WebTrends, Adobe Marketing Cloud, and Google Analytics are Digital Analytics tools that we use to measure the marketing success of web pages. These tools survey email listings, keywords used in organic and paid searches, social media links, and mobile usage data to probe your marketing weaknesses and analyze customer preferences. One of the metrics you’ll hear a lot about is a website’s “bounce rate.”
The bounce rate is the ratio of visitors exiting your website after viewing one of your pages. A low bounce rate is welcome because it indicates that visitors are reading and engaging with your content. A high bounce rate tells you that something is amiss – more people are leaving your site without waiting to interact with you.
A bounce rate of say 60 to 70 percent reveals that more than half of the visitors are pressing the back button because you don’t fulfill their need in some way or other. You can lower your bounce rate and increase conversions by adopting the following strategies.
Tips to lower bounce rate and improve conversions
Ensure your content stays smart and trendy
Information that is sterile or outdated is a downer; searchers will sense that you are out of sync with the times.
One way of detecting sterile content is to do a web search on the following lines; “Site: yourownwebsite.com 2015,” and you zero in on the content that needs refreshing.
Instead of making your content encyclopedic in coverage, try matching the content to the aspirations of the people visiting the site. Keep the content exclusive and primed to deliver information and value to the visitor. Create dedicated resource pages, informative blogs, topical white papers, and educational eBooks.
Improve your marketing: reduce your email bounce rate
Email marketing is an effective strategy only if your messages reach the targeted mailbox. High email bounce rates can lower your open rate and even get your IP blacklisted. An efficient email list validation tool by BytePlant removes undesirable and undeliverable email from your list. Sanitizing your client list ensures a lower bounce rate, thereby boosting the open rate. This paves the way for an improved click and conversion rate, boosting sales.
Never annoy or distract your visitor
Auto-playing videos, blaring audios, colorful ad banners, and many assorted pop-ups tend to drive visitors away from your website. People view pop-ups as irritants distracting them from the original purpose of visiting your page.
A safer option would be to use an exit-intent tool such as Growth Funnel or OptinMonster. These tools detect mouse movements. When visitors are on the verge of clicking out, the pop-up makes an offer the customer cannot refuse or an inducement to stay.
Use appropriate keywords to attract the right traffic
The choice of keywords could lower or hike your bounce rate. Let’s assume you are a “podiatric surgeon” focusing on injuries to the foot and ankle. It would be counterproductive to use the keywords “Orthopedic surgeon.” The latter fixes bones, joints, and subdermal tissues in any part of the body.
Using incorrect keywords attracts the wrong kind of people that have nothing to gain from your site. Sit back and analyze the bounce rates relating to different kinds of incoming traffic. Then restructure keywords to ensure the correct audience reaches content designed for them.
Focus on the global audience – move across borders to spike conversions
Review the global footprint of your overseas customers, and analyze the bounce rate within this segment. It may surprise you to learn that Indian, Chinese and Middle East customers may be leaving your page in large numbers because the content doesn’t translate into their native languages.
The WordPress Multilingual Plugin translates every layer of your webpage into the web searchers’ language of choice without breaking a sweat. Within no time, your bounce rates will be declining if you leverage content suited to the global audience.
Design your website with tender loving care
A visitor trusts a website that is well designed, and which navigates the user to the chosen destination. Consider tweaking the website to enhance its USP:
- Improve your user-friendliness: If you want more visitors to spur conversion sales, judge how responsive you are to customers. Are you optimized for mobile surfing? Are you branding your logo in an attractive manner? Are you quick in responding to emails, chat requests and telephonic queries? The more contact information you display, the more convenient it becomes for customers to ping you.
- Make it easier to navigate the website: Navigation can either enhance your site’s reputation or ruin the customer’s satisfaction. Never make the customer hunt for information; if you have identified your target audience and chosen keywords with care, the visitor should find it easy to fulfill their needs. From main page menus to hyperlinks and keyword structured anchor texts, the pathways channeling customer searches should be simple and clearly defined.
- Create a colorful and pleasurable ambiance: Colors nurture a strong sense of bonding with customers and create a perfect setting for displaying high-quality content and attractive logos. Hire a professional designer, if you must, to introduce complementary colors that suit your niche and the customers you’ll be attracting.
Your checklist for beating the bounce rate
Surveys of the world’s finest websites reveal that the most successful digital marketing strategies share many things in common. If you are pondering how to reduce bounce rate, consider how your site measures up to the following yardsticks:
- Content remains fresh and updated and is in sync with emerging trends in your industry.
- The site is attracting the right kind of traffic in expanding volumes, creating larger footfalls.
- The keyword strategy is well implemented, adding value to customers that find their intent satisfied.
- It takes not more than 2 seconds, on an average, to load the main and associated pages.
- There is a strong connection between keywords, advertisements, hyperlinks, anchored text, and content.
- The landing pages create strong calls to action, retaining customer attention with an assortment of attractive offers and interactive content.
- The layout of the website is attractive and uses color to generate a pleasurable ambiance.
- The navigation bars are simple and well designed to help customers access the right information.
- The content is engaging, precise, structured, and readable. The content satisfies customers’ curiosity about the company’s products and services.
- Keyword structured anchor texts open the gateways to information that offers value to the searcher.
- Without annoying pop-ups, there is little or no reason for the customer to take evasive action to block ads or the entire website.
The Bottom-line: the recipe for lower bounce rate and quick conversions
You are redefining and reshaping your website, presenting an attractive format that tempts the visitor to stay and test its potential. You are providing content that fulfills the needs and desires of your target audience. You are educating the visitor with digestible information which satisfies intent. The website follows a commonsensical and intuitive navigation that entices the visitor to engage and interact with you. If you’ve come this far, you’d have beaten the bounce rate and hit pay dirt in converting queries into sales.
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