Why does my website have high bounce rate?

[SweetWaterr]

Thats not me.

127.0.0.1 is a loopback ip, so probably just part of hotjar. It's basically serverside action rather than a user.

I've only tested on my phone, which I assume a majority of your traffic is from?

That's not part of hotjar. I see other recordings just fine, with correct addresses. As opposed to that one which had no js/css activated. Strange user then.

My traffic is actually 60% desktop. But I meant Chrome on mobile. Because I know there are some mobile browsers that want to download the entire movie before skipping ahead, since the meta-data info for some mp4s is at the end of the movie. But that doesn't happen to often, and not with all the browsers.

But as we speak I'm implementing statistics on how much buffering do users experience, and I'll see what I can do, and if it's really an edge case that you experience or it's the norm.

 

[Dark Sky]

That's not part of hotjar. I see other recordings just fine, with correct addresses. As opposed to that one which had no js/css activated. Strange user then.

My traffic is actually 60% desktop. But I meant Chrome on mobile. Because I know there are some mobile browsers that want to download the entire movie before skipping ahead, since the meta-data info for some mp4s is at the end of the movie. But that doesn't happen to often, and not with all the browsers.

But as we speak I'm implementing statistics on how much buffering do users experience, and I'll see what I can do, and if it's really an edge case that you experience or it's the norm.

The 127.0.0.1 address will never come from an outside network, it's a loopback address. Any packets that come from 127.0.0.1 on an outside network are discarded by the router for network security. Applications typically use 127.0.0.1 for local testing, which is why I assumed it was from hotjar itself. It's definetly not an outside user.

Either someone is logged on the server and doing it, or it's something to do with hotjar.

Yeah I only use chrome on my Samsung, all other movie sites work fine on my phone.

It works fine on my desktop chrome, so just mobile issue I assume. You'll have to do some testing on it.

 

[SweetWaterr]

The 127.0.0.1 address will never come from an outside network, it's a loopback address. Any packets that come from 127.0.0.1 on an outside network are discarded by the router for network security. Applications typically use 127.0.0.1 for local testing, which is why I assumed it was from hotjar itself. It's definetly not an outside user.

Either someone is logged on the server and doing it, or it's something to do with hotjar.

Yeah I only use chrome on my Samsung, all other movie sites work fine on my phone.

It works fine on my desktop chrome, so just mobile issue I assume. You'll have to do some testing on it.

Should I optimize it for mobile? Do people watch movies on mobile?

 

[Dark Sky]

Should I optimize it for mobile? Do people watch movies on mobile?

Ofcourse mate, I watch movies on my mobile, TV screen in bed is just uncomfy, but with a mobile I can switch positions and it doesn't affect my viewing angle. My girlfriend also watches movies on her mobile. It's a big thing. Also tablets, they are big for watching movies on.

I can't actually remember the last time I watched a movie on my desktop, it's just so uncomfortable to watch a movie in a computer chair.

 

[SweetWaterr]

Ofcourse mate, I watch movies on my mobile, TV screen in bed is just uncomfy, but with a mobile I can switch positions and it doesn't affect my viewing angle. My girlfriend also watches movies on her mobile. It's a big thing. Also tablets, they are big for watching movies on.

I can't actually remember the last time I watched a movie on my desktop, it's just so uncomfortable to watch a movie in a computer chair.

Ok, so I've spent hours watching what users are doing. I've really improved buffering now and I collect some more statistics about performance.
On mobile, here is what the usual user does:
https://insights.hotjar.com/r?site=2173165&recording=4661121500

In short, he stares at the site, he plays a movie (clearly not really interested in watching), the movie is playing just fine (you can see the timer), and he browses around while the movie is playing. After 3 mins he's out.

And apart from few other exceptions (that mainly don't find the movie they're looking for - and that bounce I can understand), that video ^^ where nothing happens represents the majority of use cases.

Possible explanations?

 

[Dark Sky]

Ok, so I've spent hours watching what users are doing. I've really improved buffering now and I collect some more statistics about performance.
On mobile, here is what the usual user does:
https://insights.hotjar.com/r?site=2173165&recording=4661121500

In short, he stares at the site, he plays a movie (clearly not really interested in watching), the movie is playing just fine (you can see the timer), and he browses around while the movie is playing. After 3 mins he's out.

And apart from few other exceptions (that mainly don't find the movie they're looking for - and that bounce I can understand), that video ^^ where nothing happens represents the majority of use cases.

Possible explanations?

I can't watch that as I'm unauthorized.

"In short, he stares at the site, he plays a movie (clearly not really interested in watching), the movie is playing just fine (you can see the timer), and he browses around while the movie is playing. After 3 mins he's out."

I may be wrong, but that seems like untargeted traffic, I.E they didn't come to your site to watch a specific movie, they are just seeing what movies you have. I'd really look into what your marketing team are doing, anyone can drive low quality traffic, but a good marketing team will drive good traffic, e.g show posts with specific links to a movie, so anyone who clicks that social media post is expecting the movie they want to watch.

Your buffering issue is a lot better now, that should help a lot, it only takes around 5-6 seconds for me, however keep in mind that I have fibre optic in a fast area, so I can't test from a users perspective who doesn't have fibre optic.

 

[Dilipkumar01]

May be your bounce rate is high due to the third party embed player

 

[SweetWaterr]

I can't watch that as I'm unauthorized.

"In short, he stares at the site, he plays a movie (clearly not really interested in watching), the movie is playing just fine (you can see the timer), and he browses around while the movie is playing. After 3 mins he's out."

I may be wrong, but that seems like untargeted traffic, I.E they didn't come to your site to watch a specific movie, they are just seeing what movies you have. I'd really look into what your marketing team are doing, anyone can drive low quality traffic, but a good marketing team will drive good traffic, e.g show posts with specific links to a movie, so anyone who clicks that social media post is expecting the movie they want to watch.

Your buffering issue is a lot better now, that should help a lot, it only takes around 5-6 seconds for me, however keep in mind that I have fibre optic in a fast area, so I can't test from a users perspective who doesn't have fibre optic.

Fiber optic or not, there is a rate limitation of 2MB/s server side to avoid overloads. That should be more than enough to fluently watch a movie. Unfortunately I can't help those with less connectivity than that, as I don't support lowering the quality for increased speed, but I believe there aren't many needs for that nowadays.

I also discovered that due to the format of my movies, playing is (sometimes) not supported on Safari and Firefox. That represents around 20% of my traffic. I can't do anything about that unfortunately. There's no quick way around it, unless I re-encode 100TB of videos. So for now I'm going to show a message recommending Chrome or Edge (any OS). That's ugly i suppose.

And yes, I confirmed with my marketing: it's totally untargeted traffic.

I guess then the question is: do you know a good available marketing guy?

May be your bounce rate is high due to the third party embed player

It's not 3rd party, it's an in house implementation of VideoJs. But you probably mean that the player is unfriendly or something?

 

[HustleTong]

- Optimize page speed with aid of plugins like WProcket
- Compress images where possible
- Disable pop-unders
- Check if the content structure is flawed

 

[SweetWaterr]

- Optimize page speed with aid of plugins like WProcket
- Compress images where possible
- Disable pop-unders
- Check if the content structure is flawed

- So you feel the website is slow? (btw, this is not a wordpress site, so unfortunately i can't use WPRocket)
- All images are from Tmdb - can't really do much there (the same as my competitors)
- I have no popunders (my competitors have and they seem to be good with bounce rating)
- How do know if my structure is flawed or optimal? How can I measure that? (it's mainly more or less the same as my competitors I believe)

I mean, thanks, but those are quite generic nice to have things, but i'm not sure my bounce rate is fully related to them.

 

[Rikabu]

Your site does not seem like a traditional streaming site, the main reason for the high bounce rate (my point of view)

What's up with that magazine type Homepage, get rid of those big posters and try to showcase familiar and trending movies n series

Remove those blog-post columns (on everypage)

Why cast pictures below movie player, get rid of those

Remove review section and instead add a comment section

Remove about category from the menu, just add movies n TV series

Showcase many related movies by clustering into small images, right now the current thumbnail is too large to showcase most movies in a single page

 

[SweetWaterr]

Your site does not seem like a traditional streaming site, the main reason for the high bounce rate (my point of view)

What's up with that magazine type Homepage, get rid of those big posters and try to showcase familiar and trending movies n series

Remove those blog-post columns (on everypage)

Why cast pictures below movie player, get rid of those

Remove review section and instead add a comment section

Remove about category from the menu, just add movies n TV series

Showcase many related movies by clustering into small images, right now the current thumbnail is too large to showcase most movies in a single page

So you find it difficult to navigate through the website?
Because what I see from the users that actually stay is that they click a lot on those select few items that are there, since there's less choice paralysis effect.

Are those your suppositions or do you have arguments? E.g., why exactly it's not a good practice to have blog posts, why it's not ok to show pictures of actors, etc..? Those are actually things people click on, according to my recent hotmap, so I'm curious what's the downside?

And if I remove all those things I will have empty pages, only with video players. That will look bad, wouldn't it?

 

[Rikabu]

So you find it difficult to navigate through the website?
Because what I see from the users that actually stay is that they click a lot on those select few items that are there, since there's less choice paralysis effect.

Are those your suppositions or do you have arguments? E.g., why exactly it's not a good practice to have blog posts, why it's not ok to show pictures of actors, etc..? Those are actually things people click on, according to my recent hotmap, so I'm curious what's the downside?

And if I remove all those things I will have empty pages, only with video players. That will look bad, wouldn't it?

I'm not saying it is difficult to navigate but typically it is not looking like a streaming site, most streaming sites try to showcase their collection on the Homepage, but yours not

users may click on those but what is the reason for that, if a user clicks on the cast picture it should show his/her movies but your cast row shows just the picture, so no use in that

users visit your website to watch movies, not to read your blog post and how your landing page looks empty, just list random, trending, popular movies below the player, then add comment section and you can come up with other things

Just saw these sites how they showcase their movies, yesmovies.ag, flixtor.one, fmovies.sc, gomovie.ms, there are too many sites to get inspired

 

[SweetWaterr]

I'm not saying it is difficult to navigate but typically it is not looking like a streaming site, most streaming sites try to showcase their collection on the Homepage, but yours not

users may click on those but what is the reason for that, if a user clicks on the cast picture it should show his/her movies but your cast row shows just the picture, so no use in that

users visit your website to watch movies, not to read your blog post and how your landing page looks empty, just list random, trending, popular movies below the player, then add comment section and you can come up with other things

Just saw these sites how they showcase their movies, yesmovies.ag, flixtor.one, fmovies.sc, gomovie.ms, there are too many sites to get inspired

Those are quite big changes. It means doing a new site.
I will do those if I will see somebody else here agreeing.

 

[Rikabu]

Those are quite big changes. It means doing a new site.
I will do those if I will see somebody else here agreeing.

Basically, it is not a big change

 

[Cynthia Stevens]

The same thing happened few months ago for one of my websites. I did all the keyword research and created content but the bouncing rate was so high. I had to keep adding other options that visitors would actually click that makes them stay. Also add more valuable content. Afterall, being great at SEO isn't going to help here. Make sure to give something very useful to the audience through the website.

 

[SweetWaterr]

Basically, it is not a big change

It is. It's a total transformation to fmovies.to style

The same thing happened few months ago for one of my websites. I did all the keyword research and created content but the bouncing rate was so high. I had to keep adding other options that visitors would actually click that makes them stay. Also add more valuable content. Afterall, being great at SEO isn't going to help here. Make sure to give something very useful to the audience through the website.

And how did you find out what are the options that visitors would actually click and makes them stay?