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Quick Tips To Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate

Freya — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 08:04:01 +0000

Your website bounce rate is usually shown as a percentage, and refers to the number of people who land on your website and then leave again without navigating to another page on the same website.

A low bounce rate can suggest that the user hasn’t found what they’re looking for, or that they don’t consider the content on your site valuable enough to be worth sticking around. Having said that, it’s worth noting that a high bounce rate isn’t always a bad thing, and certain pages can lend themselves to having high bounce rates (blog posts for example, or in-depth, detailed content that gives the user exactly what they were looking for so they don’t feel they need to continue reading).

It’s also worth trying to lower your bounce rate however, even on these kinds of pages, as your visitors sticking around and viewing more pages can only be a good thing. Whilst bounce rate is often related to the quality of your content, there are a few simple steps you can take to try and improve your bounce rate, either on specific pages or on a sitewide basis:

Use ‘Read More’ or ‘Related Posts’
This is an excellent way of keeping users on your site, and is used by most of the big blogging, news and magazine sites (e-commerce sites also use a similar tactic to try and keep you spending, like Amazon’s ‘Customers who bought this also bought…’ section). Adding some related posts or pages at the bottom of your content can be a great way of ensuring your bounce rate decreases – if you’re using a WordPress based blog, there are a bunch of excellent plugins that can automate the process for you.

Include links on your 404 pages
If someone clicks on a broken link to your site, or mistypes the URL, they’ll likely land on a 404 error page. If there’s nothing on this page but a simple error, they may well leave altogether (and probably never come back). Try adding some links to your 404 pages so that if someone does land on one, they’re more likely to stay on the site and continue reading.

Try and improve the overall loading speed of your website
Not only is site speed an important factor when it comes to search engine optimisation, but it’s an essential element of your overall usability and can have a notable impact on your bounce rate. Internet users aren’t always the most patient of people and if your site loads slowly then you might find that people click away before the page has loaded. Improving your site speed therefore can remove these clicks away from your site, subsequently improving your bounce rate.

Improve your content
Poor or shallow content is a big factor when it comes to high bounce rates; isolate the pages on your website with the highest bounce rate (you can do this using Google Analytics) and evaluate the content on those pages. Try tweaking it or adding to it, add images and video or find a new angle on the subject matter – whatever it takes to improve the quality of the content for the user. You can then monitor these changes in terms of bounce rate via Google Analytics and try to get a good idea of what works and what doesn’t in terms of content (you can then use this to inform the content for the rest of your website).

The most important thing is to always be trying to improve your website, in terms of usability, navigation and content. The more useful you can make your content to the visitor, the more likely you are to have a website with a low bounce rate and a high quality, dedicated audience-based (which can then be leveraged or monetised through a wide variety of methods).

Top Tips For Improving Your Site Speed

Steve — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:57:01 +0000

The loading speed of your website is a crucial element to the overall popularity, traffic and subsequent conversions of your site, for numerous different reasons. The speed of a website is an important SEO element, as Google (and other search engines) are reluctant to reward slow-loading sites with high rankings.

So your site speed can affect the amount of traffic your website receives, particularly from search engines, but what about when users reach your website? Research has shown that a significant percentage of people will click away from a website that takes too long to load, with the vast majority of those users never returning to the website after that one negative experience.

Even if a user is patient and waits for your content to load, it’s unlikely that they will wait for every page to load, and if you’re an ecommerce site they’re far more unlikely to trust your site with their credit card details if it’s slow loading.

With such an impact on the perception and usage of your website, you can see why a site with a low speed should be addressed as quickly as possible. So how can we go about improving our site speed? Here are some top tips for doing just that:

1. Find out your current site speed
You’ll need to figure out how fast your site is compared to other websites before you start addressing any potential issues; whilst general checks are a good way to judge generally, a lot of it could be related to your internet connection so you’ll need to use an external tool that can give you far more specific information.

The best tool for this is the site speed section in Google Webmaster Tools, as this is provided by Google and gives you an accurate idea of your site speed compared to the majority of other sites.

2. Combine and externalise CSS files
Your website is far more likely to load quickly if it can reference one external cascading style sheet (CSS), rather than a difference CSS file for each page. Combine them all into one and minimise the source code as much as you can.

3. Compress your content
HTTP compression can be an excellent method for reducing your site speed, as it combines all of your website data into one file, rather than needed to request and reference numerous different files.

4. Optimise your website images
This is an important element in improving your overall site speed and can have a surprisingly notable impact. Different file formats (jpg, jpeg, png, gif, etc) have a varying impact on site speed, with some file extensions causing a substantial increase in file size. Know when to use the correct formats and optimise your images with site speed in mind (for example, GIF files tend to load quicker than JPEG or PNG files).

5. Put your Google Analytics code in the footer or at the bottom
If your GA code is at the top of your HTML document, then the browser will load this information before anything below, giving the impression that the site is loading slowly. Move your GA code to the footer or lower down the HTML body to ensure that browsers load your page content before the analytics, making the page seem much faster to users.

Web Hosting for Game Servers

Steve — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:25:09 +0000

The internet offers you many games to play.These games are played online through game server connections, which are offered by game server providers.A game server is a remotely or locally run server that game clients use to play multiplayer games.

Dedicated game servers are provided by companies called game server providers.Today, game server web hosting is one of the fastest growing segments of the web hosting industry.

Game server web hosting is found in two varieties; listen and dedicated servers.In case of listen servers, a player can play simultaneously host and take part in the game as the server runs with the game.These servers are usually operated by individuals in LAN networks and not over the internet.

It is also possible for dedicated game server web hosting to be run by individuals.The difference here is that it is usually run on dedicated hardware that is found in data centres so that they can provide more bandwidth and dedicated processing power.Most of the PC based multiplayer games found today use dedicated servers for their hosting purposes.

When compared to traditional hosting, game hosting proves to be a more demanding form of web hosting.The reason is that it needs a specific amount of formatted server space so that it can meet the requirements of all players simultaneously playing a game.With millions of consumers looking to play online games, game servers have to provide reliable and dedicated web hosting.

Apart from heavy traffic, you also have to make sure that the game server provides you with easy to use control panels .These control panels should let the site owner automate and organize processes easily.This feature is important in game servers because online gaming players look out for efficient customers support and services in gaming sites.These sites also use many applications and software updates, which can be provided only through a good control panel feature in the web hosting plan.

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted

Doug — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 08:04:49 +0000

It todays Web Hosting Tutorial we are going to cover how to change your PHP file upload limit to avoind the following error:

‘Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted’?

PHP has a built-in limit on the amount of memory it will allocate. If that limit is reached, the process will exit with this error message. This is usually the result of the PHP script trying to load a large file, such as an image, into memory all at once. While it is better if you can arrange for the script not to do such things, it is also possible to increase the memory limit some to avoid this problem. To do that, edit the php.ini file with your PHP scripts (create it if it does not exist) and add the following line:

memory_limit=16M

You should replace the ’16′ with whatever value is appropriate. The default is 8M (8 megabytes, the 8388608 bytes from the error message).

Thats it! You’ve just increased your PHP file upload limit. Well done you!

Click here to find out how to create a custom php.ini file.

Possible issues with OSCommerce and MySQL5

Doug — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:52:19 +0000

We have been made aware that some customers may have issues with their OSCommerce installations after your recent upgrade to MySQL5.

To solve this, two files in the installation directory need to be changed. the first set of changes are needed to index.php.

Remove the code below from that file …

// show the products of a specified manufacturer if (isset($HTTP_GET_VARS['manufacturers_id'])) { if (isset($HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id']) && tep_not_null($HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id'])) { // We are asked to show only a specific category $listing_sql = "select " . $select_column_list . " p.products_id, p.manufacturers_id, p.products_price, p.products_tax_class_id, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, NULL) as specials_new_products_price, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, p.products_price) as final_price from " . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd, " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS . " m, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " p2c left join " . TABLE_SPECIALS . " s on p.products_id = s.products_id where p.products_status = '1' and p.manufacturers_id = m.manufacturers_id and m.manufacturers_id = '" . (int)$HTTP_GET_VARS['manufacturers_id'] . "' and p.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.language_id = '" . (int)$languages_id . "' and p2c.categories_id = '" . (int)$HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id'] . "'"; } else { // We show them all $listing_sql = "select " . $select_column_list . " p.products_id, p.manufacturers_id, p.products_price, p.products_tax_class_id, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, NULL) as specials_new_products_price, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, p.products_price) as final_price from " . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd, " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS . " m left join " . TABLE_SPECIALS . " s on p.products_id = s.products_id where p.products_status = '1' and pd.products_id = p.products_id and pd.language_id = '" . (int)$languages_id . "' and p.manufacturers_id = m.manufacturers_id and m.manufacturers_id = '" . (int)$HTTP_GET_VARS['manufacturers_id'] . "'"; } } else { // show the products in a given categorie if (isset($HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id']) && tep_not_null($HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id'])) { // We are asked to show only specific catgeory $listing_sql = "select " . $select_column_list . " p.products_id, p.manufacturers_id, p.products_price, p.products_tax_class_id, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, NULL) as specials_new_products_price, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, p.products_price) as final_price from " . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd, " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS . " m, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " p2c left join " . TABLE_SPECIALS . " s on p.products_id = s.products_id where p.products_status = '1' and p.manufacturers_id = m.manufacturers_id and m.manufacturers_id = '" . (int)$HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id'] . "' and p.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.language_id = '" . (int)$languages_id . "' and p2c.categories_id = '" . (int)$current_category_id . "'"; } else { // We show them all $listing_sql = "select " . $select_column_list . " p.products_id, p.manufacturers_id, p.products_price, p.products_tax_class_id, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, NULL) as specials_new_products_price, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, p.products_price) as final_price from " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p left join " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS . " m on p.manufacturers_id = m.manufacturers_id, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " p2c left join " . TABLE_SPECIALS . " s on p.products_id = s.products_id where p.products_status = '1' and p.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.language_id = '" . (int)$languages_id . "' and p2c.categories_id = '" . (int)$current_category_id . "'"; } }

Replace the code with this :-

// show the products of a specified manufacturer if (isset($HTTP_GET_VARS['manufacturers_id'])) { if (isset($HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id']) && tep_not_null($HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id'])) { // We are asked to show only a specific category $listing_sql = "select " . $select_column_list . " p.products_id, p.manufacturers_id, p.products_price, p.products_tax_class_id, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, NULL) as specials_new_products_price, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, p.products_price) as final_price from (" . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd, " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS . " m, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " p2c ) left join " . TABLE_SPECIALS . " s on p.products_id = s.products_id where p.products_status = '1' and p.manufacturers_id = m.manufacturers_id and m.manufacturers_id = '" . (int)$HTTP_GET_VARS['manufacturers_id'] . "' and p.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.language_id = '" . (int)$languages_id . "' and p2c.categories_id = '" . (int)$HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id'] . "'"; } else { // We show them all $listing_sql = "select " . $select_column_list . " p.products_id, p.manufacturers_id, p.products_price, p.products_tax_class_id, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, NULL) as specials_new_products_price, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, p.products_price) as final_price from (" . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd, " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS . " m) left join " . TABLE_SPECIALS . " s on p.products_id = s.products_id where p.products_status = '1' and pd.products_id = p.products_id and pd.language_id = '" . (int)$languages_id . "' and p.manufacturers_id = m.manufacturers_id and m.manufacturers_id = '" . (int)$HTTP_GET_VARS['manufacturers_id'] . "'"; } } else { // show the products in a given categorie if (isset($HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id']) && tep_not_null($HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id'])) { // We are asked to show only specific catgeory $listing_sql = "select " . $select_column_list . " p.products_id, p.manufacturers_id, p.products_price, p.products_tax_class_id, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, NULL) as specials_new_products_price, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, p.products_price) as final_price from (" . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd, " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS . " m, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " p2c) left join " . TABLE_SPECIALS . " s on p.products_id = s.products_id where p.products_status = '1' and p.manufacturers_id = m.manufacturers_id and m.manufacturers_id = '" . (int)$HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id'] . "' and p.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.language_id = '" . (int)$languages_id . "' and p2c.categories_id = '" . (int)$current_category_id . "'"; } else { // We show them all $listing_sql = "select " . $select_column_list . " p.products_id, p.manufacturers_id, p.products_price, p.products_tax_class_id, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, NULL) as specials_new_products_price, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, p.products_price) as final_price from ((" . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p) left join " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS . " m on p.manufacturers_id = m.manufacturers_id, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " p2c) left join " . TABLE_SPECIALS . " s on p.products_id = s.products_id where p.products_status = '1' and p.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.language_id = '" . (int)$languages_id . "' and p2c.categories_id = '" . (int)$current_category_id . "'"; } }

The second line that needs editing is advanced_search_results.php

Remove the following code …..

Replace the code with this :-

// show the products of a specified manufacturer if (isset($HTTP_GET_VARS['manufacturers_id'])) { if (isset($HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id']) && tep_not_null($HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id'])) { // We are asked to show only a specific category $listing_sql = "select " . $select_column_list . " p.products_id, p.manufacturers_id, p.products_price, p.products_tax_class_id, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, NULL) as specials_new_products_price, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, p.products_price) as final_price from (" . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd, " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS . " m, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " p2c ) left join " . TABLE_SPECIALS . " s on p.products_id = s.products_id where p.products_status = '1' and p.manufacturers_id = m.manufacturers_id and m.manufacturers_id = '" . (int)$HTTP_GET_VARS['manufacturers_id'] . "' and p.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.language_id = '" . (int)$languages_id . "' and p2c.categories_id = '" . (int)$HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id'] . "'"; } else { // We show them all $listing_sql = "select " . $select_column_list . " p.products_id, p.manufacturers_id, p.products_price, p.products_tax_class_id, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, NULL) as specials_new_products_price, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, p.products_price) as final_price from (" . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd, " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS . " m) left join " . TABLE_SPECIALS . " s on p.products_id = s.products_id where p.products_status = '1' and pd.products_id = p.products_id and pd.language_id = '" . (int)$languages_id . "' and p.manufacturers_id = m.manufacturers_id and m.manufacturers_id = '" . (int)$HTTP_GET_VARS['manufacturers_id'] . "'"; } } else { // show the products in a given categorie if (isset($HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id']) && tep_not_null($HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id'])) { // We are asked to show only specific catgeory $listing_sql = "select " . $select_column_list . " p.products_id, p.manufacturers_id, p.products_price, p.products_tax_class_id, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, NULL) as specials_new_products_price, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, p.products_price) as final_price from (" . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd, " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS . " m, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " p2c) left join " . TABLE_SPECIALS . " s on p.products_id = s.products_id where p.products_status = '1' and p.manufacturers_id = m.manufacturers_id and m.manufacturers_id = '" . (int)$HTTP_GET_VARS['filter_id'] . "' and p.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.language_id = '" . (int)$languages_id . "' and p2c.categories_id = '" . (int)$current_category_id . "'"; } else { // We show them all $listing_sql = "select " . $select_column_list . " p.products_id, p.manufacturers_id, p.products_price, p.products_tax_class_id, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, NULL) as specials_new_products_price, IF(s.status, s.specials_new_products_price, p.products_price) as final_price from ((" . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p) left join " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS . " m on p.manufacturers_id = m.manufacturers_id, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " p2c) left join " . TABLE_SPECIALS . " s on p.products_id = s.products_id where p.products_status = '1' and p.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.products_id = p2c.products_id and pd.language_id = '" . (int)$languages_id . "' and p2c.categories_id = '" . (int)$current_category_id . "'"; } }

The second line that needs editing is advanced_search_results.php

Remove the following code …..

$from_str = "from " . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p left join " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS . " m using(manufacturers_id), " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd left join " . TABLE_SPECIALS . " s on p.products_id = s.products_id, " . TABLE_CATEGORIES . " c, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " p2c";

Replace it with this …..

$from_str = "from ((" . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p) left join " . TABLE_MANUFACTURERS . " m using(manufacturers_id), " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd) left join " . TABLE_SPECIALS . " s on p.products_id = s.products_id, " . TABLE_CATEGORIES . " c, " . TABLE_PRODUCTS_TO_CATEGORIES . " p2c";

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My PHP script gives the error ‘Call to undefined function: mysql_connect()’

Doug — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:35:11 +0000

My PHP script gives the error ‘Call to undefined function: mysql_connect()’

This is usually due to a faulty php.ini file causing the PHP MySQL functions to be undefined. A custom php.ini file should not need to contain more than a very few lines to override the specific necessary directives. Using a php.ini found on other webservers or examples given on PHP-related websites will likely cause problems such as this.