Oh that evil bounce rate, always fighting to improve it! Yesterday, I changed the template of my other blog for a much more professional template and I must say I’m impressed. I managed to improve my bounce rate by 10% and I like it. That improvement is certainly not due to returning visitors exploring the new website, because I get a lot more organic traffic coming from search engines than returning visitors. For that reason, I don’t think they have a huge impact, they get diluted in the organic traffic a lot. This is just a great example of how a template can change a lot of things for a blog.

What’s so special with the template?

Nothing, really. It’s just damn more professional and better looking! I got rid of all the non essential stuff and this new template gives a lot more place to what really matters: the content. It’s funny how I haven’t even tweaked the template to improve the bounce rate. Just by being clean, it does the job. I certainly included the related posts plugin which helps a lot I presume but there is still a lot that can be made to make it a lot more a ‘bounce rate killer’.

Should you change too?

Maybe. You know, a blog goes through a lot of different phases before becoming well established and an awesome template won’t help you be that blog if you don’t focus on the content. You see, the new theme I used is the third one for the blog I’m talking about and I can say the first theme was looking extremely average. One day, I noticed I was able to get a little 100-200 uniques a day with that crappy template so I decided to improve it. I just changed the colors, a little bit of the look and feel and also designed a custom logo. I was actually extremely satisfied at the time and that partially helped me reach the 200-500 uniques a day mark just because it was a little unique and more professional. So now, this is my third theme move and hoping to get to a constant 1000+ uniques a day. I reach it on lucky days, but I’d like to reach it on a consistent basis. So should you change? Well, it depends where you are in your blog life. If you have some spare time or money and feel like your blog is due for a change, then go for it, but if you still like your template the way it is and don’t feel that changing it will help you, then don’t do it.

In fact, I’d much ratter tweak a template to its limit before changing it. When you feel you have reached the absolute limit and there’s no way you can monetize any further, improve your bounce rate or get more traffic, then you are due for a change!

It’s just a matter of credibility

In the end, having a unique and professional blog design is only a matter of getting some credibility. People will tend to respect you more if your website looks elegant and that will surely help you to establish yourself as an authority in your niche. You know, life is all about credibility…