Do you ever see and ad on TV, the paper, or online and think:

What the heck are these people trying to say, or sell?

This is advertising and communication failing at the highest possible level, and even the biggest of companies still make this simple mistake. As an online media, marketing and strategy company, we know that by addressing this, it is one of the fastest possible ways to haul in more profitable customers, without making too many changes to your overall strategy.

What is my “Bounce Rate”?

A bounce rate can be defined as “the amount of visitors who click through to your website, and quickly leave again without taking the action the Webmaster desired”.

There are different time lengths that should be used for determining a “good” or “bad” bounce rate for different industries and for different styles of websites, but the underlying theory is that all companies should focus on decreasing their bounce rate.

Think of the bounce rate as being a shopper who enters a store, and then turns around and leaves without purchasing, enquiring or taking any action the shopkeeper desires.

As we all know in business, getting new customers is far more difficult than selling to the customers we already have due to heavy selling costs, so what if you can get people who are leaving your website to stick around and hear what you have to say, browse your products, and contribute more to your bottom line?

There are several reasons why a website has a high bounce rate — here are just a few of the major ones:

1. Your content hasn’t been tested, tweaked and tuned

What you have to say on your website is incredibly powerful — but you have to say it in a certain way. Just like how most novelists don’t end up writing best-sellers, or breaking anywhere near even on their labour of love, most websites never make the profits that the creator desired.

The message that you are putting on your website should be compelling, gripping, interesting, and leave the reader wanting more. Often the writer for a website makes the all too easy mistake of writing about themselves — instead of what they can offer.

The copywriting on your website needs to be written in precisely the correct way for your target market and fine-tuned through analytics programs to see how well it is converting traffic into sales (or data into cash). The power that a single headline has to turn your profits up by 300%, or down by 600% is incredible — just ask anybody in the publishing and/or writing world.

2. Your website isn’t 100% user-friendly

The days of the company being supreme are all but gone — especially in an industrious and thriving country such as Australia. If a customer finds your website cumbersome, annoying, slow to load, confusing, or anything else mildly frustrating, they will not even think twice about leaving your site and clicking through the competition until they find one that meets their needs.

With the growing market share of mobile devices such as iPads, and smartphones that still have comparatively small screens, your site should run seamlessly on all types of device, and be just as easy to use as if the user were on a desktop computer — or you risk losing valuable customers.

Although it is hard to figure out exactly why some bounce rates are so high, here are the ones that we come across most often:

  • The visitor expected something else
  • There is too much information on the site and not presented properly
  • The website isn’t logically laid out
  • There isn’t a decent “search” function (if your website is large enough to require one)
  • The website is too slow to load
  • Colours are overpowering (or under powering)
  • Fonts are too difficult to read or too small
  • The visitor isn’t sure what you are offering
  • There is no “main benefit”, or “USP” on the site

Now, some of these problems you have little control over — but the vast majority you do.

What can you do right now to reduce your bounce rate?

There are a few quick things that you can do to help reduce your bounce rate yourself, but to really drop it so that a much higher percentage of your visitors are following through with what you want them to do, you need to:

  • Install analytics to track past performance against current (management by exception)
  • Know the benchmarks that you should measure against
  • Be able to write strong, gripping copy
  • Create aesthetically pleasing designs
  • Know colours that will work subliminally and consciously to appeal to your market
  • Reduce loading time of your website
  • Use a responsive layout
  • Test new headlines, calls to action and landing pages

Wow…

This is a huge list, and to be honest, it is only the beginning.

Here are a few things you could do yourself to help drop your bounce rate, and increase your conversion rate:

A. Use bullet points and shorter, more powerful sentences
B. Get somebody to review your website and learn from their feedback
C. Write about the benefits that you offer, instead of talking about you and the company

If you prefer to hire proven professionals to do the work…

If you want more information on how you can drop your bounce rate, increase conversions and pull in more customers, our team has a wealth of experience in all facets of online marketing from building powerful websites, through to getting targeted traffic, converting that traffic into sales, and everything in between, including SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and Google AdWords. You can get in contact with us through the contact form, by calling one of our marketing gurus on (07) 3216 1151, or drop by and visit us at our Brisbane CBD office on Creek Street.

Photo Credit (Flickr)