I want to prefix this by saying I am interested in improving the front page anyways and that I’m not experienced with google analytics, but did check its help page before posting.
As far as I can tell the bounce rate includes return visitors. This leads me to suspect that the high bounce rate could be from regulars checking LW and leaving when they don’t see any interesting new posts or recent comments.
Also, I think we can do a better job of meeting both goals, but I for one am willing to accept a fairly high bounce rate if it keeps the quality of newcomers high and the current system seems to be doing a passible job there.
Sure, the bounce rate may include returning users, but you seem to be missing this really important point:
When I first saw the site, I had no idea what it was about. I left. Without clicking anything.
When I saw the site the second time, I read the about us page, still didn’t know what it was about, and left. Without clicking anything.
A web professional who has worked with marketers (me) is telling you “the web marketing sucks”.
We really don’t know what percentage of the bouncers are new users from this page. But if we want growth, we can’t just tell ourselves that most of the people who are leaving are returning users and brush this off. Consider this:
I want to prefix this by saying I am interested in improving the front page anyways and that I’m not experienced with google analytics, but did check its help page before posting.
As far as I can tell the bounce rate includes return visitors. This leads me to suspect that the high bounce rate could be from regulars checking LW and leaving when they don’t see any interesting new posts or recent comments. Also, I think we can do a better job of meeting both goals, but I for one am willing to accept a fairly high bounce rate if it keeps the quality of newcomers high and the current system seems to be doing a passible job there.
Sure, the bounce rate may include returning users, but you seem to be missing this really important point:
When I first saw the site, I had no idea what it was about. I left. Without clicking anything.
When I saw the site the second time, I read the about us page, still didn’t know what it was about, and left. Without clicking anything.
A web professional who has worked with marketers (me) is telling you “the web marketing sucks”.
We really don’t know what percentage of the bouncers are new users from this page. But if we want growth, we can’t just tell ourselves that most of the people who are leaving are returning users and brush this off. Consider this:
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s18lesswrong&r=36
If the new users were all registering, the growth should be how much faster than that?
(I’m hereby updating the OP with this. Thanks for pointing it out.)