Bouncing Websites And Bad Impressions!

Online smarts and algorithm savvy are rapidly changing search behaviour. Not to mention fast social media mash ups! Optimised links, faster broadband and mobile internet means we now expect every landing page to be our final product or service page destination!

Successful optimised link building across multiple messaging channels and advertising platforms combined with evolving Google SERPS now means that many online searches land directly on the required product or service page – ignoring the Home or About Us pages altogether! It is at these pages that the first time visitor receives their first, split second brand design impression and decides whether to stay or bounce away.

Faster broadband means ever higher expectations of page loading times! Many impatient searchers will simply click away if they have to wait more than a few seconds for all the different parts to load – the first impression could be inferior site design performance!

If a website page receives a bounce rate of nearly two thirds from visitor traffic and other pages are not being looked at, it’s time to rethink the total website design concept with a view to optimising for every single page.

Today, the importance of optimising for social media content appearing on every page cannot be underestimated. The use of word-of-mouth online marketing is becoming increasingly important for eCommerce sites. Careful integration of the process from say, a relevant Twitter hashtag to the landing page content is essential.

However, it is important that changes cannot be made by guesswork but by critical reference to website analytics for individual page performance. It should be immediately obvious which are the highest volume entry landing pages and a heatmap tool can track exactly where the eye is looking on the page. If a single page receives less than roughly 1,000 views per week, then using split testing of alternate page layout is essential.

It may be necessary to bring target market segmentation and demographics up–to-date and ensure metadata keyword bounce rates have not been creeping up as a result of not keeping in touch with changing behaviours. As with vital PPC ad keyword relevance to landing page link reinforcement, it’s absolutely crucial to double check that brand identity or domain name are also not suffering high click- throughs too!

Awareness of the eyecatching SEO optimised headline can sometimes lead to misrepresenting content on blog/article pages just because of attention grabbing! It’s important to stay absolutely relevant to the object of the website – whether it wants to simply sell, inform, obtain followers or newsletter subscribers, etc.

A word of caution – when it comes to being virtuous and offering an abundance of valuable information and accompanying outbound links, be aware that they may simply provide an exit point, from which the visitor never returns!