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Improve Your Bounce Rate

Improve Your Bounce Rate With These 5 Simple Steps

Your website visitor is on a mission: Get in, find accurate and actionable information, and make a decision as to whether or not they want to establish a relationship with your brand. Is your website scaring away your potential clients?

“Bounce” is the term we use to describe visitor behavior when they prematurely leave your site. In American slang, it means, “I’m out of here!” Obviously, you want visitors to stick around. Here are the key steps to keep your visitors engaged in your content and increase their trust in your brand.

Build a Sleek & Responsive Website

Websites bogged down by slow servers and cumbersome, awkward designs prompt visitors to give up and move on to the next link on their search engine results page (SERP). Your website must load quickly, and automatically adapt to all portable devices and aspect ratios unless you want to drive leads to your competition.

Improve user experience with intuitive navigation, and consider implementing user-data generated personalization features to help guide your visitors in the right direction.

Turn Off Autoplay or Turn Off Your Audience

Improving Website Bounce RateNothing irritates a site visitor more than the instant and startling sound of audio erupting from a newly-opened page. Your potential customer’s first move will be to seek out the “X” on the upper right hand of their window, especially if they’re browsing in public or at work.

Don’t ambush your visitors. Give them the choice to play your video and audio files with a click-to-play interface, and increase the odds that they’ll appreciate your content.

Knock Down Text Walls

Among Millennials, the acronym “TL;DR” means “too long; didn’t read” and that demographic isn’t alone in dismissing enormous, disorganized blocks of text. Your audience wants to be able to skim your content copy for information that precisely addresses their needs.

  • Break up your text copy with appropriate subheaders and small chunks of text.
  • Keep each paragraph to no more than three or four brief and concise sentences.
  • Use bullet lists whenever possible to make your key points stand out.
  • Include a call-to-action (CTA) to let your visitors know what to do next (send an e-mail, make a call, or visit a page further down the funnel). Consider incorporating a “mini” CTA in the first third of your piece.
  • Include professionally-shot photographs, useful graphics and even professional video production pieces to add visual interest and “eye relief” to the page.

Look at formatting this way: On this page, each header summarizes the content in its section. Allow the reader to “read deeper” into the content as they see fit and keep your headlines and subheaders true to the content — readers don’t like to be misled.

Use the Right Voice for Your Audience

Make your content relatable by choosing the appropriate voice for your brand. “Voice” refers to brand personality, and your target audience will respond best when they can identify with the tone and vernacular you use to relay your message. But be natural. Forced use of colloquialisms is ingenuine, and ingenuity translates as deception.

This might be a good time to stress the importance of understanding your audience. What’s your ideal demographic? What are their priorities, pain points, and consumer behaviors? Before you can define your voice, you need to know who’s listening.

Avoid Premature Gating & Overuse of Pop-Ups

Would you surrender your personal information to a complete stranger? No, and neither will your visitors. Make sure you provide free access to quality content before you “ask” for their contact information for an email list so they can develop a rapport with your brand.

You’ll get better leads if you entice your visitors to fill out contact information in exchange for “exclusive,” high-quality, unique content such as video tutorials, white papers, coupons, and e-books.

Pop-up ads, especially those asking for information, need to be subtle; otherwise, your viewers will swat those tiny “Xs” like mosquitoes. Avoid those full-screen landing page pop-ups or any that cover up relevant information. Tricky, hard-to-find close buttons go a long way in leaving a negative brand impression on your potential clients.

Stay Agile, Stay Current

Stay in front of trends in user experience and market expectations. Develop and maintain a schedule to test your site for speed and performance, and to evaluate your SEO effectiveness and visitor behavior.

Keep adding fresh copy and visual content to keep your visitors coming back.

If these essential steps to successful digital marketing make you want to bounce, reach out to SocialSEO for more information on how to improve your website’s user experience and lead generation.

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