The great splash page experiment of 2007!

Mr.Bishop

Mr.Bishop

Active member
Staff member
Ok guys, we have to conduct an experiment that might irk a few of you, but we HAVE to do it.

You see, we've been closely watching our traffic stats, and currently ~20% of the traffic that attempts to visit Newschoolers.com doesn't get past the splash page. We tried to fix that by making the picture a link, and having some of the latest news articles on there, but the bounce rate went up.

We need to see if having no splash page would drastically change this bounce rate, or if that's just standard web traffic behaviour. Even if we have to ditch it for the public though, we'll make it so that you can just put a cookie on your computer that will have you able to see it. But, we won't know unless we give it a try.

So, sometime within the next few days we're going to just set it that NS drops you right onto the homepage, bypassing the Splash page. We'll collect data for one week, and then report back about what happened.

Just bear with us, we love the splash page as much as you guys do, but 20% of the traffic bouncing off of it is crazy! We need to figure out what we've done wrong!

Thanks for understanding guys, you are the best community a website could ever ask for!

 
Doug, would a large amount of the bounce traffic not be attributed to kids having www.newschoolers.com as their home page? I know there was a thread a while back and a large percentage of kids seemed to have it set as home. Therefore opening any new browser would recognize it as a hit and run. Might want to try and compare those stats to the reffering site stats and see how many come from "none"
 
I thought a lot of the guys with it bookmarked may have bookmarked the actual newsy homepage, not the splash page.

The bounce percentage seems reasonable to me, so I guess it's worth a try.
 
This makes a lot of sense. I know I had my homepage set to the splash page for a while, as did a lot of people I know. You could probably look on a unique-IP basis and figure out if this is the case.
 
I'm sure there are a zillion things that could be causing it... but the only way to know what the effect is of not having it is to gather data of it not being there. Once we've tried that, we'll know what the other end of the spectrum is... and then we can get down and dirty to sort out what is causing it.

However, without taking it down we'll never know. Its gnarly though if it really is true that so many people are bouncing off of it... that would suck. ;)

 
yeah, the splash page is my home page, so any time i open a browser for anything, i go to the splash page and then navigate away. 
 
Honestly, hopefully that is exactly what causes it. If it is, then re-directing the newschoolers.com link to the homepage instead of the splash page wouldn't change the bounce rate at all. People with their homepage set to newschoolers.com would just have it go to the main news page, and the bounce rate wouldn't change at all. Then we know!

 
I haven't used the slash page in about a year or so...seems silly. I just have my FireFox tab set to the main news page. That way I don't have to worry about random crap. But I definitely understand that the rate is 20 percent. You get kids like freezed said, who have homepage set as www.newschoolers.com then go do homework (very unlikely) on another website. I know that would be a problem. Well good lucky dougy poo
 
Yeah my homepage is the splash page. I would have it set to the main page like a lot of people are saying, but personally I enjoy seeing a nice skiing shot every time I open the internet. Kind of like a background/desktop.
 
yeah me too. i'm sure alot of kids just have NS as their homepage because really why wouldn't you
 
here is a story relivant to this. My home page was NSG back in the summer. So the first day of university i couldn't get my internet working, so my RA comes over, logs in with his ID, and the NSG opens and he is reading all the thread titles, then looks at me with the most fucked up look on his face. I'm sure he forgot about it by now though... nothing like a great first impression.
 
I love the Splash page and can say I'd be very disappointed if it didn't exist. I think MacMahoooon hit the nail on the head. I know I have NS as my homepage and often times I navigate away from it immediately so I don't find myself balls deep in NS by the time my paper is due. Keep the splash page!
 
You could add some news, etc. to the splash? Not exactly on topic, but if the bounce rate isn't just from having the page set as home it could help attract more people?
 
We did it!

Chris just brought up an excellent point. If you have the splash page set as your homepage/bookmarks then you'll still go there. The splash page is still accessable if you directly type in the web address. So nobody change their homepage links, and we will be able to somewhat measure how many people have the splash page set as their homepage!

 
My firefox just deleted everything i had on it, settings, bookmarks, the works.

I'm looking at you doug...
 
That happened to me a couple weeks ago when it did one of the mandatory Firefox upgrade things. I lost all my bookmarks, everything.
 
same here, but im the one using the comp about 85% in my family, and if im on the comp, then im logged onto ns

 
I HATE IT!

i dont care if 50 percent of the members are scared away by thinking that you have to sign in and you cant browse as a guest... fuck em!
 
yup, i previously had www.newschoolers.com as my homepage. I just reset it too splash/splash.
 
Return the splash page! If visitors are being scared away by such a friendly entry, they don't deserve to enter anyways. The login is the same as most sites, and it's pretty straightforward. Have 'www.newschoolers.com' redirect to the splash, not the news.
 
if it is "scring" people awa I think it's because the link that tells visitors who aren't members to log in is really small and people probably have no idea what to do if they're not a member. make the fact that you can still go inside if you're not a member mroe prominent so people who don't know abotu the site will still go past eh splash page.
 
very good point.

the guest login link is small. i get scared away from other sites where it looks like i have to login
 
oh thats why when i clicked the homepage it always took me passed the splash page. it pissed me off so i went and changed myhomepage to the splash page
 
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