Re: Bounce rates

From: Philip Kaufman <pkaufman5_at_cox.net>
Date: Fri 11 Apr 2003 07:33:10 -0600

Alana Thornberg wrote:

<snip>
>I am trying to figure out how to decrease our bounce rate.
<snip>
>If you have an extra moment to navigate our site and have any ideas, I
>would greatly appreciate it.
>http://www.usadentaldirectory.com
>I appreciate and comments or help you could give me.


I checked out your website. Noticed a few things that could be improved
that are causing confusion.

Most important: With your City/State dentist lookup, the first thing I did
was enter my City, (Omaha) and click "Search" . When I did this, I got
back a "No Results Found" message. This is probably causing a lot of
people to give up on the first try - they enter their city, and nothing
comes back. What they don't realize, and what isn't made clear on the search
form, is that you MUST also enter the STATE, as well as the city, to get the
results back. People are probably assuming your software is smart enough to
figure out what state Chicago or Omaha is in, which it doesn't. What I
recommend is that the lookup be done on CITY alone first, and if more than
ONE city is in your table with the same name (for example, Long Beach, NY
and Long Beach, CA), that you THEN prompt them to enter a state.

Also, the ZIP SEARCH produces disappointing results, because it narrows the
results down to just that zip. Although there were about 15 dentists listed
in Omaha, only ONE appeared under the zip search for 68134.
I recommend listing all dentists exactly in ZIP 68134, followed by all
dentists in the CITY that the zip is closest to. If a dentist does happen
to located EXACTLY within that zip code, your search returns zero results,
which is disappointing a lot of people.

One more thing - even if your search is working, one minute is all it takes
to find the dentist. Why do you expect that they will spend more time on
your site than it takes them to find the information they are looking for
???
================================
Philip Kaufman, Webmaster
cyberadvan1_at_netzero.com
================================
www.DiscoverYourState.com
Top Stocks Ranking List - SP500
================================





Received on Fri Apr 11 2003 - 08:33:10 CDT