Digital marketing strategy to decrease a website’s bounce rate is a continual digital marketing question underscore’s digital marketing strategists are asked.
Websites should aim to keep their bounce rate within the acceptable industry standard which varies greatly.
For retail sites that drives well targeted traffic, the bounce rate usually sits between the 20-40% margin.
Simple landing pages that contain one call to action such as “add to cart” or “call now”, the bounce rate is quite higher at 70-90%.
Portals such as MSN, Yahoo groups etc have a much lower bounce rate at 10-30% while Service Sites or FAQs sites retain a similar bounce rate.
Content websites with high search visibility have a bounce rate of 40 -60% and lead generation sites have an industry average bounce rate of 30 – 50%.
These figures above are a good current first indicator of the digital health of your website.
There are many issues that affect the bounce rate of your website and there isn’t a simple generic answer for every site.
When we are given the task of reducing a site’s bounce rate we like to first answer the key points below, however the problem is usually far more complex and requires a larger amount of attention, time and strategic thinking in order to create a long term solution that addresses the issues that are always more than surface deep.
1. Website Design
Is the website design contemporary and visually appealing? Are the objectives of the business clear across the whole website? Has the user journey been mapped out? If a user finds it difficult to navigate through your website, or is turned off by the design, font or colours, it will affect their online experience and increase their likelihood of disengaging with your website.
2. Landing page
The landing page should communicate with the user immediately what the website is about. This is when a user will decide to stay or leave and this is one way to keep a user interested. Businesses should refresh the landing page so returning users are given the impression that there is new interesting content to engage with.
3. Content
This is a key reason why people leave websites. Without interesting content to engage a user in, they will leave within thirty seconds which classes their visit as a “bounce rate user”. Lack of written content on different pages within a website will also affect SEO success and Google’s ability to class your site. New content is key to a successful and engaging website for returning users and will create interest for new users.
4. Poor Loading Speed
Internet users are notoriously impatient and research says if your site takes longer than 4 seconds to load, your customer will leave your site and likely not return. This adds to the user experience, so finding a host that is able to maximise your load speed and ensuring your website is as “light” as possible, is important.
5. SEO presence
What are the keywords your site is ranking for? Awareness of the type of people that are finding your site, where and how they are finding your site and ensuring they are of the correct demographic will affect appropriateness of your website to their search efforts and thus affects bounce rate.
The issue of bounce rates is far more complex than meets the eye so it’s important to undertake an open minded approach and be aware of all areas that can be improved to create a long-term solution.
It’s only through addressing the issue of design, user interface, SEO, content, host server and range of other issues in a holistic way, will a business find their ability to decrease their bounce rate slowly result.