One of the key indicators of your Inbound Marketing strategy is the bounce rate. This lets you know if your site is welcoming if it makes you want to know more and if it is ergonomic enough. It is common to say that a rebound rate higher than 30% is the bad sign, but it depends clearly on your activity, the input page, and your goals.
To help you better measure the bounce rate and understand its issues in the Inbound Marketing strategy, we offer today a point on this important metric.
The definition of the bounce rate
The bounce rate is a statistical indicator that lets you know the number of visitors who left your website after only viewed one page. This indicator provides valuable information about the attractiveness of your content.
To study it, you must be interested in the first page visited by the surfer. It is from this that you can check if it has opened other pages of the site or if it immediately fled.
Know also that the bounce rate can be studied at two levels: at the entire site or a specific page. Why is it important to differentiate between the two? If the visitor falls on your homepage, he is normally required to continue his visit. It should not be content with this page. Conversely, if the user lands on your “Contact” page after typing “phone number” + the name of your business on Google, it is normal for the user to leave your site immediately, Information sought.
How to interpret the bounce rate?
The interpretation of the bounce rate will depend on two factors: the type of site (institutional, blog, e-commerce, ..) and the landing page.
In general, visitors to e-commerce want to have detailed information about the product they need. For this, they generally consult several pages (the cards, the presentation page of the product, the delivery details …) before choosing to leave the site or to buy. This is why an online store should have a bounce rate very low (between 20 and 40%). If this rate exceeds the threshold of 50%, this indicates that the site is not attractive or that its content does not necessarily correspond to the expectations of Internet users. This can also be a sign of poor positioning SEO that does not attract qualified traffic.
On the other hand, a blog or an institutional site may have a higher bounce rate (about 70%). Internet users tend to read an article they find interesting or just look for the information they need. They do not need to look at multiple pages, which results in a higher bounce rate. This is also taking into account this setting you have to build your Inbound Marketing strategy in order to retain these visitors or at least encourage them to act only on the page they’re viewing.
However, the bounce rate is not relevant enough to inform about the behavior of visitors to a website. It will, therefore, associate with other statistical indicators to really optimize your conversion funnel and your Inbound Marketing levers.
The techniques to retain visitors on your site
If you find that your bounce rate is too high and you want users not just to visit a single page or a single article, here are 6 steps to take right now on your website:
1. Provide useful content for your target audience
Interesting content is the basis of the attractiveness of your site! It captures the attention of your visitors and encourages them to visit other pages of the site to learn more. Decrease bounce rate, therefore, requires the implementation of an editorial strategy that meets perfectly the needs of your buyer’s persona.
2. Making your landing page more attractive
A landing page attractive features a sleek design, shock-formulas that take the issue that attracted the customer to your website and a visible call-to-action. If this page stack meets the expectations of the target, then it must push your visitors to perform an additional action on your site.
3. Reduce page load time
A page that takes too long to load will annoy the user who will leave your site before reading a single line of text.
4. Place Calls to Action
If you want the visitor to take the time to discover several pages, encourage with the call-to-action. Invite him to download a guide, which will make him visit another link, suggest to him to know more by linking another page of the site, etc.
5. Suggest similar articles
At the bottom of your articles, please offer similar items that will push the reader to visit other pages and especially to learn more about your activities or your expertise.
6. Open external links in a new tab
This little tip helps to prevent visitors from leaving your site unintentionally because you will have quoted your sources and put a link to an external site. At least it will open in another tab that the users will be able to consult while remaining on your site.
Always think about analyzing your bounce rate to ensure that your content matches your target’s expectations and that your conversion funnel is relevant. By implementing a few simple steps, you can keep your visitors longer and above all increase your chances of converting them into prospects.