StumbleUpon - and it's major drawback
StumbleUpon is a wonderful invention. If you don't know what it is yet, where have you been for the last year or more? It has been around for a long time now, much more than just a year, but it has seen increasing numbers of users in the last 12 months in particular.
We're not to explain what it is. If you don't know, Google it.
For those that do know what it is and regularly receive visitors to their website from it - we wondered if you'd clicked on to the major disadvantage it presents you?
Here is a little clue...
Bounce rate. The bounce rate of visitors on your website has almost certainly shot up since you were first StumbledUpon.
See, if you think about it, it is perfectly understandable. Whilst StumbleUpon gives its users lots of options and preferences that are configurable, few people go to the bother of changing their options beyond the first time they set them.
The reason is simple - if you don't like what StumbleUpn gives you, you simply click the button again! Besides which, the website might be in a subject category that is of interest to you occasionally, but the site it delivers you isn't one you want to spend any time on.
For those that don't know, the Bounce rate of your site is the percentage of visitors that come to your site and spend no time on it. They, literally, bounce straight off the home page and go elsewhere. High bounce rates are bad. Companies such as Alexa report them to their users and the world, so your site Bounce rate can often look much worse once you become a StumbleUpon site.
You do of course have to counter the disadvantage of a higher Bounce rate with the additional visitors that StumbleUpon brings you - and in many cases that can be thousands more every day.
Go on, go take a look if you use site monitoring software or the likes of Google Analytics. Track back to when your site was first Stumbled - you'll almost certainly see that your Bounce rate has done the equivalent of a Space Shuttle launch.
Does it matter?
Because of the volume of new visitors StumbleUpon can bring you, does this little fact really matter?
We'd say it does. If your Bounce rate has been skewed and distorted by StumbleUpon, how do you know just how effective your homepage is for tempting visitors into other parts of your site?
The Bounce rate on eCommerce and business sites is of particular importance, so the impact of StumbleUpon can be very misleading indeed.
Google think so too. Avinash Kaushik mentioned the Bounce rate as perhaps the single most important metric of any site.
However, there is very real reason for Bounce rate mattering. It could impact the ranking of your site. Search engines want to send visitors to sites that people like, have valued content and relevant subject matter. So what if a search engine picks up that you have a high Bounce rate? Your ranking suffers. You're less likely to receive visitors that actually want what you offer because of the impact of people who aren't sure if they want to see your website or not!
We accept it is a Catch 22 situation. But, it is one to consider very carefully indeed.
