So you and your marketing team spent quite a significant amount of time choosing the most appropriate template and messaging for your landing page, and didn’t get enough traction? Often due to a high bounce rate, this phenomenon is a real problem for marketers struggling to convert users.
While landing pages will vary according to the desired call-to-action, some items must appear for users to actually pay attention to the messaging. Therefore, regardless of whether you opt for a fully customized landing page or an automated service, make sure to consider the following six elements that contribute to a high bounce rate, an often critical measurement as it directly relates to whether or not your landing page was able to meet “…the user’s needs and usability.”:
Why Your Lading Pages Have a High Bounce Rate
1. Poor Design and Animation
While there are many great online landing page creators, choose wisely before sharing your page with potential leads. Think of the color design, the exact messaging you wish to spread, and the precise style which will lead users to react. For instance, adding too many unnecessary images can sway visitors away and keep them from filling in the valuable content fields to further move ahead in the sales funnel.
See below for an example of a landing page showing too many different discounts being displayed (I’m already confused, not sure about you):
Image source: Kissmetrics
2. Ambiguous or Unclear Messaging
Keep it simple stupid. The lovely KISS acronym comes in very handy here, as it’s very fitting in the world of landing pages. Users often leave your landing page due to unclear or even misleading messaging. Would you leave your personal contact details if you fail to understand the actual product, service or message being displayed on your screen?
Take the below example — it doesn’t immediately make sense to new visitors unfamiliar with the product or service being offered. What will result in me getting relief from pain? How can I know this is actually referring to a potential surgical procedure?
Image source: Unbounce
3. Too Many Call-to-Actions
If you have spent adequate time with your marketing team on appropriate messaging and targeting, be sure to include a relevant call-to-action button that will help you reach your intended objective. So whether you are focused on getting more emails and potential leads, or signing up people based on a massive promotional offer, be sure the content and the framing you pick are in line with this.
See the example below of Shopify’s well-framed landing page with clear messaging and a simple and yet, direct and clear call-to-action — “sign up for 14 day free trial by quickly filling in 3 boxes”:
Image source: Hubspot
4. Poor Targeting
Even if you have the best in-house landing page designers, your bounce rate will remain lower than you expect if the actual targeting is poor — i.e. you are reaching the wrong and/or inappropriate audience. If these wrong users are being shown your message, there is absolutely no inclination to continue on in the sales funnel.
A helpful tip is using tools that offer A/B testing to test out different strategies for pushing your landing pages to relevant customers. For instance, leading marketing automation company GetResponse has incorporated a feature that enables users to track their landing page performance and make necessary adjustments when relevant.
5. Unregulated Pop-up Frequency
If an online visitor has reached the point that he/she has to form a strategy for staying away from continuous pop-up landing pages, you may find yourself creating a more painful than pleasurable experience. Advertisements and promotional offers can even sometimes be overwhelming in our consumer-hungry society, especially if it seems as though pop-ups are displayed every time you move the cursor or want to visit a different site or webpage. This can have massive consequences, as in 2013, it was claimed that “70 percent of users said they found irrelevant popups to be annoying”.
6. Slow Loading Times
Today, no one has patience to wait for a page to load. This is true even for a product or service they really need. This is why slow loading times can be a major factor in your landing page’s bounce rate. According to various sources, you have just a mere few seconds to get people to stay on your specific page.
Tools such as Pingdom and URI Valet are great places to start testing out your load times.
Time to Conclude
Remember, you want your bounce rate to be as low as possible in order to truly be effective. Working hard on design and messaging is a great start, but it will require a bit more effort than this to get users to the next level in the sales process.
These are just six reasons for understanding why landing pages can have a high bounce rate. Have any other ideas or insights on this topic? Leave a comment or two below.
Bounce Photo via Shutterstock
This article, “6 Reasons Why Your Landing Page Has a High Bounce Rate” was first published on Small Business Trends