When people visit your website, do they stick around? If not, it's time to do something about it.
Bounce rate — the percentage of people who leave immediately after landing on a page on your website — is a big deal for marketers.
A high bounce rate can clue you in to something that's either failing to catch people's attention, or is actively driving them away.
But what can you do to reduce your bounce rate?
The first step is to identify the exact problem, which could be any of a number of things.
This article from HubSpot offers some helpful suggestions for keeping visitors on the page longer.
What Is Bounce Rate?
Your website's bounce rate is the percentage of people who land on a page on your website, then leave. They don't click on anything else. They just get to one of your pages, hang out for a bit, then leave.
How to Reduce High Bounce Rates
In general, high bounce rates might indicate that the page is irrelevant or confusing to site visitors. But don't jump into drastic actions like deleting a page or undertaking a redesign right away. There are some important steps you need to take before you figure out which action to take.
1) Ensure your website is mobile-friendly.
There are now more searches and traffic coming from mobile devices than desktops. That makes it crucial, says Vocell, “to not only provide a mobile-ready experience,” but to make sure that experience is engaging.
How annoying is it when you arrive at a mobile site, only to have to zoom-in to read its content? Having a responsive site is no longer enough — engagement with the mobile version has to be user-friendly and interactive.
2) Look at your bounce rate based on different sources.
Sometimes, the sources directing traffic to a given page might have something to do with its bounce rate.
Let's say your bounce rate is particularly high for visitors coming from social media — take a close look at the message you're using to accompany the content you're distributing.
When you're distributing your website's content, make sure the messaging actually matches the page to which you're directing visitors. You have to clearly meet the expectations of the visitor — regardless of source.
3) Determine which keywords this page ranks for — and if your content sufficiently covers those topics.
Let's say someone is searching for “marketing automation software solutions” — it's likely that this person is looking for software to help nurture leads into customers.
But if someone is using the query, “What is marketing automation?”, she's probably not at a stage where she's looking to buy a product. Rather, this person is looking for content that's more informative than anything else.
So when you evaluate the keywords for which you're page is ranking, make sure they're aligned with the actual content.
You can learn more about reducing your bounce rate over at HubSpot.
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