I was poring over my Google Analytics data this evening wondering why on earth the bounce rate on my running log site was so high when a thought hit me: What if it was because people are actually making it their homepage? I had noticed in my user traffic logs a few weeks ago that a couple users were showing up at the main page several times a day, but only adding new runs or looking at their data once a day. Originally, I thought it was bot traffic (I tend to keep an eye out for those so that I can mark the IPs and remove them from my visit logs), but then how were they signed in with the cookies? And why were the times so random? Then, it hit me that they had saved my site as their homepage and it was popping up whenever they turned on their computer. How cool is that! But, it wasn't until today that I realized that this was part of the reason my bounce rate was climbing. Sure enough, when I broke it out, the New Visitor bounce rate was 16% lower than the Returning Visitor bounce rate. So, moral of the story is, bounce rate isn't always everything. In this case, the fact that my bounce rate was rising (because people were setting the site as their home page) was actually a good thing.

On a related note, I discovered that 39% of my organic search traffic was coming in using the keywords "east coast runners" (the name of my site). Interesting... So, my search numbers were actually 61% lower than what the reports showed because anyone coming in off that term obviously already knew the site and was just typing it in through Google rather than their address bar. (Personally, I do this all the time -- It saves you from seeing spammy sites if you accidentally misspell the domain.) So, that wasn't really that big of a surprise, but this was: People coming in off that search term had a 69% bounce rate! Why would that number be so high? I've been pondering this for a while but can't come up with an answer. Why would you search for a site by name, go there, and then immediately leave? Making this even more interesting is the fact that (as you would imagine) 85% of people coming in off the term are returning visitors. So, they know what to expect from the site, they search for it anyway, and then they bounce? WTF?

Welcome to the new Ink Plant Blog.  As you can tell, this is still a work in progress.  I've been re-thinking the way that I wanted my business blog to be setup, and wanted to get started on writing it even though I don't have the time right now to make the design pretty, etc.  So, forgive that please.

I lost motivation a bit on my old blog (NYC Web Design) and haven't posted anything there since June.  I think a big part of that was because I was approaching the concept in the wrong way.  Instead of actually blogging, I was attempting to write tutorials, code snippets, etc. and the whole process became a chore.  So, with this fresh new blog, I am going to have a new approach -- I am going to write this as though it was my business' diary.  No, we're not going to talk about crushes and fabulous outfits, but we are going to talk about what's happening in the day-to-day life of Ink Plant.

I'm still going to try to do some of that tutorial/article/how-to-guide writing for SEO purposes, but I am going to do so on "real" pages rather than a blog because I think that's a more suitable medium.  And, when I publish new pages there, I'll simply write a little announcement here.  So, if you sucscribe, you'll still be kept up to date with all those developments.

Another thing I found was that my posts were way too long and I'd put off writing because I didn't have time to put together a masterpiece.  No more of that either.  These are going to be shorter and to the point because you're probably just as busy as I am and have better things to do than read long, drawn-out blog posts.  So, with that in mind, I'll call this good.