You might get all the right content and keywords on your website. You’ve got great design that even looks good on mobile devices. You’ve even dabbled some in pay-per-click ads to get more people over to your travel site.
One day, you go take a look at your analytics stats, just to get an idea of who’s coming to your site, from where, how long they’re staying, etc.
Uh-oh…
Some percentage called “bounce rate” looks a little high. And in this case, a greater number isn’t something to celebrate. As defined from Google Analytics, this is defined as:
the percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).
What does this look like? It’s when a person goes to your site, takes a look at the one page, then leaves. He doesn’t click to another one, or clicks on one of your links. She doesn’t sign up for your awesome report or subscribe to your blog. They just leave like the garbage blown away in a stiff breeze. Doggone it!
You definitely don’t want this to happen too often, because this will affect your search engine rankings and how people will find you when they look for your travel company…and your competition’s.
So how do you prevent the evil bounce rate force from wrecking your best-laid online marketing plans?
Neil Patel, the founder of SEO resource site KissMetrics, posted this very useful entry on the HubSpot blog. He created five strategies that aren’t what you’d usually find out there, the “no B.S.” approach as it were. Here they are:
1.) Know who’s visiting your site
You want to know where your visitors are coming from. This means you have to ask the question: are they new or returning visitors? You can get that answer from checking out your analytics. Knowing the answer to this question will help you figure out what copy to write, what offers to showcase and what visuals to include. Plus you just have understand what your prospect is all about – how are they searching, what do they like, why do they want to go on your vacation, etc.
2.) Know what your visitors want
This involves getting some juicy keywords that you know your audience is using when looking for “adventure travel vacations” or “active travel trips”- or whatever words they’re typing into their search engine fields to find you. You’ll have to either learn yourself or find someone (the more preferred way) to research those keywords, so you can focus on doing the fun stuff with your business. The other part of this is just looking at your customer feedback, paying attention to what they’re wanting more or less of.
3.) Pour everything you’ve got into user experience (UX)
Now, don’t run away (or worse, leave this post)! All user experience, or UX, is just making your site easy for your visitors to use. That’s all it is. Patel says they need to “feel comfortable, confident, and clear when they’re on your website.” Here’s how get there:
- Include all the important information (“the good stuff”) above the fold, or in that first display screen on each page.
- Have easy-to-follow navigation, where the menu bar is where it’s expected (usually at the top or on the left-hand side)
- Look like a pro, which means have the best website design you can afford, and not a DIY job.
4.) Make them click
Here, you need to give visitors a reason to be on your site. That means including a call to action on EVERY page, not just your direct sales pages. It can also be something as simple as a “read more” link. Patel calls this optimization for conversions, which translates to getting them to go further on your site. You’ll also have to make sure you have links on the areas your visitors look at most, or the “hot zones.” These areas include any visual content, your navigation bar, and the upper left corners of your pages.
5.) Go beyond mobile-friendly
Mobile, schmobile. You’ve heard that you HAVE to make your website good for displaying on any device, whether it’s a laptop, smartphone or tablet. And you’ve might’ve done that with getting in on responsive design. Great! But now you’ll have to make sure your site usable on a mobile device, too. Think about how some text and graphics gets squeezed and distorted and weird-looking. Make sure that doesn’t happen on your awesome travel site.
What have you done to curb your website’s bounce rate? Share your thoughts below!
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