TIPS TO AVOID HIGH BOUNCE RATES ON YOUR LANDING PAGE
With that heading 
making bounce rates (What is Bounce rate? ) appear like the villain to your online marketing, let’s get clear that high Bounce rates aren’t always that bad. There are cases when a high bounce rate is acceptable . Pages like contact us, login, checkout will have the bounce rates going pretty much up-scale yet that isn’t troublesome. Now, actual concern arises when the bounce rates for your web pages other than these start soaring, nevertheless, there are ways to seize its flight and bring it down to the ground. Let’s explore a few of them, shall we?
Tip #1 Avoid Pop-up ads and parallel distractions
Until and unless any pop-up advertisement offers something worth blocking the view, keep your pages absolutely away from them. In most of the cases, all it does is wither irritate your visitors with a content they are not interested in or disturb their experience at your site.
Likewise, a section of your visitors might find that auto play sound and videos distracting. Don’t impose, keep them optional.
Tip #2 Create Urgency
Postponing and procrastinating is quite popular. If possible, don’t let your visitors think about holding the purchase until later. That later might or might not come. A sense of urgency at times gives the necessary push to your customers to go ahead and make the purchase right away. Some special offers with deadline like ‘Discount ends 13th Feb’ or a limited stock notice like ‘Only 2 in Stock’ works. Flash them bright and loud.
Tip #3 Website Loading Speed – Don’t make it a time-eater
Your website’s loading speed is directly associated to the decrease or increase in conversion rates , user experience and search engine rankings. In this current digital age, a website that takes long (even by a couple of seconds) to load is discarded by the customers which in due course effects all your SEO efforts. On the contrary, some statistics also favor to a relatively slower loading speed since it helps to keep your visitors on your site. Get rid of all the uncommon practices for Landing Pages , deactivate any unnecessary pop-ups or plug-ins — all this to bring the load time of your site somewhere near to the ideal load time of 3 seconds.
Tip #4 Realize the Content Power
Though this list isn’t a countdown, this tip candidly deserves to be on the top. Anyhow, the conversations about content value have always had its own strong position in the discussions related to Landing Page Optimization , to Social Media Existence, Online Presence or increment in e-commerce Conversion rates.
First, freshen up your content. Update the out dated information, statistics or examples, polish the old ones and throw out the pointless posts from a decade ago. Second, identify the pages that have the most traffic and modify if needed i.e. deliver relevance and value. Third, make your posts concise and short because the attention span of your visitors is even shorter. Long blog post enhance the bounce rates, thus, cut it short or instead try to split it to separate posts.
Tip #5 All the gravy into Headlines and Taglines
Headlines are the first thing people notice in your landing page. Then, there are taglines. Short, long? Depends. But, every headline should be compelling and intriguing. Another thing that you have to keep under scrutiny while writing them is the keywords used in the PPC campaigns . Rather than a brief headline, a comparatively longer headline can bring you more customers if it is inclusive of the main and important information, mostly the ones which are beneficial to the customers.
Headlines and Taglines are the perfect tool via which you can clearly state the advantages and proudly boast of the benefits you provide. Don’t create dilemma, emphasize on the solutions you have to the visitor’s problems instead. Choose the tone (formal, informal, playful, and humorous) according to the audience you are targeting. Every so often, a good humored tagline to advertise a B2B solution works too.
Tip #6 Link it right
For reasons more than one, we link our content with various other contents either from our own website or other websites. At times, the purpose of this is to enrich our content and broaden the perspective, while at times; it might lead to our purchase and check out page. The latter is fruitful but if the bounce rates on your landing page increase because of the links which basically lead to other’s blog or pages then, you might want to reconsider. No business owner wants to lose their visitors because of the external links used. Even if you feel the necessity of linking, link it right with right choice of words.
Also, if you are going to link out to a resource on your website, how about making it open a new window instead of redirecting? Simple yet effective to reduce bounce rates, it is.
Tip #7 Be creative with Design, Use of color and Ad Placement
When it comes to designing, it’s high time you break through just color correction and photo quality. We agree that color contrast can turn a dull page into an exciting one to see. However, a first-class website design is something that amplifies the user experience, attracts and holds the attention and highlights the priorities. Maybe, your website needs a major renovation. Find out ! Your content should look more readable with a complementing design. Focus the key offers for high conversions. Moreover, don’t get too flashy with designs. It can lengthen your load time as well. Keep it subtle and offer what the customer is looking for. That’s how you get what you are looking for, better conversions.
Be watchful of where you do the Ad Placement. You need not follow the standard units. Try and stay away from getting penalized for excess advertising, both from Google as well as your customers with the high bounce rates.
Tip #8 Browsers and Mobile Compatibility Concern
You might have upgraded to the latest of browsers or the latest of devices, but as a business owner, you must be able to offer a website that’s technologically advanced yet accessible through all the browsers that your customers might possibly use. A high bounce rate can be observed if the visitors directed towards your site couldn’t win over their expectations. Websites are more effective when can be accessed and used from smartphones or tablets as most of the browsing happens through them.
Apart from design and graphics compatibility, less content should make more sense. Along with your hard work to polish your content, test your websites with various website from the beginning phase. Your website’s inability to display the content properly in the browsers’ windows is directly proportional to your site’s bounce rate.
Tip #9 Hit the Goal by helping your customers hit theirs
The most chances of bounces arise where the visitors are forced to dig down for the information they want or worse they get lost in the process of navigation. No website performs worse than the one with such issues. There are no doubts that you brought day and night together to make that Search engine snippet jump to the top. You have spent or have been spending quite a sum for PPC advertisings but if the website that you are showcasing after that isn’t well-structured, it surely will lead to a higher bounce rate. Try to create pages that are in sync with the keywords and ads that drive people there to boost conversions.
Need help making the wise choice of keywords and ad campaigns? Try us!
Tip #10 Don’t hide the Search bars
If you haven’t yet embraced internal search functionality on your sit, you better start now. It’s linked directly to the user experience as all of us behaviorally tend to go for a convenient and easy way out, to find something that we have been looking for. Internal search patterns and figures provide you the best practices to bring improvements.
And of course, if you are taking internal searches into consideration, don’t make the customers search for the search bars. Nothing is as frustrating as and more bounce-rate-increasing than it is.
BONUS TIP:
No matter how much you try to avoid it or rectify it, but 404 error pages shows up at instances least expected. First and Foremost, it’s not mandatory that it should always look that boring. Try and turn those errors away from causing you any damage by using various tools like Google Webmaster Tools.
Did we miss out any important point?
If we did, go ahead and jot down the strategies you have used to reduce the bounce rates at your landing pages – right below in the comment box. We would love to hear from you.
PIT offers you the best services to trim down the bounce rates and add up the conversion rates. If you want PIT to be of your assistance in any of your online marketing campaigns , CONTACT US .
