Home page abandonment

How many people are abandoning your site at the home page

[lgn]

We have a niche market and we target this market carefully. However for 36% of our customers, the home page is a single access page (only page viewed, before exit from site).

Is this rate reasonable. Some statistics from niche market retail ecom sites will tell me how I am doing, or if I need to rethink my home page.

[martinibuster]

That's a high number. There can be any number of reasons. Have you looked at your access logs and traced the keywords people are using to find you? It could be that they are finding you for the wrong keywords. Traffic is good, but useless traffic only wastes bandwidth and maybe slows down your server. You may want to evaluate why people are finding you and fine tune those keywords for keywords that are more productive.

Of course, there are usability issues that can come into play as well.

On a related note, you may want to question the source of your information. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but the surest way of tracking foot traffic is with cookies, and that it's close to guesswork if you're relying on access logs.

For instance, there is continuity between you and a Word Document. The software/computer "remembers" what your last keystrokes were, etc.

A server on the other hand only serves up pages-Then walks away from the transaction. It remembers nothing. A server cannot recognize that you came from the home page and now need the "download" page. The "remembering" is done on the browser side.

Thus an access log is unable to track the movements of a single visitor, as the log file only records pages served up chronologically, (second by second).

Just a few thoughts. Hope that helps or adds fuel to your fire.

:) Y

[nipear]

It seems a little strange for a WebmasterWorld member to be getting so much traffic to their front page. :)

What terms are these people coming in on?

I'd work on getting people to come in on your deep pages that have all the good stuff.

And yes from what I've seen logs can have a hard time tracking paths through a website.

[jimnovo]

I work mostly with retail sites and would have to say a 36% abandonment rate at the home page is quite low, which is a nod to your niche positioning and careful targeting. 70% - 80% is common in general retail, or niche retail with poor interface design or lousy ad targeting.

The worst case group are those who buy PPC ads on Overture or Google and send clickers to the home page, where they have to look around for a product they clicked on a specific ad for, instead of sending clickers to the specific product page. 95% one page visits are common under this approach.

[martinibuster]

poor interface design

Holey Moley! You said a mouthful.

I was hunting for a French domain registrar a couple months ago, and I swear that a person needed a microscope to find a "BUY" button on their web sites. I walked away from a couple of those web sites because I couldn't figure out how to make the purchase. Imagine that.

:) Y