I really do think it’s worth spending money on design.

-rsh

I know both of these designers personally, so I felt comfortable turning this work over to people who know me, know my site, know what I’m about.

It was well worth the money. I’m so proud of what I send out as a business. It’s highly professional, and very unique as a real estate agent. My biz cards are not something that are going to embarrass people to hand out to their friends, and have immediate impact, and are expressive of a business experience- relaxed, professional, unique.

Every indexed page on a site is a potential landing page, isn’t it?

The 46% number I reported earlier as a “site bounce rate” comes straight off Google Analytics. I log in, set a date range and under “site usage” it reports one number for bounce rate. Again, I don’t know how that’s calculated, but it appears to be an aggregated number for all pages hit in that time period.

I agree *completely* that an aggregated bounce rate means nothing. But that doesn’t stop people from asking “what’s your bounce rate?”

With that said, we really never speak to overall bounce rate. We like to speak about the bounce rate of specific pages. We create a funnel, and adjust our site to move traffic through that funnel…

The 46% average is just that, GA tracks the bounce rate of every individual page. It then reports an overall bounce rate for the site. To be honest, I don’t know how exactly it calculates it.

For example, if Page A is visited 2 times and has a 100% bounce rate and Page B is visited 500 times and has a 5% bounce rate, I *assume* GA takes 500 visits at 5% and 2 visits at 100% and returns an average. (Which in this extreme case would be very close to 5%). But I can’t say for sure this is how it determines the “Average”.

It’s really a rather meaningless number though.

Yes, the bounce rate… bounces around (sorry, couldn’t resist) a LOT. I have many pages in the 85% – 100% range. Doesn’t bother me one iota — as you say, someone came looking for info, found it, and left. And that’s OK. Some of those people will come back later for more info, some will say, “Hey, this site rocks!” and bookmark it, and a few will on occasion think “Might as well look at homes while I’m here”. I’m fine with any of those outcomes.

I do get a certain satisfaction though watching people who come to the site via a very specific search, find what they are looking for and then spend an hour or two looking (and I assume reading) post after post of content unrelated to what they originally stopped by for. I’m pretty sure those types just became a regular reader and will visit frequently, tell their pals, subscribe, link back, who knows — but it’s all good. Or better yet, if they are local, they may just decide some day to buy or sell a home… I’ve had clients that told me they read the blog for more than two years before they reached out for help buying/selling real estate. That’s pretty cool.

Incidentally, the “informational pages” with bounce rates in say the 60 – 80% range are almost always pages where there are multiple posts about the topic. For example, I’ve got several posts on the home buyer tax credit. People search, find one, and often go to another page on the same topic (here’s where internally linking to similar posts, or having some ‘Related Articles’ links helps people get further info). Conversely the info type posts that are stand alone have bounce rates approaching 100%.

As you mention, I would expect the BR on a search page to be low. People go there to search for homes. Back in the day when I had a lousy, very unfriendly IDX solution, the bounce rate was *significantly* higher then it is now. This tells me the Diverse Solutions product works. People come to search, and they search.

First let me say that SIMPLY the fact you KNOW your bounce rate, as a Realtor, puts you miles ahead and explains why you enjoy Internet Marketing Success. With that said…

I am not certain what “Year to date overall average site bounce rate” means, unless you are tracking individual bounce rates on ALL of your pages and averaging them? Some pages actually have high bounce rates by DESIGN. For example, if a page is designed to answer a readers questions, and is succesful in doing so, the reader will get his anser and bounce. My goal for this type of page is 100% bounce rate. If this is simply your homepage bounce rate,it is totally acceptable, 46 is a decent number. Most template RE sites, etc run 70-80…a GREAT RE site runs just under 40%.. IT really varies. Most analytics are looked at in combination of stats. When one goes up, the other down… it is a dance.

As far as your IDX bounce rate. This number is accurate. IDX’s typically have a really low bounce rate, because they are iframed into a page. SO when someone clicks on Search for Homes and goes to the IDX page on YOUR SITE, GA still sees that as YOUR page. Once they enter data and start the search it is now the IDXs page. So, the in order to bounce off an IDX, you would have to get your very first list of results, and leave. Not so likely….

Your IDX, Diverse really does a great job and your site sets realistic user expectations. I would have been more surprised if your numbers weren’t this good….

The purpose of design is to render a clear hierarchy of the site’s information (content, copy and calls to action) so that the user can find exactly what they are looking for without having to think.

The attractiveness of a design however, is not clearly as important as creating that clean path toward the information the user comes to the site for.

The overall aesthetic of the design must be dictated by the brand itself and exude through its look and feel a clear sense of what the brand means and is about. This regards fonts, colors, etc. That’s why Wall-Mart looks like does (utilitarian versus stunning) while Neiman Marcus takes on the upscale glamor that it does.

As for your blog Jay – it’s fine and the design reflects who you are what you’re about. It’s unpretentious. It’s honest and the the tons of white space allow the eyes rest directly on the content rather than be driven all over the place.

The problem most brokerages face is expressed perfectly here by Rob, Jim, Jay. You can’t just slap any old design on a website and call it a day and you cannot delegate web design to you print designers either.

You need to take into account who your users are, why they are coming to the site (analytics) what their impression and understanding of you are is, what your own impression of you is and what it is you want people doing and feeling when they land on your site.

hawaiilife.com is a stellar example of a home page design that rocks on pretty much all fronts and expresses what I consider a top notch design. Granted, some issues exist. But for this discussion, let’s not split hairs.

Good stuff Rob.