Little Changes Made a Big Difference
I returned to WA this week with determination and new insights. I also saw some really astounding improvements in my analytics during this time.
I worked full time all week-- 8-12 hours per day -- remininding myself how to edit and make changes and re-learning some basic html to "force" my WYSIWYG window to look the way I thought I told it to look. I removed old, outdated ads and links. I re-worked my Home page so that people who did not find me through a specific keyword search would, hopefully, be "hooked." I removed the right side-bar ads, planning to put ads into the text instead to maximize the site's effectiveness on mobile devices. And the biggest change I made? I changed the color scheme from all earthen-brown colors with a linen fabric background to a clean, fresh light teal. It's simpler, fresher, cleaner, happier... and it is working for me.
Although it's been almost 2 years since I worked on the site, never advertised, haven't kept up with the mailing list, etc., I still regularly get 25 views per day just from keyword searches. Bounce rate averages 94%, though, and people don't stick around. In one week of work I saw a drastic change. Yesterday, I only had 30 views. But I had a 70% bounce rate, with some people staying on the site for 20 minutes or more to read multiple pages! This increase in page depth and visit duration has to be from the color changes and/or removal of the sidebar ads, because the majority of these viewers did not land on the Home page where I made all my other changes.
I'll be cleaning up all the rest of the pages I have already written. They need some serious work! I spent the past year teaching High School English, and realized that I don't practice what I preach. I published a lot of those articles without proofreading first, and now their mistakes leap out and slap me in the face.
I have exciting new ideas, a new Amazon affiliation, and am accruing a collection of photos to use in future writing. My niche has no limits-- I can write about yarn and paper and sheep and ranchers and knitters and natural dyes, and never leave the boundaries of my niche or be competing with established sites like Ravelry.
I'll let you know if these big changes also start changing my conversion rates. So far, nothing on that front. But now I've got confidence that I can make this work!
Write on!
--Kelley
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