Category: Tips

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What to Do About a High Bounce Rate Part Two

High Bounce Rate – Continued from Monday April 3, 2017.

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McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.

Dealing with a high bounce rate on your website? Here are my recommendations for what to do to try to solve the problem.

 

First, don’t get spun up. Not every page needs to have a low bounce rate of 40% to 65%. I have found that blog posts and informational articles, which may be driving traffic to your website, may also have a high bounce rate.

If this is the case, I recommend the following actions:

Put the page to work for you. Feature your newsletter subscription link, video links, and even AdSense advertising ads on those high traffic, yet high bounce rate pages. Understand that they are doorways into your site and work to market your own site on these pages with banners, icons, and interactivity like video embeds.

Second, if you have content and service pages that are really meaningful to your business and they have a bounce rate in the high 70%’s, I would tag them for a content review.

If this is the case, I recommend the following actions:

Review your meta tags, you may be getting traffic that is not targeted to your page content. Review your meta title and meta description tags. Do they make sense based on the content of the page? Should they be updated to be more reflective of what the reader will find when they click in?

Review your page content with a careful eye for detail. Are you supplying content that is engaging or just supplying information. Do you have a call to action on the page, do you have links to your contact form, are you using an app like Drift to get the person online chatting with you, are you addressing a pain point and supplying solutions with related information on other pages drawing the reader in farther to your content?

Are you driving untargeted Google AdWords traffic to your page and paying for a click where what you are offering on your page does not match keywords that are being triggered? As AdWords experts find out more about our programs to solve this issue.

We offer professional by the hour content consulting and website content writing services. I invite you to visit my website to learn more about how we can help you to lower a high bounce rate on your website.

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What to Do About a High Bounce Rate Part One

Bounce rate is determined to be high if it is over 75%, however there can be acceptable reasons for a high bounce rate, but a high bounce rate does  require careful review.

What is the Bounce Rate?

What's your page bounce rate? Is it too high?
What’s your page bounce rate? Is it too high?

The bounce rate is recorded for you in Google Analytics by page in the Behavior section > Site Content section, and as a site average on the overview page.

 

Several years ago the average and target bounce rate for a good website was 46.9%. Now with more users on mobile devices, the bounce rate has skyrocketed.

Google states that this drastic change to bounce rate is due in part to the fact that mobile users may start a search on your site and move to a desktop to finish up a review or purchase. Page views have also decreased in this same time period from over 3 or so pages viewed per session to now about 1.5 pages per session – all driven by mobile activity.

Identifying a High Bounce Rate

To address a website’s high bounce rate, knowledge is power.  First, it is important to understand what causes a high bounce rate.

  1. You’ll get a high bounce rate if the page content does not engage the reader. This is a good flag to review your page and consider additions, video, additional links to other information.
  2. You’ll get a high bounce rate if the content is not what the reader was looking for. This is a good flag to review your content, your meta tags, and your paid advertising.
  3. You’ll get a high bounce rate if you supplied the content the reader wanted and they had no need to go further. It is not uncommon to see how bounce rates on articles and blog posts.

What Should You Do Next?

You’ll want to look at the pages that have a high bounce rate score and identify if changes should be done to the content. Check out my Wednesday post this week for the continuation of this article.

 

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Drift – Much More Than a Messaging App – Part Two

Continued from Wednesday.

The Drift messaging app for websites is on target with my needs.
The Drift messaging app for websites is on target with my needs.

Implementation of the Drift code on my website, to enable clients to use the app, took under five minutes, as I use header includes.

As I have tested out the application, I have found that it sends emails to the user to remind them of their appointment with you and also saves their email in the Drift application.

So, my concern with getting the prospect’s phone number in the initial conversation with the bot is moot. As the appointment approaches, I  can directly contact the client and make calling arrangements on my own. I can even communicate using the email link for appointment confirmation via the Drift app to ask for the phone number.

Drift has a mobile app which allows you to respond to website messages while you are out of the office and on the go. Talk about instant communication!

Once the appointment is scheduled by the prospect, within seconds the appointment appeared in my own Google Calendar. I was even able to select my own Google category for incoming calls so they would be marked and colored properly in my calendar.

I have to say that the Drift app has some very nice new features that I have not seen before in other calendaring or messaging apps. I do like some of the automation features and the ability to interact with prospects immediately when they really have a question while they are sitting on my website.

I do recommend that you check out the free version of Drift. At the very minimum, you will have a really nice website chat app and if you upgrade, you will get some really nice features that are unique to Drift – like the bot, team settings, and auto response functions.

 

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Drift – Much More Than a Messaging App – Part One

Nancy McCord
“Just Nancy” – My Point of View for Today.

Drift , it’s not what you would expect. This new application is much more than a simple messaging app. It is a robust website and lead generating tool you embed right in your website code.

Yes messaging and online chat is what it does, but the paid version (although pricey for the month  about $50), really puts your website to work.

First, know that their site does not work in Internet Explorer (the site will appear like a blank screen where nothing loads), but definitely works in Google Chrome.

Second, know that I am not being paid for this review. I just like the app and am interested in using it for my own website. The team at Drift asked me to look at their app as I am a user of Calendly and have written about that app before on my blog.

You can check out my online Drift profile.

You can check out my Drift online scheduling app.

View Drift in action on my website.

Here’s what I like about Drift – (I am using the free version.)

It is relatively easy to use. I did full customization of my Drift account, messages, and profiles in about 30 to 40 minutes. I was able to add my bio, image, social media profiles and company information. It was not hard and they have some really nice tutorials you can watch on YouTube.

I was able to customize the apps colors to match my website. You are offered font colors and even font styles to help you make it match your website.

I was able to customize most of the messages that clients see. Not only could I choose what the chat bubbles would say when I was online and offline, but I could select the days and hours to be available. The paid version will match your availability of your Google Calendar and does have other very nice features.

They have a very neat bot that helps to book your online appointments. I thought that was actually very cool. I wished that the free service had at least one or two options to customize bot messages, like when scheduling an appointment making sure to ask for the prospect for their phone number.

Now the paid version has a robust use of the bot and I can think of many uses for that feature. If you are running an ecommerce store you can preload FAQ’s for the bot to answer to help users and save your team time. That is very cool!

Check back on Wednesday for more of my candid thoughts and review on Drift.