Yesterday, as I was checking stats of a website that I manage, I decided to take a closer look at the bounce rate and percentage of new visitors. The bounce rate wasn't hateful (39%), but could definitely be improved.  Realizing that this site gets lots of StumbleUpon traffic, I wondered if the (higher than desired) bounce rate could be due to random traffic from SU. 

Fortunately, Google Analytics allowed me to view the days that showed higher than normal SU traffic and compare the bounce rate on those days with the average bounce rate for the month. On the days with higher SU traffic, the bounce rate was still within 2% of the monthly average, which was reassuring.  It confirmed to me that most of the people that promote this particular site on SU actually visit, read, and recommend the site to others, because they are interested in the subject matter and not just because I friended them or because they are trying to help me out.

How did I accomplish this? I spent time networking with people in that niche market, developing relationships with them, and Stumbling and promoting their sites (at SU and in other venues), which set me up to receive Stumbles and reviews in return when I needed them. Also, when I Stumbled articles from this particular site, I only sent it to those in my network that were interested in the topic and were subsequently connected to others in the same niche.  Had I spread out my submissions randomly across multiple social media sites or sent it to all of my SU friends, I don't believe that I would have gotten the same results. Perhaps the same amount of traffic, perhaps more, but most likely with a higher bounce rate and a lower conversion rate.

If you haven't done this exercise yet, it might be eye opening.  Perhaps you can tweak your social media campaign accordingly to get more targeted traffic. If your analytics tool does not give you your bounce rate, I recommend implementing Google analytics, which is free and can give you a second perspective on your user data and traffic. I know I mentioned the "percentage of new visitors" statistic in the intro, but I will leave that for another post -- expect something from me next week.