How to Reduce Bounce Rate
If you own a website or sell a service, you know that traffic is your most important requirement. But traffic, when viewed as an independent entity, can be misleading. What matters is not the traffic itself, but the conversion it brings with it.
Even though the better way to improve your conversions is to get targeted traffic, there are some simple tweaks that you can do to your website so that your conversions go up by 20% or more. The following are 10 tested tweaks that will show you how to reduce bounce rates on your site.
1) Exit Pop-Ups
Using Exit pop-ups is a great way to retain visitors longer on your website. However, like every good thing, overusing exit pop-ups may give the opposite effect of what it is actually intended to do.
Have you ever visited a website that uses an exit pop-up on an exit pop-up, drilling you with one down-sell after another? Well… don’t do that.
2) Content That Makes People Think
Use conversational style when writing a blogpost. Ask many rhetorical questions that makes the user think to himself and wonder.
If you are writing for an Internet Marketing audience, you can ask them, “Have you made your first $100 online? If so, how much money and time did you spend on it?
Or perhaps you could pick their brain with, “Would you rather spend $10 and earn your first $100 online in 3 hours, or spend nothing and earn your first $100 in 7 months?”.
Also remember to use small paragraphs, bullet points and bold and underline styles wherever relevant.
3) Intelligent Use of Multimedia
Use pictures, infographics and videos to engage your visitors. You can easily embed videos from YouTube in your website.
One point to note here is that you want to keep your visitors on your website after they watch the video. So make sure you have the ‘display relevant videos’ option turned off before you copy the code for embedding the video in your website.
4) Link to Relevant Content
If you have a blogpost that is related to a certain topic elsewhere, link to it. Don’t shy away from linking to other websites as well. Leave a message to the webmaster of the website you are linking to.
In this way, you can provide value to your readers and build relationships with like-minded people. Provide value before you demand an action from your reader.
5) Engage Your Audience
Use polls, discuss a controversial topic that no one is talking about, or hold contests. The more you engage your audience, the longer they will stay on your website and the less you will have to worry about how to reduce bounce rates later!
Holding contests and give-aways is a great way not only to attract your readers’ attention, but also to convert your readers into subscribers.
Ask them to perform a simple task and give them a reward for doing it. This way, your website will stand out from the rest. Thus, your readers will remember you and keep coming back to your website.
6) Daily Deals
If you own an online store, offering unadvertised discounts and daily deals can be a great way to grab the attention of your prospective customers.
You can create these discount coupons by submitting your discount codes in websites like RetailMeNot and Coupon codes. This will certainly keep them coming back for more!
7) Encourage Sharing
Encourage your readers to share your content. Use social share buttons and the “Tell-A-Friend” script to get more traffic to your website without spending a penny. The Tell-A-Friend script, when combined with a valuable download (probably a video or a mind map), can be an incredibly powerful tool to drive traffic.
To understand what the Tell-A-Friend script is, consider the below scenario:
- You sell an eBook called ‘My Techniques to Make $100 Every Day as an Affiliate’.
- When people purchase your eBook, they are taken to your download page.
- On the download page, you use the Tell-A-Friend script to offer a bonus eBook, titled ’10 Free Secret Traffic Sources I Use’.
- When any buyers try to download the eBook, they are prompted for an email address of a friend, and they won’t be able to download the bonus until they enter a friend’s email address.
- When the buyer enters the email address, he downloads the bonus-and at the same time an email will be sent to his friend automatically on the buyer’s behalf. So, the friend gets an email from the buyer and not from you.
Since the email is sent from the buyer to his friend, he is sure to open it and check out the page you want him to. The Tell-A-Friend scripts let you customize everything from the bonus being offered upon entering the email address, to the email being sent to the friend.
There are both WordPress plugins and software available to accomplish this objective. WordPress plugins, however, don’t allow the ability to “lock the content”, so to speak-they only let you share the blogpost or webpage by clicking on tell-a-friend button.
A demo can be found at this website: http://argonfactory.com/wordpress/af-te … d-plugin/. Click on the ‘Tell-A-Friend’ button on the top-right to see a demo.
However, by using Tell-A-Friend software, you can lock your bonus content or giveaways, and they’ll only be released to your buyer AFTER he or she enters their friend’s email address. So if you really want to get your readers to share your content and generate a ton more traffic, you may want to get more information about this viral friend-generating software.
Not only is this an excellent way to drive more traffic to your site, but also it’s a great way to build social proof, as your readers will be in effect recommending you to their friends for your site’s quality content!
8) Ask for Opinions
Ask your readers to send an email to you explaining their biggest obstacles in reaching their goals. Those who respond will become your lifelong subscribers.
You can ask them to send you ideas for your next blogpost. In this way, you won’t have to come up with a topic for writing your next blogpost. Better still, you’ll be writing about subjects what your readers are interested in, thereby reducing your bounce rates and increasing your conversions.
9) Encourage Readers to Comment & the Commentluv Plugin
The value a blogpost offers can be shown by the number of comments it has. You can increase the number of comments on your blog and encourage two-way conversations by simply asking your readers to comment on your post.
And a great way to promote a community of commenters within your blog is by using the “Commentluv” plugin. Having this plugin installed on your blog will give your readers incentives to comment on your blog, that they won’t get from other blogs that don’t have the Commentluv plugin installed.
For instance, anyone who comments on a Commentluv-enabled blog will automatically receive a backlink to their last blogpost. This is a great attraction for Bloggers who are looking to get exposure for their blog posts, not to mention getting good backlinks and Page Rank juice!
So make sure to install the Commentluv plugin on your site and head on over to Right Blog Tips’ Commentluv-enabled Blogs List. Here, you’ll see where you need to be commenting to get all those backlinks and exposure for YOUR site too. J
10) Catchy Topic
A catchy topic is the most important thing when it comes to grabbing your readers’ attention. As the saying goes, “Make your first impression the best impression.” But make sure your content delivers what your topic promises. Keep it specific and realistic.
11) Display Your Metrics
More often than not, when a visitor visits a blog and notices that the blog has thousands of visitors or subscribers, he will feel more compelled to stay longer. This also opens up his or her mind to take any action that you want them to.
Conclusion
Now that we have talked about the different ways to improve your conversion rates and how to reduce bounce rates on your blog, tell us, which one is your favourite?
Have you already tried one of these methods, or do you have your own technique? Let us know in the comments below. 🙂
Madhushan M
Author Bio: Madhushan M is a co-owner of a membership website called Dollars For Everyone that offers eBooks, videos, software and WSOs for making money online.
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How to Reduce Bounce Rate
Image courtesy of Madhushan M
