I’ve been tracking page visitors to pente.org with Google analytics for a year or so, it has a ton of nice graphs and features for tracking and I don’t have to manage anything. I haven’t really fully explored all the options, but one of the interesting things is the bounce rate. The bounce rate is the number of visitors that only view the first page of the site and don’t click on any links. It seems very high for pente.org, at over 36%!
My theories for why that is so high are
- Slow load times, the first page is slower than the rest because of the java applet. It seems to take forever for java to load initially. Plus there are alot of database calls to load other things on the page.
- Too much information. There is alot to see on the first page, and probably hard to figure out everything for new users.
So I would like to lower the bounce rate by redesigning the main page to be simpler for new users to quickly start playing! For already registered players it should go to a page that has links to join the game room, see their old games, see their turn-based games, read new messages, etc.
The other feature which I’ve mostly coded already is to allow guests to login to the game room and play (unrated) games. Hopefully if people can just login and play without having to register that might get them more interested.
I just need to find the time now to work on an improved main page. I don’t really enjoy web design work as I’m not much of a designer, so I’ve been putting that part off.
-dweebo
Tags: bounce rate, Pente