Website traffic rebounds spring semester

It's hard to tease out what might be happening to app traffic. Some possibilities:
• theorion.com works better on mobile devices than it did a couple of years ago, so viewers going to the website
• the staff did a better job of sending push notices from the app early on, which brought more people to the platform
• early adapters who were enthusiastic users have now graduated and don't use the app
• adding new users isn't keeping up with the loss of old users
• the recent redesign isn't as easy to use or useful as the original.

Whatever the reason, it would be a good idea to take a close look at the app to see how it could be improved and promoted next year.

Web traffic as a whole lacks the big viral stories that pushed traffic so high last spring. You can't dictate breaking news, which is usually the big driver of Orion views, but stepping up the paper's social media game (poor all semester) would be one way to drive more traffic.

This semester's bounce rate -- the percentage of visitors who view a single website page and then navigate away from the site -- got slightly worse. They were much worse than last spring but vastly better than Spring 2016.

Spring 2018 - 28.88 percent
Fall 2017 -  25.25 percent
Spring 2017 - 18.13 percent
Spring 2016 -- 80.41 percent

How does that compare to other news sites?

According to conversionvoodoo.com, a blog that focuses on web traffic strategies, theorion.com is doing an outstanding job of keeping viewers once they navigate to the website compared to other news sites. I have no idea what "minimum bounce rate" means. Maybe it's what the best sites report.

This includes websites that have an affiliate news station and those simply reporting news online.

• Minimum Bounce Rate – 25%

• Maximum Bounce Rate – 81.4%

• Average Bounce Rate – 55.56%

So, why do news and media sites have such high bounce rates? Many people will take a look at the headlines, decide they don’t want or need to look any further, and leave the page. To lower the bounce rates on these pages, you need to ensure that your headlines are interesting and will pull the reader into the story.

Here's a more detailed discussion about bounce rates on news sites and what to keep in mind when you compare numbers.