For many businesses, maintaining low bounce rates for their websites is always the norm of an ordinary workday.
Managers and web owners are right to obsess about bounce rates. A lack of in-depth insight into bounce rate as a metric for measuring the performance of your website can spell doom for your business.
In this article, we will have a look at the nitty-gritty of bounce rates. It will dissect the guidelines of auditing rates and the enhancements you can put in place to better your website’s engagement capabilities.
What Is Bounce Rate?
The common answer will be the act of a user accessing a specific page of a site and immediately leaving without executing any actions.
Bounce rate is a metric measured as the percentage of users who land on a page and leave without visiting another page.
A high bounce rate indicates that you were not able to convince visitors to start and act on a CTA to visit another page or make a purchase.
A visitor can bounce from your website by clicking on an embedded link, typing a new URL, closing the open tab or window, or the session has timed out. Here is a general rule of thumb to help you figure out the acceptable bounce rate:
- Over 80% is bad
- Between 70 and 80% is poor
- Between 50 and 70% is average
- Between 30 and 50% is excellent
However, some websites report a bounce rate of 20% and below, which shows that there could be a tracking error. This could be due to incorrect implementation of events tracking, third-party add-ons such as live chat plugins, and duplicate analytics code.
Why Should You Measure Bounce Rate?
You cannot optimize your website’s conversion rate without having the right questions.
You should not ask why your conversion rate is low. Instead, ask why your bounce rate is high.
When the majority of the people in Singapore who visit your site leave before completing your desired goal, this will cause a low conversion rate.
People will not complete a purchase on your site if they are not staying on your site long enough.
How to Calculate Bounce Rates
To understand bounce rate as a Google Analytics tool for analysing your website’s engagement capacity, it is essential to understand the following bounce rate calculations.
- Segmented Bounce Rate: The aggregate of bounces on all the pages of a particular segment (selection of pages) on a website within a specific timeframe over the cumulative visits on every page in that segment of the website within that same period.
- Page-Level Bounce Rate: Total number of bounces on a single session for a definite period over the aggregate visits (first pageview hit) of that session within the same period.
- Site-Wide Bounce Rate: the cumulative number of bounces on every page on the site with a specific time divided by the aggregate of visits on every page on the website during a specific period.
The calculations point out two things:
When a visitor accesses your website’s homepage and exits the page without executing any action, it warrants to be categorized as 100% bounce for that session. And, when a user accesses the third or the fourth page of your website, the bounce rate will be 0%.
The analyses help put bounce rate into context on a detailed level.
The Significance of Traffic Sources to Bounce Rate
The source of traffic can have a significant effect on your bounce rates.
For instance, SEO traffic will generate low bounce rates as compared to social network traffic.
Thus, it is important to gauge the performance of your site from a channel capacity and individual page capacity.
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Bounce Rate Analysis
A bounce rate audit helps web owners understand the problem plaguing their site and how to improve the website’s bounce rate standings.
The guidelines below are essential for conducting a bounce rate audit.
- Time Your Audit
Examine your website’s bounce rates for a particular time of day. Probe the different time segments that your website experience traffics to pinpoint the period with the highest bounce rates.
Google Analytics helps you solve this problem.
- Benchmark Against your competition
Navigate to GA to find the channels option. On this field select the vertical and evaluate the period of choice.
GA will generate the performance of your various platforms so that you can be provided with the necessary data to inform your decision concerning improvements.
- Analyze the Bounces using Channels
The data generated contains your website’s bounce rate results measured against other GA accounts in your target market.
- Analyze Bounce Rates by page
GA helps website owners compare the performance of their various pages on a single tab.
The data contain substantial data to help determine the type of material that generates the highest and lowest levels of engaged visits.
On each of the channels, repeat the above processes. It will assist you to have an in-depth insight into which source combination or content attracts the highest traffic.
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Google Analytics Session in Singapore Explained
You need to be sure of the ‘visit’ metric for you to understand how to reduce the bounce rate in Singapore. A session in Google Analytics is made of the number of hits that are taken into account for a visitor in a given time.
A user’s interaction with your site which enables data to get to the server of Google Analytics is called a hit.
For Google Analytics, the number of visitors reported in Singapore is usually lower than the number of sessions. This is because a visitor to your site can generate more than one session in a day or even weeks.
When a user is said to have a single page visit, this means that the user only visited one page of your site that is the landing page, and then left.
From a layman’s point of view, we can interpret bounce rate as the sessions’ percentage or single pages that a person exits your site after only viewing the landing page.
For a geek in Singapore, bounce rate is the session’s percentage of one page’s visit that a GIF request directs to the server of Google Analytics.
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Google Analytics Calculating Bounce Rates in Singapore
Google Analytics sums up the bounce rate of a website differently from a web page’s bounce rate.
A web page’s bounce rate is given by the ratio between the total number of bounces on a page compared to the total number of visits on the same page at a given time.
A website’s bounce rate is calculated by taking the sum of bounces on all pages at a particular time over the sum of visits on the site at the exact time.
With the above definitions, it is clear that a bounce rate in Singapore does not affect the time taken on a particular page. This is usually a misconception among many marketers. Bounce rate is an important metric as it may imply that people visiting your website have no interest in your site.
You need to know how to reduce the bounce rate to have the confidence of your site has a commercial purpose.
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Interpreting a Bounce Rate Metrics
Having a high bounce rate may not be such a big deal on selected occasions. For instance, it is okay for people to read a blog and exit the website.
In other cases, having a low bounce rate may be something that raises the alarm. A code may be dysfunctional hence sending two or more requests from GIF.
When interpreting the bounce rate, you need to keep a few things at the back of your head. These things include the user’s intent, the website’s type, the type of visitor, the type of device being used to browse the internet, the marketing channel, the industry type, and the quality of the landing page.
In light of the user’s intent, you need to know how people use your website to master how to reduce the bounce rate. A landing page that satisfies a user’s query will probably have a high bouncing rate, which is okay.
If a web page is well designed with a call to action button that is clear, it will most likely have a low bouncing rate. An e-commerce website should be mobile-friendly for it to have a low bounce rate.
The quality of the traffic will also determine if your bounce rate will be high or low. All you need to know is what your bounce rate is communicating, to be able to respond accordingly.
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Analysing and Reporting a Bounce Rate
Analysing and reporting bounce rates can take the same format as monitoring conversion rates through segmentation. You need to check the traffic sources’ bounce rates that are organic, from pay-per-click campaigns to referral and email campaigns.
Forget the idea of checking your website’s bounce rate as compared to other websites.
Let us shift gears and look at how to reduce the bounce rate.
- Fix the Bounce Rate of your Website
Adjusting the bounce rate of your website will help you get the actual bounce rate. For news and blog websites, there might be only one page to visit that is relevant to a user. Most visitors will only come to your site to read a blog. In such a case, Google Analytics might record a bounce rate of 100%.
A conversion in such a site sends GIF requests hence reducing your site’s bounce rate.
- How to Reduce the Bounce Rate of Pages with a Profit Index
All web pages that are often viewed before conversions are contained in the profit index. High bounce rates on such web pages directly affect the conversion rate and conversion volume of a website. If you do not have the profit index, it is easy to end up optimizing bounce rates of random website pages that do not affect your business in any significant way.
Create a profit index then arrange the table in reducing order of the value of the pages on the profit index in Google Analytics. Create the ‘compare to site average’ button and go to bounce rate. From the bounce rate report, you will be able to determine how to respond.
- Discard market channels that bring traffic of low-quality
Traffic sources that bring in visitors who have no interest in your site will cause your bounce rate to hit the rooftops. You need to analyze your traffic sources and do a house clean-up. Just because a traffic source is trending does not mean it is the best source for your website.
Only remain with sources that bring in quality traffic to master how to reduce bounce rate.
- Creating website landing pages that satisfy visitors
There is no good in getting good traffic if your landing pages are not user-friendly. Your bounce rate will still be too high. Your landing pages should have a great design, easy-to-see call-to-action buttons, and easy navigation, and in today’s era, they should be mobile-friendly.
- How to Reduce Bounce Rate by Paying Attention to CTA
A call to action button is the button on a website page that gives a visitor the next step once they are on a landing page. Most CTAs in the e-commerce world include the words buy, add to cart, call for more inquiries, book a ticket, etc.
CTAs should stand out. Maybe have a different colour or bolder font for your call to action. This way it will occur naturally for the user to click on it.
- Your CTA Should Be in Line with the Landing Page
A CTA can take different forms depending on the web page. It could be a link, a video, an image, or a button.
A CTA that is not relevant will cause visitors to your site to bounce, and if it is terrible, it will cause them not to come back at all.
An example of an irrelevant CTA would be an arrow with a ‘download here’ label and on clicking the arrow visitors are taken to your website’s home page. It is not only annoying but also paints a bad picture of your brand.
- Have Easily Consumable Contents
It is great to have a lot of content on your site; however, if this content is complex to understand, your visitors from Singapore will not stay on your website for long. Some visitors will put a bookmark on your site and try to come back later while others will look for a different site with similar content.
Aim to create content that can be understood in the shortest time possible.
- Use Virtual Page Views or Flash-Based Content
When using Flash-based websites, there are a lot of user interactions on a single page. This includes a pop-up or loading a video.
These websites do not need users to go to pages other than the landing page which translates to a very high bounce rate. You will need to have methods of tracking events to interpret visitors’ interactions with your site.
- Have Virtually Appealing Landing Pages that Load Fast
Recent statistics revealed that a user decides to stay or exit a page in eight seconds. One of the most popular reasons that will cause a visitor to leave your site is the time your site takes to load.
A site’s loading process may be affected by the size of the images the website has. The right image should not be pixelated, but it should also not be of a quality that is too high. This should be keenly observed, especially by sites that are used by a lot of mobile users.
If a page is also not appealing, a visitor might think of the brand as shady.
- Make your visitors Want to Explore Further
A landing page that fully satisfies a visitor will have a high bounce rate. Try spreading information over two or three pages. However, be careful not to tire a visitor causing them not to convert. In other cases, you can have a satisfying landing page and have post-conversion promotions which will attract the visitor to other pages.
- Have Page Surveys on Landing Pages
Once you have done everything you could think of including the above methods and you still do not see any changes, consider having surveys for your pages.
Use the thumbs-up or down button on the pages of your website to get direct feedback from users. Do not add a lengthy survey with these buttons. Otherwise, people in Singapore will churn from filling them. It should be less than the second kind of feedback.
The thumbs-up will show that your visitors are satisfied with their landing pages and the thumbs-down will let you know that something did not go well. You can try Qualaroo, which will help you get instant feedback from page surveys in Singapore.
Misconceptions About High Bounce Rate
Imagine searching for cinema listings for a movie on a website. You spend so much time on the site’s pages in a bid to find the screening time and buy tickets. However, during all this time the cinema’s website will be achieving 0% bounce rates while you are suffering.
The cinema company will enjoy unprecedented improvement considering every business’ aim these days is to portray a positive picture about their website’s bounce rates.
To ordinary clients, online platforms’ business acumen and reliability are always determined by their bounce rates.
Therefore, while the client is busy trying to navigate the stuffed page in search of a specific product, the company is boosting its brand in the face of its prospective customers.
Established cinema companies organize their websites with straightforward icons that help customers find what they want fast so they can watch a movie. A client uses ten to thirty seconds tops on the website. Both parties have benefited, and still, the bounce rate was high.
The misconception about low bounce rates being good is evident from this example.
Google does not even use bounce rates to grade websites on search results.
Google only employs the engagement metric in its systems to rank websites on search results.
How Bounce Rate Relates to Other SEO Factors
This is a challenging topic to address, but the most important thing to remember is that it does not matter whether Google is tracking your bounce rate and changing your SERP ranking. What matters is how customers are engaging with the content on your site as well as how it is indirectly affecting the SEO factors Google cares about for better SERP ranking. There is a direct relation between user satisfaction and SERP rankings.
Here are SEO problems that affect a website’s bounce rate:
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Low-Quality Web Design
If your website does not make an impression on the user, the chances are that they will skim the page and move on to another website. This creates a bounce.
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Slow Page Loading Speed
There is a direct relation between page loading speed and bounce rates. This means that if the landing page takes too long to load, then you will have many users visiting a single page.
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Non-Responsive Website
The mistake of failing to optimize your website for use on a variety of devices will lower engagement and interaction. For example, any website that takes longer than 3.3 seconds, especially on mobile will have a bounce rate of 20% or higher.
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A Mismatch Between Keywords and the Content
Keywords are central to getting organic searches to your website. However, there is nothing worse than having keywords that lead to completely different content. Inevitably, this will increase usability and engagement on your website.
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Writing for Search Engine Scanners
It can be daunting when you pour much time into writing content and then find out that readers do not appreciate it enough to read every word. Most time, they are scanning it, and many will leave if you have extremely long paragraphs.
This creates poor readability. However, you can fix this issue by doing the following:
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- Have paragraphs that are no longer than 5 lines
- Use between 3 and 5 sentences in your paragraphs
- Use bullets whenever possible, especially when you are referring to more than 2 things
- Break the content with sub-headings and images
- Avoid the use of jargon
- Break long sentences
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Inappropriate Pop-Ups
Pop-ups are one of the best ways to encourage subscriptions but they could be contributing to a high bounce rate. You could try to optimize the pop-ups to increase engagement and interaction. However, if the rate does not drop, there are two interpretations:
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- Your audience does not like pop-ups
- You are not offering value with your pop-ups
However, you can fix these SEO and website designs. For instance, you could optimise the pop-up to appear after the visitors have been on the website for a while.
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Lack of Clear CTAs
There are chances that 80% of your traffic is going to the inner pages of your website, and not accessing the landing pages and homepages. The lack of clear CTAs on these pages will create a bounce since there is no clarity on what the user should do.
This means that you need CTAs on every page, and this turns them into landing pages that can convert or direct visitors to other pages. However, you will need to direct them to the CTAs with valuable content.
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Poor Navigation
This is a problem associated with Singapore website design and it is a major deal-breaker. You ought to use the common design element placement for your site navigation. For example, users expect certain elements in specific areas of the website such as the location of the signup or login buttons.
Moreover, the logo should be linked to your homepage and have footers on every page with links to other pages on the site. Ideally, seamless navigation links show the visitors where to click. This will improve website engagement.
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You Have a Single-Page Site
Single-page websites are an increasing Singapore web design trend. They pack all the information on a single page and this reduces the number of clicks required to access the content.
By changing a few things in your Singapore SEO strategy, you could increase engagement. The first thing is to make the website mobile-friendly and it has a fast loading speed. You could also refine how the traffic flows to your page or adjust the stream of traffic to your website.
Why Not Try User Engagement?
Your business in Singapore does not make more profits through unique visitors but through visitors who are engaged. You need to know why people visit your site in Singapore and then leave shortly after.
The bounce rate will help you know if your website’s traffic is of quality. If the marketing channels you use are giving you poor-quality traffic, the bounce rate has to let you know. You can then determine what to do with that knowledge.
Let us now go through some basics.
How to Enhance Website Engagement
The problems that are affecting your website’s interaction with your users are known to you at this stage. The improvements below will change how your clients engage with your website henceforth.
- Enhancement of user experience and design of your website
- Optimized conversion rates
- Enhanced call to action
- Skilled copyrighting
- Developing exquisite content
- Advertise new offers
- Enhance page speed
- Invest more in targeted advertising
- Reevaluate your keyword targeting on search engines
- Harmonize targeting and landing page message
- Target leads on marketing platforms with low bounce percentages
- Eliminate from your pages websites that promote high bounce rates
- Mask some events as interactions so that elements on your page like playing are not categorized as a bounce.
How to Lower Bounce Rates?
There are several ways to lower bounce rates.
In this section, we will walk you through the various ways that you can minimize bounce rate and improve engagement and conversion rates:
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Improve the User Experience
Bounce rates come as a result of unsatisfied customers. Unfortunately, a small thing could irk your customer and you could lose them for life. Good user experience is when the visitor finds the website not only easy to use but also engaging.
To improve the user experience, ensure that you create a website that is accessible and easy to use by each one of your target audiences. This calls for you to observe user behaviour and what sways their decisions to minimize bounce rate.
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Optimize the Placement of Your CTAs
It only takes a couple of seconds for a user to make up their mind whether they like a website or not. In most cases, a simple glance at the visible section of the website without scrolling will differ from one device to the other.
Ideally, the section should describe what your website is offering in the least amount of words possible and a visible call to action. You ought to make the CTA clear and honest. Most brands mislead the visitors and this creates a poor user experience leading to poor engagement and low conversions.
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Improve Website Loading Speed
To reduce bounce rate, you should optimize your website to load as quickly as possible. With most traffic today being from mobile devices, the ideal loading speed should be 3.3 seconds or less. You do not want to have long periods where the users are staring at a blank page.
Fortunately, there are various tools that you can use to optimize the loading speed of every page. Statistics show that with every second of delay, you lose approximately 7% of sales, a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and 11% fewer page views.
Here are several ways that you can optimize your page loading speed:
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- Optimize your images
- Always use a content delivery network (CDN)
- Add better website caching
- Switch to a faster website hosting provider
This is a guaranteed way of minimizing bounce rate and reducing Singapore website digital marketing costs.
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A/B Testing and Using Targeted Landing Pages
The only way of knowing whether the CTAs, headlines and other design elements are working is by doing A/B testing. You should use different content strategies for every page and run A/B split tests to see how they perform.
Moreover, you could also target different audiences, keywords, and regions, and create numerous landing pages. If you have users from all over the world, ensure to optimize the website to detect the user’s location and show them the localized landing page.
This will include optimizing the pages to show the content in the user’s local language, cultural background, and currency. You will then be in a position to improve the user experience.
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Incorporate Videos
Videos have become one of the best ways of engaging and grabbing the attention of the user. They have even surpassed images and text. With that said, how can you best incorporate videos into your website to maximize conversions and minimize bounce rate?
Here is how to go about it:
- Using a full-screen video as your website background
- Place the video next to a CTA
You can use different forms of persuasion tools such as music, narration, animations, colours, and more. You could use a Singapore website digital marketing expert to create an effective video presentation.
However, there is a catch to this strategy. Ensure that the video and the persuasion tools are not heavy such that they increase the page loading time, which will lead to a poor user experience.
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Use High-Quality Images
As with video, images can also help in capturing the user’s attention and reduce bounce rate. A few years ago, it was the norm to use minimalistic layouts with a white background. However, this has changed and there is an increase in the use of high-quality images on the landing pages.
You can find several websites that provide royalty-free images. You can use the images as parallax backgrounds, inline images next to your CTAs, background slides, as well as full-screen backgrounds. However, ensure that they are light to avoid increasing the time it takes for your website to load.
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Have a Consistent Content Strategy
Some digital marketing experts advocate for experimenting with different content strategies. However, a consistent strategy will always work best but you need to carry out A/B testing to get the ideal strategy for your website.
Better yet, a content plan can help you use different content strategies at the same time. This should only be used if you have something that will engage the users and minimize the bounce rate.
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Show Your Credibility
Visitors will leave your site if they establish that you are not a credible source of information. Customers today carefully examine an offer before deciding on whether to make a purchase or not. After the initial assessment of your service or product, the user will look around the page to assess the credibility of your content.
You can show credibility by:
- Displaying user reviews, endorsements, partners, awards, quality scores, certifications, and industry affiliations
- Making your website secure and displaying safety seals
This will go towards building trust and it will get the users comfortable in entering their personal information and credit card details for purchase. Moreover, ensure to invest in link building as a way to increase your website authority.
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Invest in a Proper Web Design
There are plenty of web design services in Singapore that you can use to help you deal with your site’s bounce rate. Bounce rate is a critical factor that Google bots use to rank your website. To understand how to take full advantage of the many web design services in Singapore, you need to understand the bounce rates in detail.
The bounce rate is the percentage of individuals who land on your site page and immediately leave without performing any action. The single-page sessions are divided by all sessions and then multiplied by a hundred to get the bounce rate percentage.
Several web traffic analysis tools can help you find out your site’s bounce rate.
Several web traffic analysis tools can help you find out your site’s bounce rate. Google Analytics is by far the most popular. The standard version is free, but there is also a premium version known as Google Analytics 360.
It is nearly impossible for your website not to have a bounce rate because many times people click on-site links without knowing the information contained on the website. An excellent bounce ranges between 26 to 40% while an average bounce rate ranges between 41 to 55 per cent.
A high bounce rate can have detrimental effects on your rank on search engines. A high bounce rate means that the content on your site is not useful or relevant and your website should thus not be presented to people who are searching for certain terms.
It is challenging trying to reduce the bounce rate on your own. Many businesses hire web designers to help them do this so that they can concentrate on other critical aspects of the company.
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Bounce Rates in Line With GIF Requests
Every time someone in Singapore loads a page into a browser, the code from Google Analytics tracking, GATC, requests for an invisible file by the name _utm.gif which sends data from page views to Google Analytics through this file.
A tracking code for E-Commerce is also able to make the same request to send data for e-Commerce to the server of Google Analytics. Virtual page views, the tracking code for events, and the tracking code for the analysis of social interactions are also able to be requested for the _utm.gif file.
Google Analytics documentation on GIF requests will help you learn about different parameters passed through the requests.
To give a summary, the GIF file sends data from page views (visits and average time on the website), social interaction (tweets and Facebook likes), and e-commerce (item code, transaction id, and item value) plus event details that have been tracked.
Scenarios in Singapore Where a One-Page Visit is Not a Bounce
To master how to reduce the bounce rate in Singapore, you first need to know when a single page visit is termed as a bounce rate and when it is not. When two or more GIF requests are sent in a Google Analytics session, the session is not considered a bounce, though it may be a one-page visit.
Here are some of these cases in Singapore.
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When Tracking an Event
This is when a user in Singapore gets to your page and launches an event that is tracked by the tracking code for events and then exits the page without visiting other pages. In such a case, two GIF requests were made within the session, so Google Analytics will not take it to be a bounce.
Using a tracking code for events might drastically reduce your bounce rate. This should be at the back of your mind when analyzing your site’s bounce rate.
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Using Social Interaction Tracking
Sometimes, a visitor will land on your page and trigger a social event which is traceable through social interaction analysis tracking, then leave without browsing other pages. A good example is when a person reads a blog on your site and then shares it through the sharing button.
Just as in the previous scenario, two GIF requests were made, so Google Analytics won’t take it to be bounced.
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Tracked Events Execution
When an event that is being tracked is launched as a page gets opened on a browser, more than two GIF requests are usually sent; hence Google Analytics will not consider it as a bounce. The first GIF request will be sent by the tracking code for Google Analytics and the other by the events tracking code.
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One Website has Multiple Duplicates of a Tracking Code
If a site has a similar Google Analytics code, two or more GIF requests have to be sent. As a result, a one-page visit will not appear as a bounce. You should, therefore, make sure that your tracking code is only installed once on a web page.
Ways Web Design Services in Singapore Can Help Your Website
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Mobile Responsiveness
The overwhelming majority of Singaporeans access the internet through their phones. According to the Singapore Business Review, a whopping 91% use smartphones to access the internet while 71% use laptops or desktops, and 42% use their tablets.
Optimizing your website for mobile is vital. Optimizing a site will ensure that the pages load faster, the page fits on your mobile screen, and the text is big enough to make scanning easy.
The web designer can also optimize your website for tablets to ensure that you appeal to 42% of the market using tablets.
Improving the user experience for potential clients increases the chances of them sticking with your business.
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Site Navigation
Your clients need to be able to find the items they are looking for easily. This can be done by using large, high-resolution pictures that are correctly described.
Incorporating a search bar on the website is crucial in case you are selling many items. The home page should also have several sub-categories that will easily guide the users to their destination.
Lastly, the online purchasing process should be secure and simple. You do not want a situation where clients are unsure about sharing financial information with you yet you are an e-commerce business.
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Content Readability
Potential clients want to be able to scan through your website and find out what the business is selling or the type of information it has. They can do this only if the site has high readability.
A site’s readability can be improved by having short sentences and paragraphs that use simple language. No jargon should be used on the site.
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Useful and Relevant Content
You have probably heard the phrase content is king. The phrase came about after Google made a series of changes to its ranking algorithm to have relevant results on the first page of Google search.
Ten years ago it was possible to rank high on search results for using the right keywords even if the content added no value to consumers. Nowadays, it is difficult because your site’s bounce rate will show that your content is irrelevant.
Web design services in Singapore keep up with these algorithm changes. They will advise you on the right type of content to have on your website.
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Popups
The Daily Egg statistics show that 70% of people hate popups on websites. They hate them so much that they put them in the same category as online lottery scams.
The reason your site has such a high bounce rate could be that the users are bombarded with many annoying popups immediately after your site loads.
These services can help you find out if you have these popups and remove them for you.
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Meta Description
The meta description is the piece of content below a site’s link on a Google search that gives more information about the page. It is usually 155 characters in length.
A good meta description with the right keywords will convince users to click on the link. These users are more likely to stay on your page longer and even click through other pages on your website as they already know what type of information to expect.
Many businesses do not know or ignore the importance of the meta description. Some use it but use more than 155 characters leading to crucial information being cut out.
Web design services in Singapore know all about meta descriptions. They will help you reduce your site’s bounce rate by using powerful descriptions.
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Internal Linking
Internal linking refers to the practice of using links to your site’s other pages on the content in the landing pages you have used to market your website.
The users land on a page, and then easily click on a link that directs them to another page on your website. This ensures that the session is not counted as a bounce. More importantly, by directing the potential customer to other relevant pages on your website, you get more chances to motivate him or her to buy from you.
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A Great Design
The aesthetic appeal of your site is extremely pertinent. An exciting home page will make the readers scroll through the other pages to find out what other interesting things your website has.
A great design is likely to cost you more, but it will ensure that your readers stick to your website for longer. This makes clicking on a compelling call to action more probable.
Effective Tips Every Website Should Use When Designing a Homepage
Website design teams often spend a lot of time and effort in designing a homepage. This is because the homepage is typically considered the most important page on the site.
This claim makes sense as it is the first page that viewers will see when the site loads and thus designing a homepage that immediately captures the attention of your visitors is vital.
An excellent site homepage puts you in a unique position to achieve your site objectives.
The objectives of your site can be to increase awareness, generate more leads, generate more sales, or increase content consumption. You need to make an exceptional first impression regardless of the site objectives.
There are several homepage design tips you can use to impress your site visitors and motivate them to do business with you.
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Use a Clear and Captivating Headline
The headline on your site is the text that tells visitors what your site is all about. It is usually 6 to 12 words and in large font to make it more visible. Some studies have shown that up to 80% of people browse the next pages on your site based on how interesting the headline is.
A fantastic headline is not vague and tells the visitors what the site promises within a few seconds.
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Test the Homepage Design on Mobile
91% of Singaporeans use smartphones to access the internet. This is a crucial statistic to keep in mind when designing a homepage because the homepage of a site looks different on a desktop and a smartphone due to the differences in the size of the screen.
Your site should be optimized for mobile to ensure that the images come out clear and the texts are legible.
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Embrace Whitespace
Whitespace makes your homepage appear less cluttered and improves the readability of the text. As a result, your site visitors will be able to find the information they are searching for quickly.
This directly benefits your search engine optimization efforts as it reduces the bounce rate.
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Include the Search Function
A lot of site owners create content every day. This makes finding a specific piece of content on the site difficult.
A search function enables users to search for products/content that they want quickly. Potential clients expect to find the search function on the top right-hand corner of your site.
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Navigation Bar and Visual Cues
Your site visitors need your help exploring the other areas of your site. An identifiable navigation bar enables them to do this. Placing the navigation bar on the top left corner makes it easier to find as this is where users expect it to be.
Using arrows as visual cues to point to essential steps users should take to explore other pages of the site is also vital.
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Add Social Proof
According to Hashmeta, social media penetration in Singapore stands at 85%. The most popular social network is WhatsApp closely followed by YouTube and Facebook. Instagram is fourth.
Having a presence on these sites is critical because it shows that you care about the platforms your clients spend most of their time on and you are willing to join the platforms to serve them better.
Displaying this proof on your homepage passes the message that you are on various social media sites. However, social media icons should be placed at the bottom of your homepage.
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Use Original Photos
The days of getting away with using stock photos when designing a homepage are long gone. Nowadays, clients expect original images. Original photos enhance the brand image by showing that you value authenticity.
Schedule a photoshoot to get original photos to use on your site. This is even more critical if you intend to use a picture of a product. The product a client sees on your Singapore website should be the same product he/she receives after making an order. The website design team should make sure that this requirement is met before the site goes live.
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Use a Balanced Colour Scheme
Singaporeans view colours differently. Men are drawn to black as it indicates power and luxury while women are fascinated by pink and purple as they communicate femininity, class, and beauty. Age also affects colour choice as people are more likely to change their preferences with age.
Therefore, a business that caters to a specific age or gender needs to research the colour that will have the most impact.
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Make the Call-to-Action Compelling and Conspicuous
Increasing the visibility of your call-to-action is a good business practice. You can do this by contrasting the colour of your call-to-action button with the background colour.
Red is typically used on the call-to-action button as it communicates a sense of urgency. Orange can also be used as it denotes enthusiasm.
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Font Type
The font type is a superb attention arsenal and the most subtle way of showing your company culture. A traditional font communicates a conservative company culture while a modern font can indicate a relaxed company culture. If both categories of fonts are utilized well, they will draw the attention of the visitor and lead them to the other site pages.
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Feature a Video
Many website designers typically tell site owners not to include videos on their sites as it can significantly reduce the loading speed. While this is true, you can optimize the videos when designing a homepage to make your loading speed fast. You can optimize videos by using data compression tools, streaming directly from the server, specifying the video size, and using a content delivery network (CDN).
Remember that Singaporeans watch an average of 2 hours of online video per day and that there are 4 million YouTube users in Singapore. These two facts coupled with high internet speeds – the highest fixed broadband speed in the world – make video content ideal for your site.
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Constantly Update
A visually appealing and useful homepage today may not have the same effect in a few months; a client’s taste and preferences change with time. Updating your design often ensures that the old designs are binned to make way for fresh designs.
To master how to reduce the bounce rate in Singapore, you have to start by understanding what bounce rate is and how it is calculated. Bounce rate is a metric that most people do not understand in Google Analytics. When a person exits their landing page on your website without going to other pages, it is termed a bounce rate.
Let us look at why one should measure the bounce rate of a website before we get to how to reduce the bounce rate in Singapore.
Quantitative Vs Qualitative Analysis
When looking to reduce the bounce rate on your website, you will need to analyze both the qualitative and quantitative data. This will ensure that you understand your customers and thus enhance your digital marketing campaigns.
However, to get the best results, you will need to combine both types of data, understand what they mean for your digital campaign, and then commit to reducing the bounce rate.
Quantitative data analysis revolves around collecting data, classifying it, and doing the actual analysis. The results will offer the insight you need to understand what happened within a defined timeframe. You will get the total number of abandoned carts, monthly bounce rate, and homepage loading speed.
On the other hand, qualitative data analysis is done by conducting user testing, open-ended surveys, and interviews with your users to gain insight into what happened.
The information you get cannot be counted directly, but it shows how your users feel about your product or service, the checkout page, and what would make them complete the purchasing process.
With this in mind, you can now move on to selecting the tools and software to reduce bounce rates and enhance your digital marketing campaigns. You will always need to seek out the best tools to help you in this endeavour.
8 Superior Tools to Reduce Bounce Rate and Enhance Your Digital Marketing Campaigns
Now that you know what is bounce rate and the different factors that cause it, it’s time to spring into action and come up with robust ways of reducing it. Note that no website is immune to bounce rate.
Let us now discuss the top tools you can count on to reduce bounce rates and enhance the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaigns.
When looking around for the best tools to reduce bounce rates and enhance your digital marketing campaigns, you need to understand the value of data and analytics. You will need to be well-versed in quantitative and qualitative analytics.
While each has its merits, you will need to create the right balance to improve conversion rates and improve the effectiveness of your digital marketing.
Tools and Software to Reduce Bounce Rate and Enhance Digital Marketing Campaigns
The quantitative tools discussed below will allow you to collect numerical data that you will use to track and understand what is on your website. However, you will need to incorporate qualitative data analysis techniques to understand the steps to take.
It will show you at what point would-be customers exit the sales funnel. This way, you can enhance your digital marketing campaign and align it with user experience to increase conversion rates.
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Google Analytics
Source: Cloud Physics
Google Analytics is one of the best free tools to measure and keep track of quantitative data. It allows you to track and analyze data about the pages your customers see and interact with while browsing your website.
From the collected data, you will see which keywords are driving the most visitors to your website.
It will also show you the repulsive designs to your users, thus increasing the bounce rate. You will also see data on how fast your pages load.
Some of the tool’s best features that will enhance your digital marketing campaign:
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- The number of website visits
- Conversion tracking
- The number of people who visited your website without opening other pages
- The keywords that brought in the most traffic
- Third-party referrals
You will get a custom dashboard that arranges all the data in one place for you to analyse.
A powerful yet flexible and easy-to-use tool, Google Analytics will help you enhance your digital marketing campaigns.
You will find the messages and channels, which will give you the best results. You will not need prior knowledge of the tool to create an account.
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Spring Metric Analytics
Source: Aqua Technologies
Spring Metrics is one of the best conversion tools that shows you the top search keywords, converting sources, and landing page elements on your website.
It offers a real-time dashboard that displays how your customers interact with your website while offering suggestions for increasing the rate of conversion.
It is easy to install and run, thanks to the point-and-click configuration.
These features make Spring Metrics one of the superior tools to reduce bounce rate and enhance your digital marketing campaigns:
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- A real-time conversion dashboard
- It gives insight into the source ad location of your clients and how they interact with the site once they get to the landing page
- It offers keyword intelligence and analytics
- It gives the details about the short – and long-term revenue gains
Better yet, Spring Metric is optimized for both mobile devices and PCs.
This means that you can stay updated on the developments in your website from anywhere in the world.
While Google Analytics offers similar information, Spring Metrics is more straightforward and collates the information more usefully.
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MouseFlow for Heat Map Analytics
Source: Pinterest
To gain a deeper understanding of bounce rates, you will need to see a heat map analysis of how the users interact with your website. MouseFlow is one of the best behaviour analytics software used to optimize website experience and thus enhance digital marketing campaigns.
MouseFlow allows you to see what happens when users click by watching their time on the website. You will get a friction score that helps you know the issues you should fix rather than wasting time combing through the various issues contributing to the high bounce rate.
Moreover, MouseFlow allows digital marketing teams to build six different types of heat maps for each page on the website. This way, you can optimize the user interface and thus enhance your digital marketing campaigns to increase conversion rates.
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GetResponse
Source: Pure Residuals
For some businesses, it is easy to bring customers into a sales funnel.
However, to make them take action and make a purchase, you must guide them through the purchasing process. Engaging the customers in various ways through content and call-to-actions, among other activities, will help reduce the bounce rate.
However, no sales funnel is similar for all businesses.
The type and configuration of the funnel depend on the number of steps you want the user to take before checking out. It will call for you to include videos, articles, automated emails, and more.
GetResponse is one of the best tools aimed at automating your sales techniques.
You can do everything right from creating and running Facebook Ad campaigns and landing pages.j You could also add subscribers to your autoresponder cycle and direct the users to the sales pages.
GetResponse will also accept payment for the products and services and channel it to your bank account.
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MonsterInsights for Form Analytics
Source: Pure Residuals
Form analytics allows you to track how many users see your forms compared to how many take the time to fill them out and where they get stuck.
You can use the data collected from form analytics to improve your form and eliminate the sections that lead to the customer abandoning it.
MonsterInsights is one of the best form analytics tools that will help you reduce the bounce rate.
It tracks the form submissions automatically, and you can then track the form submissions in Google Analytics automatically.
With this tool, you can do data filtration after a specified period. For example, you could review the insights every seven days or after one month with a custom data range.
It allows for an easy view of your website’s impressions, conversions, and overall conversion rate.
It will require that you study the information generated by MonsterInsight to gauge the level of bounce rate when users get to the form section of your website.
This will give you the necessary insight into enhancing your digital marketing campaigns by having better forms.
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HubSpot CRM for Lead Management
Source: Global Ranking Solution
Before you start thinking about the effects of bounce rate and the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaigns, you need to identify what defines your ideal customer. This is where lead management comes in, and some people call it customer acquisition management.
Knowing what your customer wants is the key to your digital marketing campaigns, and when done right, you will not have to worry about the bounce rate.
This will require that you cultivate a healthy and robust relationship with your customers even before they become customers.
Of all CRM software on the market, HubSpot is arguably the best one, mainly for two reasons:
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- It has a comprehensive free version that is better than what most paid software have
- It is applicable in various hubs, including customer service, sales, and marketing
For new websites and inexperienced digital marketers, the free 14-day trial offers the best value for your money.
Whether you want to enhance your digital marketing campaigns by reducing your bounce rate or improving customer relations, you will get hundreds of powerful features. Better yet, you can manage as many as a million contacts on the free plan.
While the price is on the higher side, HubSpot is the better option for customer acquisition management.
The trick is to bundle the services you want together and create a custom plan worth the money you are paying.
Millions of web admins and digital marketers love it because of its ease of use and creation. By this, we mean that you can create content for your forms, landing pages, and emails easily via drag and drop.
Leveraging lead management using HubSpot CRM, you will be able to enhance your digital marketing campaigns. In this way, you will mitigate the issue of bounce rate before the customer gets to your website.
The thinking behind this is that you have the most suitable content to nudge them into taking action and making a purchase.
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Unbounce
Source: Thrive Stash
Unbounce is a tool that helps you quickly build, tweak, and publish new landing pages and test them for the ease of converting browsers into customers.
It has built-in A/B testing and variant analytics that can identify the CTAs and additional page elements that are not working.
This will come in handy if you are not versed in landing page design since Unbounce has fantastic landing page templates.
After going through Unbounce’s analytics, you will see the best landing page elements responsible for conversions and bounce rates.
You can modify the landing pages as you see fit to enhance your digital marketing campaign and reduce the bounce rate. It is marketed as the best tool for small businesses, and looking at their prices; you will be getting good value for your money.
When adequately adapted, you will see a significant drop in the bounce rates.
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OptiMonk
Source: The Blog Metrics
OptiMonk allows businesses to grab their customer’s attention and reduces bounce rates through personalized pop-ups.
It emphasizes lead capture and exit intent messages. OptiMonk uses behaviour-based targeting, which ensures that your pop-ups are not disruptive but enhance the user experience for your site visitors.
With OptiMonk, you can create digital marketing campaigns that your customers can appreciate instead of giving them the tired one-size-fits-all pop-up.
This means that you will segment the users on whether they are first-time customers or return buyers.
OptiMonk is suitable for all kinds of businesses and websites thanks to its ease of use.
It has hundreds of templates with well-established click-through rates, which brands can customize based on the suitability and effectiveness of the pop-ups.
Personalized pop-ups will go a long way in enhancing your digital marketing campaigns.
Consequently, they will reduce your bounce rate. However, this will call for you to create a custom data range to monitor the effectiveness of the personalized pop-ups.
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Bonus: MailMunch for Email Marketing
Source: WP Built
Email marketing, despite many digital marketers underrating it, remains one of the most effective aspects of any digital marketing campaign.
Statistics show that the average open rate for emails is between 11% and 50%, which means that a majority of the emails go unopened.
Moreover, the click-to-open rate is 10%.
For this reason, you will need to optimize your email marketing to enhance your digital marketing campaigns. MailMunch is a hybrid email marketing tool that is also a landing page tool focused on building lists.
This tool offers engaging form types and emails you can send to leads once they have completed the onboarding process.
With MailMunch, you can segment your audience based on various factors such as how often they buy, their demographics, and more.
The platform also includes a goal-based form-builder where you can create several templates.
After going through A/B testing through qualitative means, you can then identify the one that will reduce the bounce rates and enhance your digital marketing campaigns.
With that said, reducing the bounce rate on your website is all about understanding your audience and putting in the work to win them over before they land on your website.
Optimizing your landing page and sales funnel will then come in handy when enhancing the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaigns to reduce the bounce rate.
Digital Marketing: Factors that Affect Your Bounce Rates
If you want to know if your visitors are engaged, then you should pay close attention to your bounce rate. This is the metric that shows how quickly people are leaving your page upon their initial visit to only one page.
Though a low bounce rate is not always proof of a winning (digital marketing) DM strategy, it’s important to think about what you can do it improve it. Let’s talk about what elements can affect your bounce rates. But first, let’s discuss user intent.
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User intent is everything
When optimising a website, you must first understand why people click on your link. In many cases, this reason may be pretty trivial. The individual may simply want to view a certain image.
They may be interested to learn what happens next. Perhaps they simply want to know if the link is clickbait. Whatever the reason, it’s ultimately very important to your business. When you have the answers to these questions, you’ll be able to provide value.
So ask yourself who you’re trying to attract. Create a buyer persona for them and figure out what this person is trying to achieve when they visit your site. Not only will this help to improve your bounce rate, but it will also help you with your overall online marketing campaign.
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It’s more than ‘on-site’ factors
Yes, every website needs a great design, a compelling call to action and a clear and descriptive menu structure. However, these factors are just a few things that can contribute to your audience being engaged. What is just as important as your on-site factors is your off-site marketing.
There’s a very good chance that users are visiting because of one of your campaigns.
This is why your marketing campaign and website must be aligned.
They are both crucial components in attracting your desired audience and reaching your goals. So make sure that you review each. In some cases, you could find that your advertisements are misleading.
- User experience
One of the most challenging things for a Singapore business owner to do is to view their user experience objectively.
Most are not fully aware of how much work their layout may need. And this is because you have looked at your website for too long.
It’s hard to see the things that need to be changed. Sometimes business owners simply run out of ideas. So a fresh perspective can be useful. This may mean working with a professional web designer.
Here are just a few things you need to look out for:
- Mobile
A few years ago, it was perfectly acceptable for your website to be designed for mainly desktop users. Sure, it was a good idea for your website to be mobile-friendly, but it was something that simply put you ahead of your competition.
Now that changes are being made on the mobile front, mobile friendliness is no longer an option. It is instead a necessity.
Not only that but since Google has changed over to mobile-first indexing, it’s the only way that your site can be taken seriously on Google’s search engine.
Users are primarily using their phones to search the web. So if your users are struggling to navigate through your website on their mobile devices, then this contributes to their bounce rate.
- Readability
Another element that could affect your bounce rate is your content.
Your content may be extremely valuable and unique, but if people are having a hard time reading it, then they are bound to leave your site. The good news is, this often requires just a few simple changes.
For instance, you may need to increase the size of your text.
In the case of the mobile version of your site, you may need to increase the line spacing to make the text more digestible. In some scenarios, it may be a matter of the colour of your text.
Perhaps you’re using grey and it’s too light to read comfortably. Remember, just because a text may look nice in theory does not mean that your users will be able to read it easily. Sometimes it’s a good idea to go with the most practical option.
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Engagement
According to Google, some pages naturally have a high bounce rate. This is chiefly due to the user intent.
If you would like to help offset this, you should encourage engagement on these pages. For example, if a certain blog post is likely to have a higher bounce rate than others, you need to use content marketing to encourage them to visit other web pages.
This means that you should make sure to include clear calls to action to content that is relevant, internal links, as well as a menu structure that is clear and consistent.
In this way, people may leave the blog page, but they will leave and go to the page that you recommend–one with a lower bounce rate. And this helps to improve your conversion rates.
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Intrusive ads
Most visitors will agree that one of the most frustrating parts of a user experience is visiting a website only to be greeted with a bunch of advertisements and pop-ups. And that’s because it breaks the flow of their experience.
And in most cases, visitors will leave immediately to avoid further frustration.
That’s why it’s important to get rid of these types of pop-ups–specifically those that take over the entire page on mobile devices.
Many Singapore business owners have a hard time getting rid of these pop-ups because they are what often cause some of their visitors to convert.
However, if you must have pop-ups on your site, it’s a good idea to make it so that users can return to their user experiences as soon as possible.
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Speed
Ever since mobile usage has increased, speed has become an even bigger player in digital marketing. Users can be pretty impatient and attention spans are getting shorter and shorter.
That’s why many expect instant access when it comes to how quickly a website loads. The optimal load time is under 3 seconds. If it takes longer than this, people tend to leave your page.
So make sure that your website is at its optimal load time.
Several things could affect the speed. Shared hosting that is low cost can be a source. It may just be a matter of images that are too large, so make sure the resolution isn’t too high.
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Design
In the past, you could beat out your competitors just by simply having a website.
However, this is no longer the case. Not only should you have a website for your business, but the website should also feature an excellent design.
Brands are now spending more of their budget to secure the best designs.
So if your site is outdated are is poorly designed, then it can easily cause your visitors to bounce. If you’re struggling to create a design that gets good reviews, then consider working with a professional.
As you can see, a few changes can make a world of difference. However, though we have just discussed several individual elements things that can affect your bounce rate, it’s important to remember that it’s about the overall experience. All of these elements work together to provide one package.
Conclusion
We hope that you have found several ways you can use to minimize bounce rates and maximize conversions for your Singapore website. However, optimizing your website to reduce bounce rate is a never-ending process.
Moreover, assessing the changing demographics of your end-user should be central to your digital marketing campaign. Contact us for professional digital marketing and website design services in Singapore today.
