When people think of the word “bounce”, it doesn’t usually spring pictures of graphs, pie charts and website metrics to mind!
Yet when it comes to accountant marketing, “bounce rate” is an important indicator of how well your website is engaging with your target market.
You might have seen it in Google Analytics. It’s usually represented as a percentage. Of course, many accountants ask us:
“What’s better – a higher percentage, or a lower percentage?”
“Is it possible to get 100%?”
“Is bounce rate a bit like when you send an email and it bounces?”
Let’s take a step back for a minute…
What Actually Is Bounce Rate?
In answer to the third question: No. Bounce rate is not the same as an email bounce. It refers to the percentage of your website visitors who arrive at one of your web pages, and then leaves.
In other words, they don’t visit other pages. They don’t click on anything. They just get to one of your pages, mull around for a short while, and then go.
A quick note before we move on. Bounce rate is not the same as “exit rate.” This is a different concept in accountant marketing, and refers to people who have visited multiple pages – and then choose to exit on a particular page.
So if your home page has a high exit rate, that means that your home page is often the last page people look at (out of the several they have looked at) before leaving your site.
Bounce rate, therefore, is bound up with the idea of singularity. In other words, people only visit that one particular page before they leave.
This is what makes bounce rate more serious when breaking down the performance of your accountant marketing.
For a “Thank You” page following a contact form submission, for instance, a high exit rate should be expected. However, a high bounce rate on a homepage is usually a troubling sign.
To find out how to use Google Analytics to gain insights into these sorts of statistics for your website, view our “How To” blog post here.
How to Improve Your Accountant Marketing Through Bounce Rates
Now that you know what bounce rate is, can you actually do anything about it?
A quick note before we jump ahead into looking at how to reduce your bounce rate. A high bounce rate percentage on a page doesn’t always spell disaster.
Bounce rate simply means your visitor looked at one page, and then left. It doesn’t tell you how they interacted with that page.
For instance, did they arrive at one of your recent blog post – perhaps by clicking on it through a social media post pushed out b your business?
If so, look at the average session duration – the metric which shows you how long, on average, people stay on a given web page.
Does the blog post have a high bounce rate, but a higher-than-average session duration compared to other pages on your website? If so, then that could actually be a positive sign that people are engaging with your blog!
However, this caveat aside, bounce rate is usually something you should be looking to reduce as much as possible. You want your users to “swim through” your website and “chew over” the content on there, whetting their appetite and encouraging them to download a report, submit an inquiry or take some other kind of positive action.
Here are some steps you can take to improve this side of your accountant marketing:
#1 Ensure Mobile Responsiveness
People are now viewing websites and conducting internet searches primarily via mobile devices – not desktop computers. If your website is not responsive to these devices, then people are more likely to get frustrated with the user experience and leave.
Seriously, nobody likes getting to a website on their phone and then having to pinch the screen in order to “zoom in” and read the content!
#2 Check Traffic Sources
Sometimes, bounce rate can vary according to which channel people used to arrive at your website.
For instance, is your organic traffic showing a lower bounce rate than the traffic you are generating from Facebook, or other social channels?
If so, could there be something wrong with your social media strategy? Is your accountant marketing using the correct headlines? Sometimes, people use click-bait titles to get people to click through to an article, only for the user to not find what they were expecting when they arrive at the content. Frustrated, they leave straight away.
#3 Avoid Unwanted Disruptions
Have you ever clicked onto a website to view the content, only to have annoying pop ups shoving into your face the moment you arrive?
If your website is doing this, then seriously consider your strategy. Are these sorts of things putting people off, rather than encouraging them to sign up to your newsletter?
Be honest with yourself, and refine your accountant marketing in light of your insights.
