beach ball bouncing

Landing pages are a crucial part of your client’s websites. If they’re not performing, it’s time to look ways to improve bounce rate. When considering the success or failure of a landing page, the main metric is bounce rate. That is the number of visitors who land on the page but then disappear without a trace.

If optimizing landing pages is not one of the focuses of your marketing agency, but you still want to provide this service to your clients, you can always use white label web design services.

Getting people to a client’s landing page takes effort. Whether they arrive via social media, a Google search or a marketing campaign, every visitor to your client’s site comes as a result of time, effort and (possibly) money your clients have invested in getting them there. But at that point, your work is only half done.

The landing page gets its name from the fact that it is the place that new visitors to your clients’ sites “land”. But that term is deceiving and fails to acknowledge the purpose of the page. Indeed, a more appropriate name for it is a “lead capture page” or a “conversion page.” After all, the main functions of it are to either capture data such as email addresses for future marketing campaigns or to entice the visitor to a sales or booking page.

What Is a Good Bounce Rate?

This is not an easy question to answer, because it depends on the purpose of your client’s site and what they hope to achieve from their landing page.

If, for example, the landing page is advertising a music festival, the intention may be to capture email addresses and other contact details. But users may simply want to know where and when the event takes place. In this case, a high bounce rate (a large percentage of visitors not staying on the page or providing contact information) may not necessarily be a bad thing. Your client’s event may still attract a decent crowd, and there will be other opportunities to capture data at the event.

If, however, your client runs an ecommerce site and their landing page is part of a sales funnel intended to sell a product online, a high bounce rate is an indication that their landing page is not working.

As a rough guide, a bounce rate of between 26%-40% is considered pretty good and anything above 70% is considered poor. The most important factor in determining bounce rate success is to think about it realistically while planning campaigns, designing a website or creating a landing page.

Think about how many people your client is targeting altogether with their campaign. How many are expected to click-through to the landing page, and how many will realistically follow the CTA? Average figures for any industry can be obtained from Google when first starting out with tracking landing page success for your clients. Predictions and analyses become easier with experience.

Practical Tips for Improving Bounce Rate

This is where we get to the nitty gritty of your clients’ landing page. Some of the information contained below will be relevant when creating their landing page, but this article is predominantly focused on ways to improve an existing landing page that is not performing.

1. Design Landing Pages That Work on Mobile and Desktop

These days, most people use smartphones to access the Internet. So, the first thing to check is that your client’s landing page is compatible with mobile devices. If it isn’t, there may be a quick fix.

It’s worth noting, also, that mobile devices are used on breaks, train journeys and when people are quickly scrolling when they should be working. If your client is deploying a direct marketing campaign and wants people to follow a link, click at the landing page and then buy straight away, almost all their business will be from mobile devices.

Whatever updates are required to make your client’s website more effective, white label web design services are the ideal solution for bespoke designs and improvements that will resonate with the intended audience.

2. Find Your Website’s Friction Points

Data is crucial here. It’s essential that you have an analytics tool to take an in-depth look at how your client’s site is performing. Google analytics is free to set up and provides detailed insights into site performance. If you don’t have an analytics tool, your first step must be to find one and start using it.

Once you have your analytics tool set up, you will be able to clearly see which pages have the highest bounce rates. The first thing to look at is whether it really is the landing page that is the problem. It might be that your client’s landing page is doing what it should but that their sales page has an unusually high bounce rate. If this is the case, your focus should be on improving their sales page.

One of the key pieces of data to consider when reviewing your client’s landing page bounce rate is how visitors arrive there.

Are they getting most visitors from Twitter but using a landing page that would appeal more to their LinkedIn audience? While any marketing campaign should be broadly consistent, the message needs to be adapted slightly for each section of your client’s target market, and you may just need to tweak their landing page to appeal to their visitors.

You should also compare landing page bounce rate with that of your client’s homepage, for example. If they’re achieving a better bounce rate from their homepage – or any other page on their site – what is it about those pages that is compelling users to follow the CTA?

The more you analyze the data, the more comfortable you will become with interpreting it and translating it into actions. Each time you change something about your client’s site, document it and track the results. This will be invaluable in developing your marketing knowledge.

Of course, analyzing and understanding the data isn’t all you need to do.

3. Make Sure Your Client’s Landing Page Is Not Deceptive

Does your client’s landing page follow the click-through logically? When a user clicks on a post or an ad and is sent to a landing page, they have an expectation of what to expect. That expectation comes from the content of the original post.

If the landing page they arrive on is not consistent with the original post, users are likely to leave quickly. With so many online options when it comes to any interaction, one thing Internet users are not known for is their patience.

Your client’s landing page should be simple and give users exactly what they want and nothing more. Too much text or a lot going on with too many videos or flashing images will not impress anybody.

Use a simple, brand-consistent image, an obvious headline (this is not the time for being clever), and a clear call to action with a large button that tells the visitor exactly what you want from them in as few words as possible.

If you’re struggling to condense the message or CTA, get in touch with a white label web design services company to discuss how to get that landing page converting.

4. Improve Targeting

Visitors who land on your client’s page with no interest in buying their product or service can send the bounce rate sky high and skew the results. A high bounce rate – particularly above 70% – may be an indication that their whole sales funnel and marketing technique needs to be revamped.

If their campaign has been poorly put together, is outdated or is targeting the wrong audience, no amount of tinkering with the landing page is going to improve results.

An excessively high bounce rate will often require a root and branches review of their entire marketing strategy:

  • Do they really know who their customers are?
  • Where is the digital space their customers spend their time?
  • Is their marketing targeted at that space?
  • Is it appropriate for that space?
  • Is their content engaging?
  • What are their most successful competitors doing that your client is not?

If the campaign was not properly thought out from the beginning, stoically ploughing on with it is unlikely to change anything. There is no shame in recognizing things need to change and implementing those changes. Being able to guide your clients through a process that improves their bounce rate is likely to impress them and help to improve customer experience and your retention rates.

5. Boost the Site’s Speed

Is there anything more frustrating than a slow-loading page? Sure, it’s a first-world problem – but it’s one that Internet users won’t tolerate.

The easiest way to check the speed of your client’s landing page is to use your own phone and follow the link. Is it fast enough in your opinion? Would you be happy as a user? If not, boosting their site speed is an option.

You can use tools like Google PageSpeed to get more accurate results and to benchmark your client’s site speed within their industry. But your own experience as a seasoned user of the Internet will be more in tune with real users. If real users think it’s too slow, it doesn’t matter what Google says.

6. Avoid Unnecessary Pop–Ups

Some marketing managers love popups. Users hate them. If it’s not essential, get rid of it. If it is essential, get rid of it and replace it with a piece of simple, static text, an image or a CTA button.

We Can Help

If your clients are struggling to meet their customers in the users’ favorite digital haunts, white label web design services will offer a fresh pair of eyes and bespoke solutions tailored to their intentions.  Find out more and start your journey to a high-converting landing page. Contact us today.

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