I have been running a small adwords campaign to drive traffic to my lamp store. I just cannot get the bounce rate below 90% no matter what I do... I know the design is not perfect, but I have tested it on every machine I can get my hands on and the thing loads pretty quickly. FYI most of the traffic is mobile, so not sure how significant that is. I should also mention that my keywords are pretty specific, so when someone clicks on the ad they definitely know they are going to a lamp store. Any ideas?
Bounce rate is terrible... advice?
- Thread starter TBlamps
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- bounce rate
Gollie
Registered Member
- Aug 1, 2011
- 93
- 21
With just 3 seconds to gain their approval before they leave on your site, any major design/navigation flaws will cause them to lose trust and leave immediately. What I would do...
Go to your analytics account to find the pages with the most exits. Try to clean up your information that's above the fold on all pages but start with the pages that are getting visits but causing the highest exit percentage.
Use as many "flat design colors" (Google them) as you can and use good typography (Helvetica, Gill Sans, Impact, Baskerville, Open Sans, Lato) and they will stay longer.
Keep testing GL.
Go to your analytics account to find the pages with the most exits. Try to clean up your information that's above the fold on all pages but start with the pages that are getting visits but causing the highest exit percentage.
Use as many "flat design colors" (Google them) as you can and use good typography (Helvetica, Gill Sans, Impact, Baskerville, Open Sans, Lato) and they will stay longer.
Keep testing GL.
I will definitely take your advice on the color scheme. I've been working on this as a side project for like 6 months and have gone through a lot of design changes. It's a little plain colorwise right now, so I will fix that. I'm really hoping that it's not breaking when customers visit... I've tested on a couple of phones, tablet, and my laptop and everything seems to be loading pretty quick even when I clear the cache. So I guess it's the design, but frankly it just doesn't look that bad to me compared to some of the examples I've seen with too much going on, lots of popups, and so on.
Yeah I've checked it as much as I know how.... I also went to pingdom and got a 2-3 s load time. Everything I read says that 90% is really terrible... Could it be that I'm just in a really weird industry where bounce rates are higher for everybody? Also, I'm really not sure about these mobile visitors... thinking about switching to desktop + tablet only.
- Feb 12, 2015
- 870
- 506
90% bounce rate? That's very high. Are you sure the site is working properly? Have you tested on multiple OSs as well? Are you targeting the right keywords / audience? Can they click through to another site like amazon?
Guess I'm not sure of anything. I *think* it's working but the bounce rate seems to be telling me something is off. I basically just have a store page that shows 60 items, and each ad jumps straight to the item they searched for. I was also thinking maybe there's just something messed up with my google analytics but that seems unlikely.
LucidMarketing
Regular Member
- Jun 25, 2011
- 431
- 128
I caution about being myopic on one metric and bounce rate is one of them. The bottom line is if you are profiting. If 90% bounce, that means 10% don't and maybe they bounce to the checkout and buy. This may be a very profitable campaign.
But such a bounce rate can be indicative of other issues, not with your site but your campaign. That's where you are getting your traffic so that's where I'd start.
You say you use specific keywords. Good, although I've often heard the same and when checking they were not but I'll take your word for it.
My big question that nobody has mentioned yet is, where are you taking those clicks? If to your home page that's bad. Suppose I was looking for a leg lamp (let's use this for fun and I'll assume you sell them). You may have a campaign targeting leg lamps keywords. Your ad may be great enticing me to click. But if you take me to your home page, don't expect me to search your site for a leg lamp. You need to bring me to a page where, ideally, you have a few different models or to the one leg lamp model you do carry.
I see in your last message above that you take them to the item they searched for. Good start. But I think in your case it's more a question of taking them to a category. I had a client some years ago selling lamps among other things. If someone searched for seashell lamps, they expected to see a variety of them, not just one in particular. So you need to have categorized landing pages to give them a choice. I think it will be rare for them to like and want the one lamp you show them so best to show them different styles, sizes and colors in that category.
Good luck.
But such a bounce rate can be indicative of other issues, not with your site but your campaign. That's where you are getting your traffic so that's where I'd start.
You say you use specific keywords. Good, although I've often heard the same and when checking they were not but I'll take your word for it.
My big question that nobody has mentioned yet is, where are you taking those clicks? If to your home page that's bad. Suppose I was looking for a leg lamp (let's use this for fun and I'll assume you sell them). You may have a campaign targeting leg lamps keywords. Your ad may be great enticing me to click. But if you take me to your home page, don't expect me to search your site for a leg lamp. You need to bring me to a page where, ideally, you have a few different models or to the one leg lamp model you do carry.
I see in your last message above that you take them to the item they searched for. Good start. But I think in your case it's more a question of taking them to a category. I had a client some years ago selling lamps among other things. If someone searched for seashell lamps, they expected to see a variety of them, not just one in particular. So you need to have categorized landing pages to give them a choice. I think it will be rare for them to like and want the one lamp you show them so best to show them different styles, sizes and colors in that category.
Good luck.
SEO
Senior Member
- Jan 6, 2017
- 942
- 754
Are you promoting specific products? One tactic I've seen for reducing bounce is bringing visitors to a category page or product results. It allows them to easily choose what interests them most rather than saying "look at this one specific product."
Amazon and many other top retailers do this (It was easier to find an example on Bing):
Amazon and many other top retailers do this (It was easier to find an example on Bing):
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AneaKr
Regular Member
- Oct 15, 2014
- 220
- 65
Hi, I may have some suggestions for you since I specialize in AdWords/conversion optimization.
First is what you mentioned, mobile. I would totally stay away from this if possible since mobile clicks can get expensive very fast without good conversion. I say this especially because of your niche.
Even though a big deal is made of making sure sites are responsive and accessible by mobile, it doesn't always make sense to focus on this. I have seen this in dozens of client campaigns. I wouldn't ever order lamps on my phone...why would I? My laptop is right in front of me and it's so much easier.
That's my first suggestion. Of course I don't know how your site is set up, but there is a big chance you could see some gains by some user experience design.
Hope that helps!