reducing bounce rate

How To Keep Them Clicking: Reducing Bounce Rate

What happens to your web traffic once it lands on your website? Are users dropping-in and bouncing-out of your web pages faster than you can think? Then you need to reduce your bounce rate, and there’s more than one way to skin this cat.

When visitors land on your pages they are looking for something specific.

If you’re following white hat SEO practices then you’re already on the right track, delivering accurate information about your site’s services, products and content.

Unfortunately, even the most concise info and perfectly optimized pages can’t keep your audience interested forever. You need to have follow up materials, exercises and contact options to keep them clicking through the body of your website.

The more pages and features they navigate through means more chances you have at converting that visitor into a sale, or at least capturing their email for a future campaign.

Reducing Your Bounce Rate

It’s not always easy to keep visitors clicking. We have to produce materials that supports the landing pages and keeps our visitors busy. Here’s some of the best tactics to use to reduce your bounce rate:

Calls to Action

One of the best ways to prompt users into clicking more than one page is by having ‘calls to action’ plastered all over your website. These ‘calls to action’ work the same way as ads. They promote a specific product or feature that solves a problem for the user. Let’s say your business offered free consultations. Here’s an example of what the ‘call to action’ might read:

“Contact Us Today for a free Consultation, No Strings Attached”

This ‘call to action’ compels a visitor into literally another action on the website and gives you one more chance to close the sale.

Contact Options a Plenty

Each mind works differently. Therefore there is no way to accurately predict what sort of questions one user will ask compared to the next. No matter how many FAQ documents you create they never seem to answer all the questions.

If you have contact details of multiple types displayed in key positions around your site you’ll give the user the every chance to contact you if they so choose. Having email, phone and social media contact options allows the user to communicate on their terms, their way.

Free Downloads

People love free stuff, especially when that free stuff has some value. Don’t always hold back every little bit of info and innovation your business has stockpiled. Give some of it away in free downloads like PDF’s and eBook’s.

This is a prime example of support material. If you had, for example, a website that sold cellphones, having a downloadable catalog for users on your side bar might entice a few clicks. Every download from a site visitor is one more chance to recapture them as a sale in the future.

Links to Other Pages

As you build pages and blog posts on your website you’ll be creating one piece of material after another. After a while you’ll start to notice that some topics are quite similar or related in some way. This is the perfect opportunity for some internal links.

Let’s say you wrote an article about an upcoming event your business was attending and you had previously written an article on all the events you’ll be attending in the calendar year. What if a customer wants to attend but they don’t have time on the specified date?

Wouldn’t it be nice if they could find out the next event you’ll be attending? You’ve already created the content to solve that problem so link it and reap the benefits.

Ask Questions

It’s always a good idea to engage your audience as much as possible. Asking questions is a good way to get your audience involved.

Use your social media accounts and your blog roll to pose compelling questions to your visitors and let them know you’ll publish the results if you get enough responses. Giving users the ability to effect your site pulls them into the creative process. In time this builds extra leads and online traffic.

Have a Comments Section

People have opinions and they want to be able to express them at the drop of a hat. Give them a chance to say what they want.

Opening up a comments section will expose your business to both criticism and compliments. Take every comment as an opportunity. Positive comments are leads, just waiting for the next free download or blog post, while negative comments are a chance to improve your site and it’s content. Feedback is feedback. Use it to grow.

Keep Learning

Using these simple tasks and tactics will significantly reduce your bounce rate but there are even more ways to cut down on fickle visitors.

How do you reduce your bounce rate? Let us know the best ways to reduce bounce rates that we missed and we’ll add the to our list. Comment below or email us with your ideas.

And here’s some more value from your friends at Canopy Media. Reads these posts and turn your website into a high-traffic hub on the Internet.

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