We need to reduce our websites bounce rate- can your agency help?

Introduction

Okay, so when you’re on the phone chatting away to your marketing agency, they might be stating that their planning on building links, writing content marketing, making sure the onsite seo is spot on, so the general theme here is to add.

That’s to say, add work, so why then did they mention that they plan on reducing your bounce rate, what does this even mean? And why does it need to be reduced?

Well, this is a fairly common question that our Bristol marketing agency gets asked, that is, why should a bounce rate be reduced, and what methods do you use to reduce it?

Well, this article will explain all:

First things first- what does “bounce rate” even mean?

Okay, so a bounce rate simply means this, its expressed as a percentage of how many visitors landed on a page or a post on your website, then didn’t click through to another link.

The easiest way to explain this is to provide an example, let’s say that you run a company that sells coffee machines, your based in Bristol, you have a warehouse flooded with machines, yet you need to increase your online sales.

Now, what you are wondering is, why does the homepage for your coffee machine company have a 94% bounce rate?

Why are 94% of visitors to the homepage then not clicking onto the pages that actually sell coffee machines? Why are they then leaving the website, now this is a question that your web designers and your seo agencies need to answer, and as you would expect there’s a million and one reasons, it could be due to the company website being very slow, so as you can imagine, when someone is say sitting on a train, coming to Bristol, well, there not going to wait very long for a company’s website to load, before they simply click the back button, and possibly make a purchase elsewhere.

Make your website simply better

Okay, easier said than done, we do admit that.

But here’s the thing, you need to sit down with your web designers, and also your SEO agency, you need to start thinking down these lines, that is, what is the competition doing, and how can you do it better.

Sounds simple, right?

Well, not really, whether your selling hyper cars in Bristol or birthday cakes, what you will find is that companies will have got used to ranking on the first page of Google in Bristol, and they’ve got there because they’ve forked a lot out on advertising, and have become very good at what they do, so often, its never a walk in the park that’s for sure.

Customers first, SEO second

Its quite a common mistake, that’s for a business to obsess about improving their organic seo, but not actually see the wood for the trees- so what do we actually mean by this?

Well, what we mean is, if you focus on offering the best experience for your customers, so for example, making your companies website easy to use, offering the best advice you can for customers, in terms of detailed product descriptions, and you aim to answer as many FAQ’s as you can, well, what this means is that, you will be helping your customers, which means that they are likely to spend longer on say your e-commerce website, which will in turn lower your bounce rate.

So, what should you aim to do? Well, our advice is simple, help your customers as much as possible, yet, at the same time, whatever SEO you are working on, make sure that it follows Google’s WebMaster Guidelines.

Why should a marketing agency aim to reduce a bounce rate?

Well, it’s a bit like opening a café / coffee shop somewhere in Bristol, and having say 500 customers per day, but only half make a purchase, the other half look at the shop, and then walk straight out, if this occurred, you would want to why.

This is the same with your companies website, that’s to say, if your Google Analytics account, is saying the homepage has a 99% bounce rate, well, this should be looked into, as you could be losing customers.

Google’s algorithm and also “user experience”

A lot of various agencies think that “user experience” seo signals, such as bounce rates, and how long a shopper spends on your site, are now part of the algorithm, simply meaning some companies believe that these factors could influence where your website ranks.

This stands to reason, if you run a company, lets say you sell skiing equipment, and on one website the average shopper spends 50 seconds on the site, yet business number 2, well, the average shopper there spends over 10 minutes browsing skis, ski-jackets, goggles, snow shoes, and also clothing, well its clear that business 2, where the shopper is spending longer browsing the products, is better serving the shopper who’s looking to purchase skiing equipment for their up-coming vacation.

Why some agencies, including ours believe websites are ranked according to user experience, and could this be Google’s RankBrains job?  

We think that the websites that rank on the first page of Google, well, they are normally the businesses that offer the best service to a customer, so for example, may have some of the following strengths:

-Load’s quickly

-Easy to get to the right products, even if the shop stocks thousands

-Offers advice

The businesses that don’t offer the best service, well, often the shopper will quickly leave, because they haven’t found an answer to their question, so they leave to make a purchase else where.