When talking about Entrecard, there are three things that come across my mind; Traffic, Credits and Money. Personally, I am not interested in Entrecard Money. All I need is the traffic, and credits for further traffic.

BOUNCE RATE

Talking about traffic forces me to mention another word, Bounce Rate. I am not much of an Analytics techie, but I think I know what bounce rate is. In the simplest sense, bounce rate refers to the ratio of the number of visitors who just glance at your home page to the number of visitors who actually spend time reading your content. If for example, 100 people visit your site and 75 spend less than 1 minute on the homepage and don’t click to visit any other page, while only 25 actually spend time reading your content and navigating to other pages, then your bounce rate is 75%.

AVERAGE TIME

The bounce rate is different from the Average Time a visitor spends on your site. Average time per visitor is calculated by dividing the total time spent on your site by the total number of visitors. For example, if 100 visitors spend 6000 seconds on your site, then the average time spent per user is 6000 divided by 100 = 60 second (or 1 minute).

WHAT ROLE DOES MY ENTRECARD WIDGET POSITION PLAY?

What role? Come one! Let’s work this out together. Believe me or not, Entrecard is more of Quick Droppers than Dedicated Readers. These quick droppers, because the majority wins the vote, mark the direction of the game. They have nothing to do with your blog or it’s content. All they are interested in, and want to do, is drop their card on your widget and leave.

ENTRECARD WIDGET POSITIONS

Consider the following EWPs ((My TLA (Three Letter Acronym) for Entrecard Widget Position)) .

Top Page Entrecard Widgets

If your Entrecard widget is placed at the top of a page where a user will not have to scroll before seeing it, what happens?

• Quick Droppers just drop immediately they see it and leave
• You gain more Entrecard credits since you will probably have more quick droppers than dedicated readers.
• Your Bounce Rate increases since quick droppers spend very little time on your blog.
• The Average Time spent on your blog decreases

Mid Page Entrecard Widgets

If your Entrecard widget is placed at the middle of a page where a user will have to scroll about 1 and a half of your screen’s height before seeing it, one can observe the following effects.

• Most quick droppers will have to spend a little more time scrolling to find your widget, hence slight decrease in bounce rate.
• Some quick droppers will have to wait a little more time for your page’s content to load up to the position of the card before they drop, hence slight increase in Average Time.
• Some.
• Some quick droppers who don’t see your widget immediate will not bother to scroll down, especially if your content loads slowly. They will just close and continue dropping elsewhere. This might results in a slight decrease in drops on you, hence decrease in Entrecard credits.

Bottom Page Entrecard Widgets

Most quick droppers will tolerate a mid page Entrecard widget, not a bottom one. Unless your page loads very fast and scrolls smoothly, they will prefer “skipping” your page and continue dropping elsewhere. This will definitely contribute to higher bounce rates, smaller average time and fewer drops.

Where are the dedicated readers?

They are here, there and everywhere. You are one of them. The only problem is that you (dedicated readers) are being outnumbered by the quick dropping Entrecarders. No matter where I place my Entrecard widget, dedicated readers like you will always drop on it. If you can read a post up to this point, then I guess your primary interest is my content, not my Entrecard widget. Dedicated readers continue to make sure other bloggers’ blogs remain healthy in terms of bounce rate and average time.

What does AZ Blogging think about this?

I love Entrecard. With Entrecard, I have more traffic and better Alexa ranking. The only problem is that through Entrecard, many fellow bloggers have dedicated themselves to quick-dropping than reading. With Entrecard, a continuous increase in bounce rate is certain. This is not very healthy for blogs. Lucky enough, bounce rate is not as important as Google page rank. If it was, guess…

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