Hello, I’m using a Wix website and just published it recently. I’m noticing on analytics that it’s bounce rate is around 40% for the landing page and wondering/suggestions what specific things on the page would be causing it. I feel the loading time may be a big part and I have some more graphics compared to other competitors. The larger graphics range from 100-300kb in size each. I only use 2 types of fonts. In contrast what things could I do to improve loading times without compromising the visual aspects. I used tinypng.com to size down all images. Also what techniques visually or with copy would you suggest I deploy to lower my bounce rate and lead to higher conversions? I’m still new to this so if I sound general I apologize, but when I can get detailed suggestions then I’m able to ask more detailed questions. My website can be visited here: www.5mphotobooth.com
Bounce rate is quite an unusual metric. It is widely considered that a high bounce rate is bad, but it’s not always that simple and something that has been discussed before. Having said that, I think 40% is quite respectable and would not consider it an issue at that.
If speed is causing bounce, then it’s not good (if you are sure speed is the issue).
According to Pingdom your page size is 1.2MB which is not too far out of the way by modern standards.
It shows that largest part of the site (94.2% of it) is not images, but script. That is something I have noticed with Wix sites, that they are totally reliant on javascript to display anything at all. I don’t want to fire up the whole argument of “relevance of progressive enhancement in 2017” here, but it grates a bit how it’s just a blank page, without even the minimum token effort of a noscript message telling you js must be enabled.
The “document size” option on the Web Developer Toolbar is showing 186 scripts, which is a ridiculous number for a single page. It also shows 21 stylesheets, and 270 files in total required to render this one page. That many requests to the server will inevitably slow things down.
I don’t know if you have any control over this kind of thing on a Wix site, but it would seem to me like a good reason to think again about using them. (I also notice the site is not responsive, and has a horizontal scrollbar on my 1280px-wide monitor.)
Thank you for your reply. Your ‘user experience’ seeing it the first time… anything stick out in a bad way? Or something that could affect my credibility as a professional?
Ah, thank you for more response… i seemed to have still been typing when you made your next response. Yes Wix sites are not responsive… but some background elements such as ‘strips’ are. I have a promo bar that appears at the bottom of the site… I believe this one alone may be not responsive causing the horizontal scrollbar… though I should test more it seems.
When it comes to scripts/stylesheets/file numbers… this would only translate to myself as how many background files… or strips… or picture images… or text blocks i’m using. I’m thinking that’s digging into the ‘behind the scenes’ part of a wix site which I do not have access. Mainly I know what I ‘drag n dropped’ onto the page.
Using Firefox (my usual browser) I see this:
On Chromium, it looks like this, which I imagine is what you wanted:
The difference may be to do with slight differences in default font settings between the browsers, but I can’t easily check, as Wix appears to be using a script to disable right-click on the site, which makes using developers tools somewhat awkward. In any case, I think it’s indicative of a greater problem, in that your design will not render reliably if a visitor’s screen size and/or browser settings differs from yours.
I actually forgot to test for responsiveness. Funny, that in a modern-looking new website, I never gave it a thought, taking it as a given.
But now you mention it, I saw exactly the same in another Wix site I was looking at a while back. It was a brand new site (this year) so i was staggered at its non-responsiveness. It has scroll bars at full-screen on my laptop. On my desktop, with HD monitor I have to maximise the browser to full-screen to lose the scrollers.
So to put it bluntly, for anything less than an HD monitor, it’s a UX fail.
@start1 your Analytics should also show you mobile usage and visitor’s screen sizes. You can measure if there is any obvious connection between those and bounce rate.
Here is where to look (these are from a site which is responsive).
You can see most of the visitors here are on mobile, but mobile has the highest bounce rate. Since it is responsive, I would put that down to people probably having a lower attention span on mobile, but speed may be a factor for them too.
You may find you have a lower number of mobile visitors, as your appearance in mobile SERPs may be affected by this too. But if the mobile/tablet/smaller-screen bounce percentage is greatly above desktop, you know why.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention! Chrome was my main browser for making the site, but I also checked on explorer/firefox/safari to see if they were the same as I was making it. My firefox was showing ok, but it seems not to be. I think I’ve had this before and its a matter of resizing the text box to be slightly bigger (may sound like pre-school talk compared to an expert coder) In regards to the right-click disabled… that is an app from wix I use on the website to have some protection for imagery… I know if someone really wants to steal images they can, but at least I try to have some sort of ‘protection’. Thank you again for your input, this one really would have flown right over my head.
Thank you for your input. I am also still wrapping my head around google analytics so this information is valuable to me.
Your design is still very fragile, because it relies on items being positioned exactly with relation to backgrounds and other items. It works for you as you expect it to, but if a visitor has their minimum font size set larger than yours, or uses the text zoom feature in Firefox, then the layout breaks.
I’m now on mobile and have tested the site again. It seems it does have a “mobile” version, but it must use browser-sniffing rather than viewport size to determine which version is displayed.
I’m using it with a decent WiFi connection (but not high speed) and the experience is pretty horrible; blurred content (including text) which takes time to render crisply, and content jumping as more items eventually load.
ackk. If I may ask, what phone and os version are you using? I’ve been hearing more problems on android with my site… but my sample size is still too small to tell.
It’s an Android phone, about two-and-a-half years old. (I don’t know which version of Android it’s running, or how to check.)
(Off Topic)
Menu button > Settings > General > About device. (It’s the last entry)
Thanks, @Erik_J.
I’d looked at the “Device” settings and it wasn’t there. The next section was “Personal” and it didn’t occur to me to scroll down any further. (Phones are not my thing.)
Anyway, the answer to the question is Android 5.1.
A post was merged into an existing topic: How long does it take to get my webpage to rank?
This topic was automatically closed 91 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.