Hello everyone,

 

About a month or so ago you very kindly gave me feedback on the proposed new design of my supplements website, www.wheyproteinking.com . I went ahead with the new design and I think it has gone well. Unfortunately, I am still having issues, in particular with a high bounce rate, 60% for my home page, which is not good! Other problems are that statcounter shows people are coming to my site trying to find answers to questions, which are on there but leaving straight away. I am unsure if this is because the text is too far down?

 

I also thought of changing the banner, to make it smaller as I believe that is pushing things down considerably. If anyone has any thoughts in these points, or indeed any others they can see that might help, I would be most grateful. Your comments were extremely helpful last time and I hope to hear from people once more.

 

Kindest regards,

 

David Stanhope

Hi David, how long are they staying for? If they've come to you for an answer then maybe they find that answer, read it, and are gone again in 30 seconds.

 

I don't think your text is that far down, but maybe they are put off by the ads they are blasted with first of all. You could try putting your questions/answers first and the ads underneath, or if you want the ads high up then use jQuery to show a list of questions that can be toggled to show the answers.

Thank you for your feedback.

 

A lot aren't staying at all, as in 0 seconds, according to Statcounter anyhow. I was toying with whether to keep the ads, they aren't generating much income at all, they never have seemed to on my site. I don't know if that is because of the product or down to my site...

 

Can I ask you for a bit more information on jQuery? Is that a programme or download? I must say I haven't come across it before, but it certainly sounds like it may be useful.

 

Thank you once more for your comments.

JQuery is a javascript library you can use for dynamic effects like scrolling the page or animating content.

 

Have a search and you'll find a load of info and tutorials.

 

As for your stats, do you have any that show times of less than a minute? Maybe it doesn't kick in until they reach a certain number of seconds, and anything less is shown as zero.

Thank you , I will definitely look into jQuery.

 

Unfortunately I have had people on for 20 or 30 seconds, so I believe it must register whatever time is spent. It is just frustrating because I know I have the information people are looking for, but something must be offputting them straight away as they are clicking the back button. I realise that there will always be this scenario, but 60% is quite high.

 

Thank you for your suggestions though and I will definitely test that out, see if it can hlep reduce the problem.

Thank yo very much.

 

I agre with the ads because that really isn't my intention. How would I go about designing the 'click to read more' element? Would it be possible to keep that information all on one page with this method? If perhaps you could tell me where I would find how to do this, I would be most thankful.

 

Kind regards,

 

David

I definitely agree that the advertisements are a problem. I don't think they are giving a good impression on first landing at your site, particularly as you also appear to be selling these products on the site itself. It almost looks like your ad placement betrays a lack of confidence in the quality of your own products, otherwise they would dominate the page?

My other thought is that you may find that separating the product display and the information onto separate pages could help. For example, why not have a faq page containing the information currently right the way down the bottom of your page, but have it as the main focus on the faq page? Use the faq to sell your products. Inlcude picture links as well as text links, maybe throw in a couple of testimonials too - there is so much opportunity there.

Good luck.

That is an excellent point.

 

My only concern is, as the info is on my home page and indexed etc, if I move it to a new page, will I not lose the traffic bought to me by people looking for the info? For example, if someone types in 'does whey protein have an expiry date' the answer is on my home page and I come up in Google for it. If I then remove that text, will I not end up losing that traffic?

 

I hope I have explained myself clearly, its easier to think it than it is to write!

 

If there is a way around that, it would be ideal.

 

Thank you to you and to everyone who has commented.

That is an excellent point.

 

My only concern is, as the info is on my home page and indexed etc, if I move it to a new page, will I not lose the traffic bought to me by people looking for the info? For example, if someone types in 'does whey protein have an expiry date' the answer is on my home page and I come up in Google for it. If I then remove that text, will I not end up losing that traffic?

 

I hope I have explained myself clearly, its easier to think it than it is to write!

 

If there is a way around that, it would be ideal.

 

Thank you to you and to everyone who has commented.

It would be a short term problem, but would be easily circumvented by putting a small but obvious link on your home page inviting new visitors to read your faq. Search engines will catch up soon enough.

so for example, If I had the questions listed on the home page but then linked off to an FAQ page, the keyowrds in the questions would still get me the traffic until the other pages are indexed?

 

Thank you both by the way. Ihave taken Adsense off now, going to see if that plus this idea with the questions will help things.

 

I really appreciate both of your inputs.

Basically, I don't think it makes any difference you leaving those phrases on your home page. The problem I thought you were trying to address was that of google pointing users to a page that no longer carries the content google has indexed because you have moved it to another location.

In this instance I would just have a prominent link - something like : 'Your questions answered in our FAQ!'

Other than that, once googlebot revisits your page and indexes it, it will then direct users to the new page if the content has moved.

Hope that makes sense.

You really need to pull the most important information out of the main copy and put it right upfront. Your visitors need to know where they've come to, what you do and, most importantly, why that matters to them.

Should have something before the ads like folks have said.

There's nothing wrong with lots of copy but it needs to be written so that it gets and then retains attention. Good sales copy is as long as it needs to be, but you've got to think really hard about how you draw the visitor in and keep them reading. You should definitely consider splitting the content up to other pages (it can be done without damaging SEO) and really, really need to work on the 'inverted pyramid' approach (most important info upfront). A dash of creativity and psychological triggers wouldn't go amiss to turn the passive infomerical text into sales copy.

Again, thank you.

 

You mention it can be done without harming SEO. is this via the methods we have discussed above, or is there something else that you can suggest? I have a summary of what the site does, albeit it is under the products table, would you suggest moving that higher? I am sorry to ask so many questions, I am just keen to get this right and value all of your inputs. although the Adsense was a problem, my 60% bounce rate pre dated when I put the ads in, so they cannot be the sole cause. This is why I am keen to address other areas such as this.

 

RE: NOTBANKSY

 

Yes sorry that is the point I was trying to address and yes that makes sense, thank you. On some sites with FAQ, I have seen the question and then when you click on it, the 'answer' text appears below it, where it was previously covered up. Would anyone know how this is achieved and whether it would be a good method to employ?

 

If not, I will definitely take on what you have said and build something around that. My aim is just simply to build a site where visitors can get everything they need to and the bounce rate needs to be addressed for this as I automatically lose over half of them.

 

Thank you for your suggestions, your help is really appreciated.