One of the possible negative consequences of a website receiving more visitors is an increase in the bounce rate. A website’s bounce rate merely expresses how “satisfied” or “dissatisfied” visitors are with the page’s content.
After seeing your page, visitors can depart after a short while. Or, visitors could just visit that page before departing to browse other sections of your website. Less time means fewer opportunities for people to interact with your material, which lowers the likelihood that postings will be converted into purchases, registrations, or even more website clicks.
It’s common knowledge that increasing conversion rate may be achieved by lowering bounce rate. In light of this, there are a few tactics you can do to ensure that your content truly draws in more readers. We outline a few of these options below.
1. Invest in readability and design
How many times have you visited a website with the intention of reading content and changed your mind when you realized that the font of the text was not legible, that the design of the page was not pleasant or that the visual clutter, with ads, banners and other calls to action, were distracting you too much? Believe me, this happens to everyone, every day.
Providing a fun reading experience is the first step in keeping visitors on your website. Users are turned off by poorly designed material that features long text blocks, is devoid of graphics and videos, and has an excessive number of pop-ups and adverts.
For this reason, invest in readability. The idea is that you don’t disturb – or disturb the reader as little as possible – during the time they are on the page. Offer hooks (links) so that they can visit other content, but do so in a natural, organic and non-invasive way.
2. Know your target audience
Content creation should always have a persona in mind, that is, an idealization of your target audience. It is common for many companies to adopt a “shoot in all directions” strategy, producing content capable of hooking users. Many even use click bait to do so.
What happens in these cases is that the user enters your website – thus increasing the number of visits – but quickly realizes that it was not at all what he was looking for. As a result, he immediately leaves the website, taking your bounce rate to even higher levels.
The solution, therefore, is to create content with a specific audience in mind. Your posts should be complete and explanatory, not vague or just use keywords to attract readers and nothing else. Be useful to your reader, give them reasons to continue browsing your site.
3. Create landing pages based on high-value traffic
Landing pages are the pages that users use to get to your website. Some of them probably work better as a gateway for visitors than others. Choose at least the twenty best pages on your website and turn them into landing pages.
What does this mean? That the user experience on these pages should have your full attention. Insert links to other relevant terms, check for broken links, and enhance the page by adding audiovisual elements that make the content richer.
You can become a reference on a topic with a well-designed landing page. The more landing pages your website has, the better. Work with your digital marketing team to build a strategy of keywords and relevant content that will increase your conversion rate.
4. Credibility is key: earn it
We live in a time when the spread of fake news has transformed the reputation of many websites. In addition, click bait strategies, that is, attracting clicks with headlines that do not correspond to the content, are widely disseminated on social networks, which has made users more suspicious.
Avoid easy solutions and shortcuts that seem “too good to be true.” Enticing a user by promising them something and not delivering may inflate the number of page views on your site, but it will certainly increase the bounce rate as a whole.
Even worse, the chances of a user falling for this trick a second time on your page are slim. Not only will you lose a reader at that moment, but you will probably lose them forever if you keep using the same strategy. So make it clear to the searcher what information they will find on the page.
