is relevant to their query, not interacting further with your site, and “bouncing” right off your URL.

Yes, its important.

You can’t expect your audience to interact with your site if you don’t give them a reason to.

A good bounce rate is around 40% (4 out of 10 visitors to your site do not remain on a landing page or interact with the site). An average bounce rate is around 65%. Analytic services (e.g. Google) reads your site’s bounce rate and uses such as a metric when calculating site relevance, which is a determining factor in how highly (or not) search engines rank your site in search results.
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Chaos, Sober Englishmen, and Creativity

Great moments in Mankind’s history- Einstein’s revaluations about the relationship of space and time; Newton’s epiphany about gravity; Steve Job’s development of “useable” technology; Tim Berners-Lee and the innovation of hyperlinks-countless other moments when the clouds parted, the blinding rays of innovation shown directly into the grey matter of some contemplative individual, and the world was forever changed.

We have, really since the enlightenment of the 16th and 17th centuries, kept this idea surrounding the inspiration of genius. Great thinkers, in contemplative moments of solitude, reach the epiphany which had for so long eluded them. Artists retreat within their own heads and visualize their masterpieces. Engineers create complex systems after periods of self-imposed seclusion.

I have never really stopped to consider this meme. Until recently I watched a TED talk on the topic of creativity. Steven Johnson explodes the notion of quiet genius speaking about the idea of a “Liquid Network.” Mr. Johnson’s overarching point, and a subject of his new book Where Good Ideas Come From is essentially that creativity is most often a child of chaos. Rather than some secluded, Nostradamus-like wizard hermit, innovators and creators operation in bustling workshops and labs, chaotic, one might say.
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Two Things to SEE on a Monday

Seeing is believing.

OK, stop gawking and get back to work.

Margie