A Bounce Rate is a common website metric you’ll find on Google Analytics or other statistics services. It refers to the percentage of website visitors that directly leave rather than look at other pages on the same site. If a visitor stays on a landing page and doesn’t leave after a certain time-out it also counts as a bounce.
It’s an effective tool to determine how well your landing page performs and how well it encourages visitors to delve deeper into your site. Generally, the lower the better. A subjective rating would be something like:
0-20% – Excellent, But Difficult to Achieve
21-35% – Very Good, On Target
36-50% – Average, May Need Review
51-100% – Poor, Action Needed
A high bounce rate may not necessarily be bad. If your site is purposely designed so that a visitor finds everything they need on the landing page, the bounce rate is irrelevant. However, if you have a e-commerce site there is a conversion path. This is a chain of web pages on your site that ultimately lead to a completed sale. With a high bounce rate, customers are not completing transactions – no sales.
So, if you have a high bounce rate, what can you to do to lower it? The first thing is to determine the reason.
Search Engine Keyword Mismatch
If there is a mismatch between customer expectations and your site’s content, visitors will immediately leave. This is especially true if you’re running a search engine ad using misleading keywords. For example, if you have a Motorcycle business and you’re using seemingly logical keywords like “Custom Bikes”, “Cycle Sports” or “Yamaha”, you will draw people interested in Bicycles and Pianos. They will leave your site quickly.
Wrong Page
When you run ads, you can specify a landing page. It is very important to select a page that will engage the customer in the conversion path. If you run a shoe store, and your keywords are “Italian Shoes”, the landing page should be the Italian Shoe catalog, not the home page or the press releases.
Page Layout
Even if the correct content is on the landing page, it might not be obvious to visitors. If they can’t immediately find what they’re seeking, they’ll leave. Use eye-tracking tools like Attention Wizard, CrazyEgg or Click Tale to find hotspots on your page and change your layout.
Complex or Confusing Conversion Path
The conversion path or online customer’s purchase path should be dead simple and clear. If you try to collect too much information or display distracting or irrelevant information, visitors will simply give up. Give them a call to action and make it obvious how to buy.
Summary
Once you’ve determined the source of your high bounce rate, you’ll be able to see the solution.
Constantly monitor your analytics. The bounce rate should be one of the first things you look at. Adjust your site pages and ads accordingly, and you should see a steady decline the bounce rate.
If you’d like to share any experiences with fixing high bounce rates, please leave a comment below.
Small Businesses are constantly searching for ways to solve problems in the most effective way and lowest cost. Crowdsourcing is one method of doing that. The term was coined back in 2006 by Jeff Howe in an article for Wired magazine. He noticed how the rising business trend of business outsourcing was intersecting with emerging social media. Crowdsourcing is distributed problem-solving, where problems are given to a group of solvers, “the crowd”, which submits solutions. The crowd also judges the quality of given solutions and finds an optimum answer.
Your customers know what they like and crowdsourcing is a great way to get a lot of really innovative ideas. Two areas that can easily be crowdsourced are product naming and design. Asking customers for help can create some anticipation and buzz around new products.
It’s a good idea to limit choices. This makes it less overwhelming and easier for customers to participate. Perhaps start with your employees and narrow down name or design choices to 10 or less.
So how do you measure the success of a Twitter campaign? Usually you include a link in your tweet that you hope will direct potential customers to your landing page or third party page with useful information. You may think you can just check Twitter clicks by looking at Twitter referrals on Google Analytics or your preferred Web Stats app. After all, a click on a Twitter link does include a 
Until Twitter came up with
Even if you don’t have an account, you can get stats of a particular link just by adding a “+” at the end of the link like this: 
Hootsuite provides a whole suite of services, one of which is domain name shortening and analytics. You can recognize the shortened links as 
Visibli is a link shortener that also has some impressive statics information available for both Twitter and Facebook page links.
Along with Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter is one of the top three platforms in Social Media Marketing. As a marketing platform, Twitter has experienced phenomenal growth. But as a small business, you may wonder how you can take advantage. 
If you intend to use Twitter for both business and personal communication, it’s a good idea to create separate accounts. This requires separate email accounts, one for each Twitter account. If you are using gmail, and your account has period in it, you can simply adjust its position. For example, if your account is 
For your business Twitter account, you need get a few hundred followers to appear credible. At first, quantity is better than quality. The best way to get followers, is to follow others in your industry. If they don’t follow you back after a couple days unfollow them. A service like 
With the rise of Social Media and Mobile Marketing, email may seem a bit like yesterday’s technology. As much as people are attracted to the latest thing, old-fashioned 
Most people have a preview pane turned on by default in their email app. This means the first part of your email, which is displayed there, plays a crucial role in the decision whether or not to open. This is where you want to build on the content of the Subject line. Fill it in with the core points of your marketing campaign, listing your best offer or key benefits.
Be consistent with formatting and tone. You want your customers to immediately recognize your style and brand. Set up a unique template that defines your business. This makes it easier to create future campaigns and markets your brand.
No one wants unsolicited email, and annoyed customers are worse than no customers. So It’s important that you only include those who have opted-in, via a signup sheet or a click through.
Using video to promote your business once meant hiring a local production company, giving them a few days edit and finally, produce some media for your website or event. These days, with Social Media Marketing taking off, there are 
Socialcam
Qik Video Connect -Owned by Skype, this app works not only on Apple and Android, but on a wide variety of other phones. The feature that really sets Qik apart, is the ability to broadcast live events. This is great if your business has contests, entertainment or sponsors a local sports team. But it also does video on demand and even has built-in editing.
Thwapr
If you have a small business website or a blog, it’s generally ill-advised to publish your email address because that tends to be a spam-magnet. But you still want to give your customers or prospects a way to contact you.
What’s called for is a “Contact Us” form. It doesn’t reveal your email address. It also lets you control what type of information people give, which in turn, allows you to qualify customers and respond more effectively.
Along with Facebook and Twitter, 
Claim your Name – Register an account in your name and register your business name. At the very least, this will prevent imposters or others with a similar name from using your brand.
Recommendations – They are a unique feature of LinkedIn. But how do you get them? You can ask your customers, associates, or vendors. But actually, a better strategy is to write recommendations of others first. People will reciprocate.
Find Groups to Join – LinkedIn has many special interest groups you can join including those built around specific industries and business topics. LinkedIn will recommend groups for you to join, but you may be better off looking at the profiles of your associates and competitors to see which groups they’ve joined.
Get your Blog Promoted – If you have a blog, LinkedIn is an excellent marketing channel. There are two applications you can add which will let others see a summary of your posts right on LinkedIn. If you use WordPress, 
Try a LinkedIn Ad Campaign – It turns out that, like Facebook, LinkedIn has it’s own 
Your customers will be looking for you on Facebook, so it’s vital that they can easily find you. Facebook itself is so popular that Facebook Fan Pages have become a secondary web presence for many small businesses. But, like your Website and Blog, they need care and nurturing.
You probably already know that SEO means Search Engine Optimization, and has to do with your site ranking when people search on your keywords.
Select the Best Name for your Page – Up until now, it didn’t really matter what you named your page because your didn’t yet have a username. Now you have to decide. The best bet is to simply name it after your company. Some will try using popular search terms as a username. Don’t do this, it will only make your page seem suspicious and illegitimate. Also, Facebook will likely remove any usernames that are trademarked.
Fully complete the “Info” box, it’s also rated fairly high on search engine indexes.It’s on the left of your fan page just under the “Wall” menu item. Make sure you completely fill out all fields, including your location. Make it readable, but insert your keywords where you can.
Fan Page Step #7
Consider using the
