Do Pages with questions as title receive more clicks (Part 1)

There exists a very contended view that, If you write an article with a question as its headline or title, it will receive more clicks and the webpage as a whole would be more successful. 

codemakit in the past has published material on improving the readership of any blog like, using specific publishing schedule, controlling Spam, creating apps, organising your blog content etc.

Though some are of the opinion that it plays no part in determining the popularity of an article. However, Online marketing experts disagree, Several studies claim an increase of 100% (Though there are several more probable methods of doubling your website traffic) traffic to the website, i.e. "Double Your Traffic!", some claim a modest 10% increase.

The truth isn't inaccessible, its just hidden. Gregory Ciotti, who oversees marketing at Help Scout and is the founder at Sparring Mind, believes, there exists an information Gap Theory based on a paper by George Loewenstein, on "The psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation" 

The Online marketing geniuses often claim that once a person glances on the headline, She/he frames their question as per the one displayed. For example, You need to know how to plant a eucalyptus tree in your backyard. You put the search term as "Plant a big eucalyptus tree". Suppose you stumble upon the headline, "How do you plant a large tree", though the queries are different enough, you must understand that the person finds it irresistible not to merge the two and experience that Aha! moment where you feel "That is just the damn thing I was searching for! How cool is that, I must check this out!"

Codemakit Website Research performed a study and analyzed Web Pages to answer this question. Since the study can prove to be too technical for some, It has been included in the second part of the article.

In the study, We took 197 Web Pages and collected just two information from them, Their number of Page views and the number of days they had been public on the web. We divided the complete set into three parts. 

1. One was the Greater ones or the ones that performed really great. 
2. Second was the lesser ones, i.e. those that did not perform up to the mark. 
3. Third set consisted of those which contained questions as their headlines. 

You can take a look at part II of the article if you want to know how did we divide the articles/blog posts into good and bad (complete Data Set containing information in pdf format for is available for perusal here). Once that was achieved, We analyzed and are now presenting our findings. 

Read carefully, The Web Pages which performed really good had 31% of them as questions. However, The ones that performed really bad had 21% as questions. In short your webpage has 50% more chances of performing good if it has a question as its title/ headline. 

For more information on the study you can visit the part II of the series. If you still have doubts or would like to share your own story, comment below, we'll be happy to answer.

But, Don't you wanna know how did we arrive at this conclusion?

Check out the second part of the series. 

Also, tell us how much better did your website perform?

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How did a sentence reduce Spam comments by half

Comments are by far the most important and the most useful social media engagement technique used in blogs. A comment has the ability to spark a discussion and give a new meaning altogether to the article. 

A comment can motivate the author and can also act as a critic thereby controlling the quality of the articles proceeding. But there is a downside to commenting scenario. Most blogs do not allow anonymous commenting; this is because of the extra time and energy they will have to spend in moderating the comments if they allow. So they ask the reader to login or register with the website to post a comment. Or they would ask the visitor to leave their email id, which is again no cool for the reader. A casual reader who wants to show his appreciation for the exemplary work done by the author, cannot do so if he/she is pestered by the site before leaving a comment. True comment is always extempore. 

An ideal situation is that the reader goes through the complete article and reaches the end. After reading the article he is tempted to post a comment. He just writes it and posts it. The comment is published and the user is happy. Such is the case with anonymous posting.

The Case Study,

The following is a case study on how a simple method was enough to stop spammers and give more readers to the blog as a side effect.

Codemakit had some problems in the past regarding lower comments. As is evident, low or no comments give ‘low quality’ jibes to the readers. So to increase the comments and increase the social interaction at the website, codemakit started anonymous comment. In short anyone who knew how to read and write could write just about anything in the comment box.

The First Day
The first day, codemakit received 24 comments all of which were basically spam. The number reached 57 on the third day and was not stopping. The only thing standing between a spam comment and unsuspecting readers was the blogger’s comment filter which did its best in keeping spammers at bay.

It was sufficiently clear, why websites do not keep anonymous comments. It was becoming simply impossible to keep up with such large numbers. The process of comment moderation took more than an hour daily, which ate up the time required in the maintenance of the website. Each and every comment had to be read properly before coming to any conclusion.

Some were straightaway spam which could not be filtered by blogger’s systems whereas some were cloaked up pretty good and some were even funny. But there was a plus side, the true or legitimate comments increased to five on the third day.

The Solution

As the days crept on, it was becoming increasingly difficult to moderate comments in such huge numbers. From SEO’s perspective, if a particular article has a PageRank of suppose 3, then this will be distributed to each and every link hosted on the page. So in short codemakit was leaking PageRank to the hyperlinks in the comments. 

One solution to the SEO problem was to hire personnel for filtering spam, which was expensive. Also you cannot post an ad on a newspaper or a website saying, "Wanted, an enthusiastic and intelligent individual for sorting spam at my petty little blog! I'll pay you in installments :-)"

Solution Two, Another solution was to hire a freelancer, which was too convoluted solution for such a simple problem. The blog at that time was a one person project which obviously didn't need another person just to sort spams.

Solution Three, Last solution was attaching a nofollow attribute to the complete comments section, thereby taking off the load of moderating by the author

The third solution was finally implemented. So the SEO problem was resolved (i.e. the rankings of the website will not be affected due to the low quality links in the comments section. But another problem on the softer side was too large to be overlooked. What will happen to the image of the blog when readers see fifteen to twenty comments, most of which are spam? This will affect the image of webmaster and the blog. 

The Process

So the second problem which floated was that comment moderation was still needed. One unique solution was to display a custom message instead of the default ‘Thanks for your comments’, another message was planned thinking if spammers are warned that their tactics will not work here, may be they'll stop.

‘Spammers Kindly remember, any hyperlink in the comments will not be indexed by search Engines because of NoFollow attribute. http://www.codemakit.com/2013/01/add-nofollow-to-your-blog-comments.html’

The message was specially crafted keeping in mind the mentality of spammers. Since blogger does not allow any hyperlink in the message section.

The URL of the methodology of adding NoFollow attribute was also added. Another important thing included in the particular webpage was a proof that Nofollow was added to the comments section with the help of a Firefox add-on.

The Results

It was thought that spammers who once add a spam comment would be greeted with the particular message and this would deter them from adding any more comments. But, the particular solution did more than what was expected.

The comments reduced to just the legitimate ones and since the message was displayed, there was not a single spam comment on the webpage. The Number of true or legitimate comments actually increased and so did the total number of comments.

Another side effect of the message being displayed was an unusual increase in the visitors of the website. It is not wrong to say that nearly each and every visitor of the NoFollow Webpage within 3 to 4 days were all spammers. The webpage which received 200 visitors in 15 days received 2300 visitors in just 2 days.

The following are the screenshots of the anomalies observed on the site.

The particular article on adding a NoFollow attribute became famous overnight, garnering 3075 followers in just 3 days.

It even surpassed the previous most read articles like remove youtube logo from embedded videos and Animated Flash Tag Cloud or even the article on Faults in your SEO and how to rectify it.

The peak observed was pretty amazing as the site had never encountered such amount of traffic before. The following is a screenshot from blogger dashboard.

So in a nutshell the complete procedure did more good than expected and can be used by webmasters for their respective websites.

 Try this and post your anonymous comments. I'm sure we'll be thrilled to receive your results.

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Why is it wrong to start a "popular at the moment" blog?

Bloggers are of many types, Some are the argumentative type and some are stickers, but recently one more type of blogger has crept up. The opportunist Blogger. Such people are not a rare sight on the web nowadays. 

Their creations are not hard to miss. Even you might have seen some of their creations. Okay lets see, a blog on the recent chess tournament, or on certain hot political topics, or on current trends, infamous actors, musicians, or famous personalities, award functions, high profile parties and even viral videos.

The opportunist blogger seems to find the most intriguing and the most happening idea at present and converts it into a highly talked about website with a lot of agglomerated content from different sources. One more thing worth noting about opportunist blogger is that their websites might, at one point of time, be swarming with visitors, filled with seemingly unending comments and discussions. Little do people know the PERILS OF BEING AN OPPORTUNISTIC BLOGGER!!

The Process

Let us first see the process of Opportunistic blogging. A person (The opportunistic Blogger) sees a trending topic. Lots of users discuss about the topic and forums are filled up with discussions on why one side is better than the other. The blogger takes up the topic, Finds and collects as much information as he/she could and spends the rest of the day churning the information.He then spends the rest of two days preparing the blog and publishing the information so produced. Then it is just simple work of maintaining the blog with small pieces of gossip that he finds in the foreseeable future. He does not care for a blog posting schedule, or what would happen if he stops the posts, just because he/she has the content, he thinks he can enslave the search engines and control the flow of visitors.

The Brighter Side

Let us see the bright side of Opportunistic Blogging, The person receives a lot of visitors during the time the trend is hot. The sudden surge of visitors often surpass the number of visitors a well to do blog manages to sustain. The blog becomes one of the most talked topics on the web (Of-course after the phenomenon it was made on). The blog manages to gain visitors in six digits with bounce rate as low as 25%. It garners back-links from the most respectable of websites and gains the trust of most cautious of webmasters.

After the advantages, I bet you must be feeling nauseated and green with envy, I felt it myself as we spent hours working on topics churning concepts, creating beautiful and marketable designs, but he takes all the credit? Why? 

The Dark Side

Webmasters, control your heat, cause here comes a string of disadvantages. A popular at the moment blog as the name suggests, is just popular at the moment. There comes a time when the water dries off and the merriment comes to an end. Since the popularity has been diminished why would someone in their right mind would want to come at such a blog.

In simple words, the blog would have lost nearly all his visitors. Bounce rates would first increase of-course (As people would come to revive a dying trend but would return due to lack of content) but then the values wouldn't matter. Pages per visit would decrease to 1 or zero and then the blog (after a long struggle) could have said to finally rest in peace. What use would such a blog cater, when the fame is short-lived? 

"What is glory if not eternal?"

The missed call

How ever there are moments in internet history when a blogger does not have the time to capitalize on the situation. This situation can be known as the "missed peak" situation. This is because by the time, blog is prepared and made, peak has ready passed, public interest has already reduced. It is worth noting that sometimes blogger do gain some advantage from the peak by forecasting the peak in advance, but that is not common and hence cannot be replicated by most.

Consider the case of a very popular Indian Song "Kolaveri Di", The song was released two weeks prior to its actual release and became a hit instantly. Take a look at the graph from Google trends. It is conspicuous from the graph that it was next to impossible for a regular blogger to capitalize on the situation. A potato blogger however, would obviously miss the peak.

So, when should you start a popular at the moment blog? When you are looking at a trend which you know would die. When you are looking for some quick money and quicker fame. Now, when you decide and know the risks, you can go an buy a domain for 3 months, 6 if you're optimistic and just crack-on.

Top Image Credit VR Marketing Blog

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The dangers of Trading an Article for a Service

“If you’re good at something, never do it for free”, Joker, The Dark Knight Rises.

Even you would agree that the dialogue is super cheesy. Fortunately the meaning holds perfectly true for current blogging atmosphere.  Take examples of bloggers, the one of the things they’re good at is writing, so the obvious question, Why not use the skills and get something done for yourself. 

Usually bloggers benefit from their writing skills through advertisements. But new concept dictates the use of this indispensable skill as a barter system. In simple words, “You do something for me and I’ll write an article for you”.

The same was true until an unnamed blogger decided to barter his services for something he wanted. So he went in search for the same and one day found a suitable firm which was ready to provide a service unless and until he agreed to write an article for the firm.

What went Wrong?

But little did he know about THE PERILS OF TRADING AN ARTICLE FOR A SERVICE. Here is an email thread between the firm and the unnamed blogger, The names of the entities have been changed to protect identity. Find the Email Thread about Sam and Sue here.

How did it go wrong?

Let us discuss what went wrong and how could it be rectified. The major reason why such arrangements fail is because; neither party is willing to work with full efficiency in the beginning. This is because there exists no monetary transaction. This was the precise reason why barter system failed in history. For that failure the reason was you cannot equate fixing a window and a sack of rice. Similarly you cannot equate an article and a service unless there is professionalism in both the parties. What do I mean by professionalism? 

Professionalism in any task is shunning the informal way of working and adopting a mean result oriented approach towards things. It the main reason why corporates thrive and small businesses do not. 

How could it be Rectified?

So how do you get into professionalism? 

Easy, you make sure that you follow the following points.

Before agreeing to work

1. This is not a deal, neither the party is working for free, nor are you. It is best if you could determine the boundaries of your relationship, i.e.. What you are planning to do and what you are expecting the party to do.
2. It is better to create a proposal document (just one page) stating the responsibilities you and the party are going to undertake. Sign the document and send them the signed copy asking them to sign on the document. When both have consent for the jobs to perform on a paper, both the parties will have an incentive to complete the job in the best way possible. Also a signature would save you from legal difficulties afterwards (If they arise)
3. Preserve the email threads between the parties
4. Always set a deadline for the job to be completed. Break the job into parts. And include penalties in the proposal document if a part of the work is not completed within the stipulated deadline.
5. Also work out about the license of the final product, you can look at some articles on creative commons or thy types of licenses you can use.

On English and communication

1. You must write proper English. People won’t take you seriously if you write like a kindergarten student.
2. You write complete sentences and no abbreviations unless absolutely required. Remember you’re writing an email and there is a difference between email and a text.
3. Try and keep informalities out of the equation. This is a business deal and not a social network.

After and during the work

1. Periodically inform about the progress of the work. To keep things simple, try and give the progress report in a tabulated sheet at the end of the week.
2. Once the job is completed inform about it and ask about their portion of the work.
3. Always reply to a mail, a bucket full of misunderstandings can be avoided if you just reply or acknowledge
4. If you have made the proposal document, after completion of the works from both the parties, drop an email stating that the agreement has been carried on in the desired way and tell them it was a pleasure working with them.

Show your availability for future jobs if you genuinely find the party to be a delight.

Front image credit HDW

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An Hilarious Interview with Reza Farazmand of Poorly Drawn Lines

Today we have amongst us, a very unique professional. Unique not by the website, but by the work. Ofcourse he belongs to the class of creative individuals who seek an outlet through a web portal, but, he isn't one of the bland insensitive bloggers we see now. Yes, He is different. If a picture can say a thousand words, meet the man who writes 6000 words a week. 

The name Reza Farazmand, always creeps up in my mind whenever I think of comics. My brother and I have been following a ritual. Every sunday we would sit infront of the computer screens and browse through comics which included Ragestache, xplosm, pearls before swine and ofcourse poorly drawn lines. We would always start with pdl because we wanted our happy hour to start with a bang. So imagine my delight on getting a reply from Reza aggreeing for an email interview.

I wouldn't start with an introduction to our guest, as you would figure that out from my questions itself.

An Introduction to our Guest

Mohit: Tell us about yourself, I gather you were a student at UCSD, who used to publish comic strips in the Campus magazine. How did it grow to an online comic giant with a page-rank of 4?

Reza: I started publishing Poorly Drawn Lines as a weekly comic strip in the UCSD Guardian my freshman year. At the time I was beginning to read a few webcomics, and I realized I could reach a wider audience if I published PDL online as well. So my friend built me a website and PDL became a webcomic. I didn’t take it very seriously until after I graduated and started drawing three comics a week on a regular schedule. From there the site slowly gained a small readership, and it’s been growing ever since.

Mohit: It must have been more than 5 and half years since you started the website. How did you and the website change during these years.

Reza: My drawing and writing styles have both changed quite a bit compared to five years ago, or even just one year ago. I’ve found a lot of new influences and inspiration in that time, whether it’s my surroundings, my social life, or discovering other artists. I aim to keep growing in that way. 

The site itself got a brand new design a couple years ago. It also aims to keep growing, but it’s happy with the way it looks right now.

On Work

Mohit: Tell us about your process of comic creation. How do you do it? And what is the thought process when you start with a comic?

Reza: I draw everything with pencil and paper first. Then I ink the lines, scan the whole thing, and add the color in Photoshop. I use a graphics tablet for that part. The thought process is usually me chuckling at silly ideas with a serious look on my face until I land on something I like. It’s the most serious chuckling face you’ve ever seen. 

Mohit: You have invested in advertising as well as online merchendising, Which of them contributes to a better part of your earnings?

Reza: Advertising currently outpaces my merchandise earnings, but the two are slowly growing more equal as merch sales pick up. 

Mohit: How do you decide what strip should be added to the store? Do you take custom Orders?

Reza: I take the most popular comics and turn them into prints. That doesn't always work, though. Sometimes a comic will perform really well online, but people aren't necessarily interested in owning a physical copy of it. I'd like to be able to take custom orders, but at the moment I use a print shop that requires a base number of prints per order, so I need to make sure they'll sell before I have them made.

On Website

Mohit: Your initial website was created by Marco Segreto in 2008 then you moved to Danny Walcoff in 2011. What do you look in a Web Designer/Developer?

Reza: Both of those guys are close friends of mine who offered to design the site. Marco built PDL 1.0 when we were in college, and Danny put together the site you see now. So I guess what I look for in a developer is someone I went to high school with.

Mohit: For a comic website, search Engines like Google do not have a system to determine what is in an image however hilarious or popular. Blogs on the other hand are filled with text that give a lot to process and hence determine a website's worth. Doesn't it bother you?

Reza: I’m glad to have a site that doesn’t rely too heavily on search ranking or keywords. It’s cool to see how it’s grown just from people sharing it with their friends. 

Final Words

Mohit: Lastly, what advice would you give to budding enthusiasts?

Reza: Draw every day, write every day, and start building your web presence. There are so many avenues to get your work in front of people right now. This is an amazing time for creators.

Note 1. to the readers, the comic strips above this point are the recent favorites of Reza Himself. But, now its time for MY favorite comic strip. This one left me laughing on the floor, clutching my stomach with tears in my eyes.

Note 2. I am not including this comic to increase the length of my article. You would believe me when you reach the end.

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Readers have obviously visited PDL scores of times, but for the few and new, you can visit PoorlyDrawnLines to view some of the most ingenious creations of Reza.

If you need to get in touch with him or need regular updates from PDL, You can follow him at his twitter page, like his page at facebook or see the latest comics at tumbler.

That's all for today. Readers, If you have a question to ask our Guest, Kindly drop it in the comment box and we'll get it across.

Further

Codemakit had also conducted a really amusing interview with renowned cartoonist Chris McCoy of Safely Endangered recently. Be sure to check it out too.

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Method to Double your Visitors with Proof

The web is filled with articles to double your website visitors. Every now and then a new blog post comes up claiming that it has found out the golden method to double the existing visitors on your blog. The truth is, there is no magical sure-shot way of increasing visitors, where you can finger some buttons, chant a magical hymn and behold! Your site is swarming with visitors!

So how do people manage to get millions of views per month? And how do they claim to have a bounce rate of less than 40%? The answer lies in simple methods and techniques that most people do use, but not properly. Here you will be presented with a method to double your visitors. This is no banal post with a list of thinks you should do for higher pagerank or a list of faults in your SEO practices. This is based on a simple mechanical technique, i.e. Smooth posting or regular posting with regular intervals. You will also be presented with proof that the technique works and sometimes even more than you expected.

The Method/Technique

The method is simple enough. You have a habit of posting an article whenever and wherever you like, But that will have to stop. You are no longer a master of your free will, but a slave of Google algorithm and your visitors. You will have to post regularly and punctually. The first step includes, Setting a timetable for your blog posts. Complete timetable for different type of bloggers is discussed in previous post.

Learn More at a previous article on time schedule for the Ideal Blog based on your need.

One that should not be altered at any cost. Following are some examples for posting frequency based on the expected growth of your blog from a previous article on when you should post an article on your Blog.

Here are the results from Blog X where such technique was applied. 

Before the technique was applied, the posting frequency was erratic, the blog sometimes witnessed a posting spree when 3 posts were published in a day and sometimes witnessed a draught where not a single post was published in a week. This led to a really erratic visitor statistics, which reached 200 per day in good times and wouldn’t even reach 50 per day in draught. Here are some statistics for the blog 

Before Applying the method,

The total visitors in a month barely reached 4,000. 
Page views per visit was 1.13
0.47 seconds was the average visitor duration
Bounce rate was 90.13

As per the ideal blog posting schedule explained in a previous article at codemakit, Case III from the ideal Blog posting table was applied on the blog. According to the contents of the particular case, the blogger is supposed to post an article 3 times a week, following a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule.
As per another article on codemakit referring to the ideal blog posting time for a blog, the blog posting was scheduled at 4:30am.

After the Application

The following are the statistics for the blog after applying the method for about 20 days.

The total visitors in a month reached to a whopping 12,000
Page views per visit increased to 1.75
The average visitor duration was 2.20 seconds
Bounce rate came down to 79

Another change was observed in the social media. The Facebook page of the blog too witnessed a phenomenal increase in the audience. However the changes took place in about 20 days after employing the schedule. As is evident from the screenshot below, the Facebook audience increased two folds.

Technique to Social Media

To improve Facebook scenario, another technique was applied in addition to the scheduled blog posting. The technique has been in use by many other successful page owners too. It is a simple method of posting what is not in-house. What comes under this category? Let’s have a look,

1. Re-post/share other posts in the same genre
2. Create and post Images/Photos on the subject
3. Share important External and Internal Links

The above three were applied on the Facebook page with visible results.
You must remember that a really long interval in between two posts might result into an obituary of your blog.
If you have a website which has benefited after reading this case study, Please share your links

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An Interview with JetBro from 'The Den'

Today we have a web design company which has crossed the boundaries of simple web design/ app creation. A company which has defied the conventional methods of professionalism and created an atmosphere which reeks of productivity and creative enthusiasm.

Jetbro is an Ahmedabad based company specializing in IT services and digital solutions. It's motto “Art with sense. We deliver what your mind thinks.” creeps up into the mind when you see its main/portfolio/about page.

I would not delay the imminent anymore. Let us see what 'The Den' has to offer.

The Story

Mohit: Let’s Start with the history of JetBro. How did you start? How did the group form?

Jetbro: Ours is a young team of passionate and dedicated coders, developers, designers, artists and professionals. Jetbro started its operation way back in the January of 2011, with a team of three including our two founders (Mr. Ishit Jethwa and Mr. Sharva Jethwa) who operated it from two separate countries, UK and Australia along with an intermediary in India to take care of the local business. 

Jetbro was self-funded by the salary that Sharva (Founder) earned then, working as a lone developer in an Australian firm. Ishit (Founder) in the meantime took care of the marketing and finally flew down to India, in the June of 2011, to set across a fully functional operational market that we claim today.

The initial days were rough, where we had to convince our clients on the market possibilities of getting online, while Ishit went on foot from one organization to other, understanding their business issues and offering them with digital solutions. Today, the Jetbro family banks on happy clients and a self-motivated team, proud of their work and projects and beaming with future possibilities of working towards to a digitally advanced tomorrow.

Mohit: You started in 2011, and some of your initial projects were Blue Lotos, Dakara Dirt etc. As a start-up how did you manage to bag the initial projects?

Jetbro: Finding good and exciting projects is difficult for a startup. We accepted that early on. But, we knew that nothing would come easy, unless you prove your worth.

The solution was to accept that and keep looking for opportunities, that justified what we stand for and striving across, to address issues in firms and organization that seek digital solutions. Our initial projects were those that we applied to and claimed online through leads available on several web portals.

The Den

Mohit: I reckon that from your website and the company profile, people see you as a hip, carefree group. Is it a mirage or is your 'den' actually as cool as it sounds like?

Jetbro: Cool? Well, we have so far refused to put any label on us. But yea, if “Cool” is something you feel that relates to us, then we’d rather go for the “Bloody Cool!” tag. We have always been like that. Bold and staying true to our professional values and what we believe in.

The Den is a special place. It isn't the usual corporate environment. It’s young, alive, brewing with ideas and rocking on some pretty heavy music. The Den is where the artists within our coders, designers and professionals come alive to stir across innovations that bank on futuristic digital solutions. 

On Works

Mohit: I especially found your BRTS app really useful. How important is making applications for mobile environment? Do you think that the future is slowly moving towards a world with "Lesser websites and more apps"?

Jetbro: Catering to the mobile environment is extremely important. But the notion that “the future is slowly moving towards a world with lesser websites and more apps” is untrue. The future isn’t restricted to mobile phones; it relies on a technology that caters to all devices.

Being a digital agency we believe any digital service that is futuristic should cater to every kind of audience and on every available platform. Be it on the web or the different kinds of mobile devices. Developers should never shy away from making their services adaptable to every screen in order to deliver universal digital solutions.

Mohit: Now a question regarding your website. Usually service websites are filled with information and data (including pricing, detailed description of works done etc), your website on the other hand focuses entirely on the aesthetic aspect of web design. Customers are supposed to extract this information from you through your contact page. Do you think aesthetics are better than functional information?

Jetbro: Aah! We are so glad you asked. We do showcase our work, but here’s why we haven’t put up any functional information.  Putting up a price on our solutions is another thing the Den refrains from, which has been discussed in our blog where we elaborate on why it’s a dilemma to put a price on the websites we build. Here’s the link to the same, How much does a website cost? We don’t want to be conventional and neither do we want our clients to expect “the conventional” when they approach the Den. 

Defining the services and putting a tag on them, makes them conventional. 

Defining the kind of solutions we offer, means the client already has a line of thinking on how things will get done and they’ll want us to stick to that routine. However, at Den we vouch for challenges and not routines. Every client project is tackled with a fresh set of ideas, designs and a whole new approach.

We might have done the same kind of project earlier but we don’t want this one to be a repetition of our earlier work. For us every new project demands a fresh zeal of enthusiasm and innovative outlook and that’s the reason we don’t define our ways. We love clients who are equally experimentative and looking to invest in “New Ideas”.

Mohit: Tell us something about your recent apps.

Jetbro: We pride ourselves on being the first ones who launched a BRTS app for Ahmedabad, while the rest followed. And as has been the tradition now, we've strived ourselves to deliver yet another app - Ahmedabad Otlo, dedicated exclusively to the beautiful city and people of Ahmedabad. Our goal has always been to make the lives of an everyday citizen easier using technology.

What makes us so proud with Ahmedabad Otlo is "Show Love", where we encourage users to share concerns regarding problems in their local area in Ahmedabad that needs immediate attention and garner "supports" for their cause among fellow Amdavadis and help us build a beautiful Ahmedabad. 

You can download our app Ahmedabad Otlo. We would love to know, what our fellow Amdavadis think of the app through this platform and encourage feedback from them, to help us improvise and deliver the best, to a city, that we love and cherish so much!

On Setbacks

Mohit: As a standalone firm offering variety of services to a variety of customers, you are bound to have some depressing days. How do you deal with them and how do you keep the morale of your employees high?

Jetbro: Yes! We all have those moments. But sulking ain't our style. We re-group, re-assemble, conduct brain-storming sessions with our clients and work on weekends if we have to; unless we are sure that the project has truly accomplished our client’s purpose and motive behind the same.

Client satisfaction is our ultimate “high” and burning midnight oil to serve that kind of satisfaction is just something that our professionalism calls upon. Ours is a bunch of self-motivated and driven individuals and that’s the reason why we never fail to triumph and find solutions even amongst utter chaos.

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Domain & server, Web design, Content creation in web Sphere; Tablet specific design, Branding & Logo in Design Sphere; Online and viral marketing; customized crm, data analysis, mining and modeling, phew! the list goes on but thankfully not the article. Visit Jetbro's website (At-least to see the about page section). Like them at Jetbro's original Facebook Page or follow them @jetbroden at Twitter.

Technomugs, The Official Blog at Jetbro, Young ideas, recent trends and everything from their coffee conversations to their new launches gets talked about there. 

Update

Though no one has ever attempted such a valiance before, but JetBro was the first firm, which actually took the liberty and the pains of writing an article about codemakit on their own blog. Take a look at this graceful Technomugs Article which depicted codemakit in a new way.

Further

An interview with an Indian firm is really interesting, but if you need something about an Indian web design personnel you can read an interview with Vinay at TechPrevue.

This was, 

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Is my Bounce Rate Normal or does it change with the type of my website?

Bounce rate is one of those web-metrics which have always baffled webmasters. Bounce rate determines the fate of a website, whether it will grow or not. Forums and comment boxes are filled with questions like "Is my bounce rate good enough?" or "Does bounce rate change according to website types" or "What should I do? My bounce rate is too high!!". 

Just know this, Yes bounce rate changes as per the type of website you run, and there is nothing high-class Google wizardry in it, just simple logic. As you know websites are of different types, the bounce rate for any website is different as per the functionality. So an online web store will have a different bounce rate than that of a personal blog. 

The following article is particularly useful if you doubt your bounce rate or if you are not sure whether your bounce rate is normal. Here is a complete range of bounce rates for different websites as per functions.

Online Shopping/Services Websites

You run a website which offers products and allows users to purchase the products online through a payment gateway.

Such websites are highly popular with the world swarming up with a huge number of examples like amazon, ebay etc.  An online shopping website should be having less than 35 % bounce rate. The obvious question is why such low value? The only logical answer is because of the huge number of steps in the transition. (For example, You select on a product to buy, you’ll be redirected to the webpage for selection/entry of address for shipping, then comes confirmation of order, then another webpage for the actual monetary transition where you will be directed to your credit card/bank’s website and then finally the confirmation of purchase). So bounce rate must be less than 35% for the website to prosper.

Offline Shopping/Services Website

You run a website that offers a catalog of products but allows users to purchase only through offline methods like money order, VPP, telephone etc.

A new business would not directly plunge into online services. They would have a tendency to keep their business out of the web sphere. Also certain services involve huge transactions which are highly risky for the client and the provider to be allowed on the website. So such transactions need to be done on phone or through email correspondences. For example a housing developer’s website looking for people to invest Or a mattress specialist not ready to indulge in online trading etc. Such websites must have a bounce rate of less than 40%.

Directories and online Encyclopedias

You run a website which functions like a dictionary where users can search and find information. You cannot expect to have a bounce rate of more than 20-25% for such type of websites. Since such websites have each and every thing a person needs or might need, he/she is not expected to leave the website for another one. So that explains such low bounce rate.

Blogs

You do not run a website but a blog which is updated regularly with new posts. If you have a blog where you publish content from time to time, you are in for a surprise. Content based websites and webpages tend to have huge bounce rates in the likes of 50 to 70%. If you have it below 50%, you’re in a very safe zone and you need not worry, cause with such low bounce rate, your PageRank would be high too.

Video Blogs or PodCasts

Though most people assume both are the same, one must understand that those are two different things. A video blog is a conventional blog on popular platforms like blogger or wordpress with video(s) hosted on it. A podcast on the other hand is a page with actually hosts videos only (like you-tube). You run a YouTube page or a website which hosts either video or music or similar media.

Websites which host videos/music or similar media, bounce rate tends to be very low. As one the user lands on the page, there are a lot of entertainment/infotainment options available to the users. Also the user is on the page for a lot of time which opens him up for new options. So a bounce rate of 20 to 30% is not a value to be raised an eyebrow on.

Some exceptions

If you have very high bounce rate i.e. near 90 to 100%, do not lose heart as there are some exceptions to the above mentioned rules.

1. A website with only 1-5 pages, will have a bounce rate near or above 90%. This is because; a website with low number of pages will not provide any incentive to the visitor to visit other pages. For example, a website with a single web page will have a bounce rate of 100%. So it is not a bad thing if your low webpage website has unbelievably high bounce rate.
2. New websites/blogs need not worry, as their bounce rate will stabilize in a few weeks. For new Blogs there is a problem, your bounce rate will not decrease unless you have a decent number of blog posts which users might visit after the landing page.
3. Certain Blogs also tend to have a bounce rate of near 70 to 80%. This depends on the number of articles already present on the blog and the amount of time the blog has existed in the web sphere. This is because; readers come to the website in search for information for a particular topic and leave when satisfied. So bounce rate tends to be high. For such situations, I would recommend using the related posts technique, where links to related articles is displayed at the end of the article.

Where You Went Wrong

After reading this, if you still think that your bounce rate is on the higher side, There might be reasons behind it. I have listed down a few of them, comment if you know another.

1. You are lazy, (either a potato blogger or a lazy one)
2. You are not posting recently (Learn what happens when a daily post blog is left untouched for a week)
3. Not giving enough attention to the content of your website or the steps that come after good content
4. Lack of External and Internal Links
5. Higher Page load time which might be, so high that your users leave before your website loads.
6. You have not read the article on 4 sureshot ways to improve your bounce rate.

This must have answered your question

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