01 Sep Increase Sales by Reducing Bounce Rate
Looking at Google Analytics recently, I saw that the site I was studying was experiencing bounce rates of 30% to 50%. A bounce is when a visitor arrives at a web page and then leaves within 10 seconds. A visitor to a website is a valuable thing. SEO or PPC efforts, traditional media, word of mouth, networking, etc, go into attracting these visitors to the website, so it makes sense to focus on how to get these visitors to actually engage in the website. If one could reduce a web page’s bounce rate in half, you could argue that that effectively doubles the traffic (in terms of engaged viewers who might convert to a lead or a sale.) Here are a couple of ways to reduce bounce rate:
1) Learn what the visitors are looking for, and then create a message that speaks to their specific desires. Let’s hypothetically say that a page is getting most of its traffic through organic search engine queries. By studying the keyword phrases that these visitors are searching for when they arrive, you can understand what they want to find. Constructing a welcome message that speaks specifically to that desire means that the visitor will probably stick around for a bit, and maybe even check out some of the other pages.
2) Use call to action buttons.
The internet is an endless sea of information, yet often it can be difficult to find exactly what you are looking for, or maybe you are looking at what you were seeking, and just don’t know it. What you want is a big shiny button to call out to you, saying “click me”. Using a call to action can draw visitors into a site, and once that have invested in browsing to a second page, they will be much more likely to hear your message.