Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Where are people coming from (i.e., sources)? What keywords/search terms are they using? Look at these for bounces and non-bounces. That should give you a good clue.

As a subjective reaction, there's a lot of copy on the homepage, and I'm struggling to find the BENEFIT -- What's In It For Me? Maybe people are landing on the page and not convinced there's any reason to wade through all that copy to see if they should be interested ... so they just hit the back-button.

Maybe you can test a very simple homepage that has a clear and compelling benefit, with links to the other things/details if they're really interested ... like a landing page instead of a story. My guess is the bounce rate will be cut in half immediately.

Michael's right - the analytics will give you more insight as to your problems.

Looking at your home page, I would also suggest less text and more images - of the location, other fairs you may have held, and perhaps testimonials from previous attendees (from other fairs you've put on).

Good afternoon.

I want to ask you to look at the keywords people have used to find you. This is a good clue as to why your bounce rate may be too high. That is when you can steer towards those keywords - or away from them.

Another point is that you have very little that is search-engine friendly. You have heaps of keywords, no H1 tag, yet your H2 tag is "hold the phone" (!). Your images are all called 5433212.jpg or somesuch - with no alt tag. Change this to a sensible name and the search engine gets the nudge.

Some very basic SEO will sort out a lot of your problems. If you find things getting difficult to decide upon - take the decision out of your hands by making two pages, one for each choice. That way one will appeal to one viewer, the other to the next. You can list these landing pages on the sitemap they need only link in to your site and act as gathering points for your main point of interest, your festival.

The final question is what are people looking for - and not finding on your site? Were they looking for weddings in Dorset but not a festival? How could you cater for them?

A final thought: are your visitors - the ones that do stay around - finding what they like? Is anybody getting in contact with you? If 1% of all visitors phone you, you can say you have done well. Okay?

Hope this helps.