Written by: Savannah Brunette
What Is Bounce Rate & How Can I Fix It?
Bounce rate represents the percentage of visitors who visit your website and then navigate away from it after only viewing one page. In other words, they see your website but don’t interact with it at all. Is this a bad thing? In most cases, high percentages of visitors leaving your website without taking any action should tell you there is room for improvement!
As an advisor, you want prospects to read about your services, visit your contact page, and spend more time on your website. You want the right people to find your website and for them to be engaged when they get there. This benefits your SEO and increases your chances of gaining leads.
We recommend financial advisors aim to have their bounce rate between 40-60%. There’s no one-size-fits-all fix for bounce rates, but knowing what they are and how they can inform your marketing strategy can help ensure your website’s success.
So you just checked your Google Analytics and your bounce rate is too high. Now what? We have some tips on how to fix it!
How To Decrease Your Bounce Rate
1. ENSURE YOUR WEBSITE IS MOBILE FRIENDLY
You’re probably already aware that mobile internet use will continue to increase in the coming years. Statista found there no sign of this trend stopping, as its projected that global mobile data traffic is projected to increase nearly sevenfold between 2016 and 2021. To be blunt, if your website is not mobile friendly , you are behind! The longer you wait to make this change, the more business you are handing over to the competition.
Not only is a responsive website important to the way your design looks on different devices, but it is important to its functionality. If you haven’t gone mobile friendly yet, visitors probably can’t navigate to other pages, therefore they can’t find your contact info, their loading time is likely to be significantly slower, and they may not be able to view your website at all on updated popular browsers.
With most visitors deriving from a device other than a desktop, you want to create a consistent experience and brand across all screens and make it easy for them to explore your website. Want to see if your website is mobile friendly? Am I Responsive is an awesome tool to check.
2. CHECK OUT YOUR BOUNCE RATE PER SOURCE
Your bounce rate already says a lot about your website but Google Analytics lets you dive much deeper. If you check out the bounce rate per source, you can take a closer look. It shows you where visitors are coming from and the bounce rate for each source.
Let’s say you see a high bounce rate for visitors landing on your website from Facebook. You may also see a high bounce rate for visitors finding your website through an email , maybe a campaign you recently sent out. You can infer that something is wrong so break it down. Is your messaging misleading? Are you linking to the right page? Maybe your marketing is successful at attracting visitors but they’re not as impressed with your website and leave abruptly.
You can leverage this tool to gain insight into the channels people use to find your business and how to could improve their experience.
3. AVOID UNNECESSARY DISRUPTIONS
Having distractions on your website can drive visitors away in a heart beat. Pop-ups can give your visitors a bad experience and ruin your chances of gaining leads and creating relationships . Now, we’re not saying all pop-ups are bad, but there is definitely a right and wrong way to use them.
If you’re bombarding your readers with pop-ups, the easy solution is to stop overloading them and change the settings a bit. Place them strategically, not on every page. Logical pages you could think about adding them are on the homepage, where most visitors arrive first, or on the resources or contact page. To reduce your bounce rate, you can also reduce how frequently they show up and limit pop-ups to once a week per unique visitor.
It’s not always the pop-up functionality that makes people leave your website; sometimes its the design of the pop-up. To make sure the users continue to navigate your website even after a pop-up, do not use full-screen pop-ups and allow the user to still view your website in the background. You may know from your own experience how annoying it is to not see a clear “X” when you want to close a pop-up so don’t forget it on your own website!
Pop-ups are a great tool to generate leads , but there’s no doubt they can be a distraction. Once you make this improvement, visitors will stay focused on exploring your website and you’ll notice improvement in your bounce rate as well.
4. UNDERSTAND YOUR CONTENT DRILL DOWN
You’re content is the heart of the website, and when the heart isn’t working, neither is the rest of the body. You’re beautiful design may draw visitors to your website but your content and copy is what keeps them locked in craving more. Not only should your content be well written, but it should be engaging and include CTAs to provoke action.
Related: The Top 10 Blogging Mistakes Advisors Make
Google Analytics has a great tool that can help you better understand your content. Content drill down allows to you see which pages of your website are experiencing the highest and lowest bounce rates. Once you’ve determined that, you can analyze why pages are doing well or not well. Understanding what you’re doing poorly will help you make improvements, but don’t miss the opportunity to also understand what you’re doing right!
You may see that pages with more images or broken up text have a lower bounce rate. Something you’ll come to realize is the power of CTAs or backlinks, as they make it so much easier for visitors to interact with your website and significantly reduce the bounce rate. Look to pages that are doing well to find features that will make your entire website more engaging.
5. KEEP YOUR BLOG CONTENT FRESH
According to Brite Kite , businesses that update their blogs with fresh content regularly will generate 126% more leads more than those who don’t. However, it’s important to note that this content is not only new, but also high quality. By creating well written, trending blog posts that are tailored for your audience, readers are more likely to explore other pages and blog posts of your website.
Now you’ve created a some great pieces, but readers want more! People are visiting your website and reading your blog because they need advice and they are using you as a resource. If they check back and there is nothing new, they will eventually stop coming back. This is a great opportunity to create a relationship over time as you create content they want to read. Even if they’re not ready to work with you yet, every blog post they read is one step closer to setting up their first meeting.
By adding fresh content to your blog on a consistent basis, we recommend 2-3 times a week for advisors, you showcase your expertise, build momentum, and establish trust. Prospects will visit your website more often, interact with it, and decrease your bounce rate.
6. KNOW YOUR NICHE
If you haven’t already narrowed in on a target market, it may seem like a big step just to decrease your bounce rate. That’s because it is! This is a huge step in the right direction and it’s vital to your entire business, not just your website statistics.
When you establish your niche , you know exactly what types of content prospects are seeking and can better provide the information they’re looking for. You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends to find current popular words and topics. After writing a blog post with them in mind, you have better chances of appearing in your prospect’s search results and keeping their interest.
Tailoring your website and overarching brand to your niche is a great way to step up your game and engage visitors. Your readers are more likely to visit other pages and blog posts when the information has been made just for them, thus decreasing your bounce rate.