Beating that Bounce Rate by Having a Taste for Details

What does Pollen Street Social have in common with Dabbous?

No, these two are not characters from some obscure fictional novel. They’re actually popular London restaurants, offering customers an exquisite dining experience. By the latter, we mean long queues at the front door and of course, haute cuisine.

 Regarded as the traditional method of French food preparation, haute cuisine is characterised by numerous techniques and fresh ingredients. The meals are served in multiple courses, in portions that are undoubtedly tiny, in comparison to, say, a full English breakfast. Presentation is also an important factor. Now, you probably know why meals prepared in this manner cost so much.

Yet, you might also ask, “Why do people wait for months just to book a table”? Yes, the food is delicious. Then again, fish and chips with a pint of lager will fill you up just as well. The key here, my friends, lies in the experience.

Attention to Detail is Essential, Especially Online

In fancy restaurants, you get to enjoy great food in a beautiful setting. The chefs at the helm of these famous food spots are meticulous, especially when it comes to details.

In the digital world, having a great website also requires that you have an eye for detail. This is great not only because it’s visually appealing, but also because it helps users find what they are looking for, whether its information or actual merchandise.

Surprisingly enough, it’s much easier to create a stunning layout and design than produce a useful and intuitive website. Many business owners and developers seem to think that good looks are enough to keep viewers hooked. Their sites inevitably fall prey to a high bounce rate.

Learning about Bounce Rates

So, what exactly is a bounce rate? It is the percentage of people who “bounced off” a site’s web page.

Let’s say you were planning to make pasta with Béchamel sauce for dinner. You go online to find a recipe for roux, which is made by combining whole-wheat flour and butter. This mixture forms a base for sauces in traditional French cooking. A few minutes of searching become fruitful when you come across a web page with detailed instructions. You print it and close the site.

Since you logged out without browsing through the site’s other pages, you technically bounced off that website.

Getting the desired information is one of the reasons many websites have a high bounce rate. Others are the following:

• All of the website’s sections can be found on one page (single-page sites)
• A site visitor loses interest because the website doesn’t offer valuable information
• A website is visually unappealing

Reducing bounce rate on high traffic web pages is essential so there’s a greater chance for conversion. After all, a website’s primary goal is to attract visitors and keep them interested.

Ways to Bring Down Bounce Rate

If your analytics tool indicates a bounce rate of 70%, here are some things you can do to bring that figure down.

1. Use pop-ups only when necessary

2. Mind load time of your site’s pages (no more than 10 seconds)

3. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly

4. Enhance your website’s usability (i.e. easy to read fonts)

5. Avoid blatantly obvious messages

6. Remove or scale down intrusive adverts

7. Do not forget to add a search box on prominent areas of your site’s pages

8. Create a helpful 404 page

9. See to it that external links open on a new window

10. Provide value-laden content with appropriate keywords.

Finally, keep in mind that the process of reducing bounce rate is subjective. There is no magic spell that will mesmerise visitors. Just as Pollen Street Social’s cosy dining area is different from the industrial design of Dabbou’s interiors, no two websites have exactly the same goals.

About the Guest Author:

Richard Eaves is a Digital Marketing Specialist at Smart Traffic, which is an SEO company based in the UK. He oversees more than 300 campaigns for clients in Australia, Thailand, and other countries worldwide