9 Simple Tricks To Reduce Your Bounce Rate and Improve Conversions
Visitors arrive at your site, and then a few seconds later they bounce. The bounce rate for online e-commerce sites is quite high. In fact, the industry average is about 60%.
Thus, if your bounce rate is above this figure, you need some help. It is worth noting that some e-commerce sites have a bounce rate of as low as 40%. If a site is performing at this level, it is a top performer.
What is Bounce Rate?
If you are going to solve a problem, you need to understand what it is. The bounce rate is the number of visits to your landing page without any further browsing of your site. It is a percentage of the total visits to the landing page.
If the bounce rate is quite high, it will directly affect the conversion rate of the site. That means the people directed to your site are not relevant to your business. There are many tricks, which you can use to reduce the bounce rate to a site.
High Bounce Rate is Not Always a Bad Thing
When you see that a site has a high bounce rate, it is not always a bad thing. It all depends on the aim of the site owner. For instance, some sites just want the visitor to take a call to action.
Some of the most common call to actions that could cause a high bounce rate:
- When the site requires visitors to call a number if they want more information about a product.
- When the site contains outbound links such as when the owner sells their products on sites like eBay.
- When the site visited is, in fact, an affiliate-marketing site.
- Where the visitor is required to fill out a lead form, which does lead them to another page on the site where they can confirm their submission.
In short, if your goal is to have visitors come to your landing page for one purpose, bounce rate should not be an issue. However, it should worry you if you are not achieving the expected goal.
If your goal is to get the lowest bounce rate possible, you may want to try these ways to reduce bounce rate.
#1. Improve the User Experience
It is the general feeling a user gets when they visit a website. If you use the internet, then you know what that means. At some sites, you feel welcome while some sites give you the feeling that you are going to have a hard time accomplishing anything.
The first step in improving the user experience is improving the loading time. If a website takes anything more than three seconds to load, it creates a negative connotation in the visitor’s mind. To do that, you will need to work with a good developer who meets your expectations for fast load time.
The other aspect of a good user experience is that your site needs to be accessible from different devices. A growing number of people who access the internet do so only through their phones. It is important that your site can be adapted to all the major screen sizes that the web surfers of today use.
Another important aspect of the user experience is white space. It may seem like a huge waste to leave acres of unused space on a web page, but it is not. The white space helps to decongest a site, which helps the visitor to focus on the elements close to the text.
#2. Use Videos to Captivate Visitors
Videos are a powerful tool for capturing the attention of your viewers. You can use animations or create demos. If you are going to use demos, you need to do it well. For instance, if a certain product has a switch, start there.
If you are using a video, you need to keep it simple. Remember that most of your viewers are not experts on the product you are marketing. Thus, you must avoid going into the technicalities of using a certain product or device.
Another trick for using videos is to ensure that you reduce onscreen text. People who want to watch videos have no interest in reading the text. If you must use text, it should be at the bottom of your video, and you must avoid too much of it.
Additionally, if you will use video, use someone whom your viewers can relate. Using celebrities, for instance, makes your videos seem promotional. Use an ordinary guy, in fact, one of your employees would make the video seem authentic.
#3. Think about Site Typography
Typography refers to the creation and the appearance of the text on your site. The first step in making a site readable is avoiding too much text. If the page has too much text, it makes it less appealing, and it could scare away traffic.
Another important tip for site typography is the header hierarchy. Readers should be able to scan through text and determine what the headings signify. To do that, you can use different sizes of text for the headers.
When using text, you will also need to think about the font. You should avoid using fancy fonts. If you want to reduce the bounce rate, never use more than three types of font on a site as it makes it look cheap.
The color of the font also matters. It is a great way to make the links within your text visible. Thus, your font should always have only two colors or a maximum of three if it is unavoidable. That way, visitors can navigate to other pages on your site without having to struggle to find them.
#4. Prove Your Credibility
The number of frauds on e-commerce sites has reduced. However, most customers are still wary of losing their money online. To do this, you will need to prove your authenticity. Customers will be quick to look for anything that can help them trust you.
One way of doing this is by displaying your certificates. If you have received any badges from sites such as antivirus companies, prominently display them on the landing page. Besides that, if you are in any affiliate programs, you can ride on the brand star power of sites for which you work for.
Besides that, if a popular review page praises your site, your customers should know about that. In short, anything that could help customers verify your claims must appear on the landing page, if you want to increase the conversion rate.
#5. Make Optimal Use of the Call to Action
Most people usually make up their mind about a site within the first few seconds. It is thus important for you to tell them what your site is all about in these first few seconds.
The first step in optimizing your call to action is the placement. When visitors come to your site, a specific place draws their attention. You should research which point on the site gets the most attention and place the CTA there.
If you want to create a Compelling Call-to-Action, you will need to draw the visitors in with emotions. Appear to their base instincts such as offers and the ability to achieve something they have dreamt of all their lives. If possible, your call to action should always begin with a verb.
One of the most common and effective strategies of a good call to action is the fear of missing out. If your visitors think they are getting access to something only a select few can access, it could shoot up your conversion rate. In some cases, visitors will leave since they do not feel there is anything special about your product. Ensure they feel like they are the greatest when they visit your site.
#6. Use Split Testing to Time Your Pop Ups
Imagine if you walk into a store for some shopping and one of the salespeople decides to jump in front of you and tries to sell you something. It is most likely you would walk out of the store immediately or swear never to come back again. That is the same feeling site visitors get when you display popups immediately after they land on your site.
Depending on what you are selling, you may need to do a lot of split testing. In some cases, it might be best to avoid popups if you find that they are not leading to any positive results for the site. If you use split testing, you can tell when the best time to pop something in their face is.
It can prove to be significant in improving conversions if done right. Normally, if you wait too long, the customer may have already lost interest in your site. However, if it pops up too early, it could cause the site visitors to depart from your site.
#7. Make Use of High-Quality Images
Until recently, the significance of images for a good visitor experience remained unrecognized. However, lots of research has revealed that images alone can cause a visitor to linger around and explore the site. For them to be effective in improving the visitor’s experience, they need to be of high quality.
You can either hire a professional photographer for your site or get royalty free photos online. Whichever method you use, ensure that your photos tell a positive story about your site.
When you use high-quality images, it could slow down the speed of your site as content loads. The solution may be to use a CDN. It is simply a way to ensure that content is close to the final users that need it.
Sizing of the image is also important. An image should not be larger than the width of your site. If that happens, the images will automatically shrink. Thus, compromising the quality of the image you use. It could also distort the message you want to send to potential customers.
#8. Avoid Distracting Your Visitors
The landing page should have a very simple message. If you try to tell them too many things at the same time, it could cause them to get confused and leave the site. Besides that, if there is too much information on the site, that makes it look spammy.
For instance, if you have various deals running on your site, you could simply display a link that directs them to the deals. However, if you place all the deals on the landing page, some customers may not see what they want. Therefore, they will leave your site.
To find out how much you should display on the landing page, you can use A/B testing. It is quite effective at helping you determine just how much is too much or too little.
#9. Use the Right Marketing Channels
If you advertise your products to a target audience that has no interest in your product, it is going to lead to a huge loss in traffic. It may be tempting to use low-value keywords that capture a large amount of traffic.
However, keep in mind that such antics will affect how your website ranks in SEPRs. When a search engine sees that too many people are leaving your site without completing any action, they will lower its quality score. That will affect any traffic you had hoped to get organically.
It is thus important that you target high quality keywords in your marketing campaign. They may cost you a lot, but they will lead to high returns because of successful conversions. It is thus important to do intensive keyword research to ensure you use only those that are relevant.
Call to Action
Contact us today to improve the conversion rate on your site. We (seoexpertbrad.com) can help you to combat the bounce on your site. Thus, you may begin to reap the fruits of your hard work, which has gone into developing a product of great quality for your customers. Get in touch with us today to fix your bounce rate!