Reducing Bounce Rate

In early July, I attended the second annual “Search Engine Boot Camp” held in Auckland.  I enjoy listening to the presenters and gain a sense of how they communicate to what should best be classified as “potential customers”.  Let’s face it; they are presenting to Banks, Airlines, and major Retailers, a great opportunity to impress…

I sat in on a Google Analytics presentation from someone who has a successful online consulting business to major brands both in New Zealand and Australia.  I would be lying if I told you it was a worth while 60 minutes. 
   
In the presentation he spoke of Bounce Rate (visitors arriving on your website and immediately leaving without selecting any other pages): 

“The bounce rate of your website is relevant; however there is no true industry benchmark.  You should establish your own internal benchmark by way of the site wide average, and then focus your efforts on those pages with bounce rates which exceed that average.  For example if your site wide bounce rate is 50%, focus on those pages which are greater.”

You could knock me over with a feather!  Our interpretation of bounce rate management is very different. 

Benchmarking

The “Bounce Rate” statement is indicative of websites which do not have clear goals.   Any website with a purpose would not be pleased with page bounce rates of over 20%.  There does need to be a certain level of acceptance for “tire kickers”. 

For eCommerce, any page with a high bounce rate which influences the visitor buying process is a high priority.  For example, eCommerce catalogue pages introducing a specific product range is a common page to drive traffic.  This is a key in influencing visitors to move from one page to another helping them achieve their goals.   
  
If your website has pages with a bounce rate of 20%, you are fundamentally moving 80% of new visitors on to the next step of their buying or information gathering process.
 
When you reach the 20% bounce rate level it is time to move on to Multivariate Testing.

Building a proper strategy around correcting bounce rate depends on many things.

PPC Influences

It is common for websites to be engaged in a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign.  Poorly managed PPC campaigns define the type of traffic being sent to websites and can heavily influence bounce rates.  Something as simple as poor PPC ad creative can deliver unqualified traffic to websites resulting in high bounce rates.
  
Incorrectly managing the PPC spend can put greater weight into less qualified traffic.

It is very normal for the home page to have an extremely high bounce rate, but this does not suggest changes need to be made to it.  Significant drops in bounce rate have been achieved through redirecting PPC traffic to other pages deeper within the site, increasing the relevancy of the visitors search requirements. 

The Importance of Interpreting Bounce Rates

The source of traffic could be flawed.  We had a client drive 30,000 unqualified visitors to a good landing page, however, the bounce rate for the page was 90%.  This was not a reflection of the page; it was a reflection of traffic quality.

Best Practice – Reducing Bounce Rate

Pay Per Click Audit

Conduct an audit on the management of your PPC campaign.  There are companies who specialise in pay per click strategies and can turn non performing campaigns into performing campaigns very quickly.

Measure

Invest in Website Analytics.  Find a company who specialises in the installation of analytics and who can analyse visitor behaviour.  Art Neilson (founder of AC Neilson) stated, “The price of light is lower than the cost of darkness”.  That says it all.  If you can’t determine your bounce rate, why are you reading this article?!

Increase Relevancy

Reducing bounce rate relies on your ability to be always thinking of ways to improve relevancy to visitors.  Always ask yourself,

“If a visitor types specific keywords into Google and lands on this page, what are they looking for?  What do they want to see and read?  What is in it for them?  What do I want them to do next?” 

If you can establish this continuous improvement culture for your website (like you probably due for your physical business) then having your site wide bounce rate below 20% is achievable.
 
Landing Pages

One extremely effective method in reducing bounce rate is the creation of landing pages. Landing pages provide the opportunity to create relevant copy and images on page where you are certain specific traffic will be guided to.  Landing pages in combination of a professionally run PPC campaign can prove to be a very profitable strategy.  If landing pages are strategically laid out, with images and good copy, it is very common to have bounce rates below 10%.

What to prioritise

It is obvious to begin with pages which have the highest amount of traffic, but be careful, once the PPC campaign is managed properly, many highly trafficked pages reduce in bounce rate without doing anything.
 
Analyse where all your unbranded traffic is landing.  Unbranded traffic represents new business.  If you have visitors coming to your website for the first time, you want to make sure you keep them long enough to build credibility.   Identify the pages where this type of traffic is landing and make sure those pages are effective in retaining visitors long enough for them to move on to the next stage of either a purchase or further information gathering.

I would like to close with an interesting side note.  The Google Analytics speaker used his website as the example in the presentation.  His website had a site wide bounce rate of 55%.  I should have given him my card.