Mal Gordon – How to Sell on the Web

The bounce rate of a website is the proportion of visitors who arrive and leave on a single page without visiting any other pages. Bounce rates vary widely across sites and industries (of my 12 personal sites the variance is from 6-80%) though a general rule of thumb is that about half of your traffic will bounce.

This site (malgordon.com) currently enjoys a bounce rate of 6.43% which is very low. If you’re going to take the time and energy to build a site you want your visitors to stick around so you can sell them an idea or product, you want to reduce your bounce rate.

Factors I think that have contributed to such a low rate:

1. It is Updated Regularly

Whilst I have my regulars who visit daily many visit less regularly. When they arrive I suspect that they will want to read all the new posts.

2. It is Content Rich

This site now contains over 500 pages of information and counting. That represents over 500 assets to appear in search engine results that can be shared freely on the internet. If someone has shown interest in my thoughts they’re likely to want to drill down and see what else I have to offer (more content = good).

3. It is Easy to Navigate

The categorised header menu and sidebar archive menu makes exploration easy and intuitive. They are automatically inserted into every page and article I create. The navigation system is common to many other blogs on the web for instant familiarty for many which means that no instructions are required.

4. It has a Search Function

In the top right which encourages visitors to delve deeper into the site and read more than one article per visit.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Popularity: 11% [?]

The creative may look fantastic in a nice, cosy, plush boardroom replete with whiz bang AV gadgets and 60 minutes or more dedicated to deciding which creative option to go with. In the real world, stack that same creative up against the 5 or so other 30 second spots which are pitched at an audience that isn’t the brand manager and it has to work so much harder to stand out and get noticed.

So the next time you’re pitching or being pitched make sure to pinch yourself and remember that ad land does not equal the brutality and attention deficit disorder that is the real world.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Whilst Prezi is ridiculously user friendly what I neglected to inform you is that it was taking me up to three times longer to prepare a presentation than if I had been using Powerpoint.  Because I have been so time poor this year I have to confess that I rarely use Prezi for presentations unless it’s something really, really, really important.

I like Prezi but it has its downsides. Yes, it’s far more stable than it was last year but it just seems to take me a heck of a lot longer to get anything done in it and i’m not entirely sure why. It’s probably because it is so versatile at telling a story that I run the danger of going off on wild, time consuming tangents that I later have to back track from. With such a powerful combination of brainstorming ideation and non-linear story telling capability this is kind of understandable.

Popularity: 10% [?]

It’s been a big day in digital for me as I came across these beauties.

http://www.anzfisheries.com.au/

http://www.theirhands.com.au/

http://www.takethislollipop.com/

Popularity: 9% [?]