8 Effective Ways To Plug The Holes In Your Website & Improve Bounce Rates

0:15 – There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza!
1:08 – Your traffic is bouncing? That’s the hole in your bucket!
1:44 – Have an attention-grabbing headline
2:22 – Using Emotional Direct Response Copywriting
2:40 – The importance of an appealing website design
3:28 – Avoid using external links on your home page
3:51 – Not all social media buttons are ‘equal’
4:11 – Why the Facebook ‘Like’ box is so efficient
5:16 – Including internal links in your website content
5:57 – Having a strong CTA on each of your pages

Hi, Fiona Soutter here from Super Savvy Business with this week’s Website Word Of the Week.

0:15 – There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza!

Do you remember the song from your childhood called ‘There’s a hole in my bucket’? Well, I am really going to draw on that whole idea today when we talk about websites.

I want you to imagine right now that you have a bucket and you want to fill your bucket with water, but you don’t have one source to go and get the water. So you have to go down to the river and collect some water down there with a cup. You start to fill your bucket up. Then you go down to the stream and you go and get a little bit of water down by the stream… you fill up your cup, run back and put it in your bucket. Then you go down to a little pond where you find some more water and so you fill up your cup and you put a little bit more in your bucket.

The only problem is, each time you come back to your bucket you find that the water is leaking out because in your bucket you have a whole pile of holes. So it doesn’t seem to matter how much effort you are putting in to go and get your water from all the different sources, the water just keeps flowing out.

1:08 – Your traffic is bouncing? That’s the hole in your bucket!

Now, we can relate this back to the whole idea of your website and bringing traffic to your website. You might have several different channels of bringing website traffic to you, but you might find when you look at Google Analytics that that traffic is bouncing, or leaving your site almost as quickly as it goes. Or perhaps they are only viewing only one page or two pages and then leaving.

These are the holes in your website. In today’s video I’d like to cover some ways in which you can plug those holes and start to retain that traffic that you worked so very, very hard to attract.

1:44 – Have an attention-grabbing headline

When you think about that behaviour of most internet users, when they are searching to find a solution to a problem and they are looking through many different websites. Generally when they land on a website, it takes a couple of seconds for them to make a decision to whether or not that website is going to be worth continuing to read or continuing to look into.

So you only have those couple of seconds to grab somebody’s attention. Now how can you go about doing that best? Well, one of the things I recommend is to make sure that you have an attention-grabbing headline that is going to stop people in their track. Get their attention and then encourage them to read onwards.

2:22 – Using Emotional Direct Response Copywriting

If you have managed to do that, you want to ensure then that the content that they are reading when they continue to read onwards, is also going to maintain their attention. So I recommend that you consider using what we call Emotional Direct Response Copywriting – particularly on your home page as a way of trying to keep people there for longer.

2:40 – The importance of an appealing website design

The other thing to consider, which is often overlooked by people, is to ensure that you have an appealing design. It’s amazing: little things like white writing on a black background or writing that is really dense with not a lot of space, bold,  italics or subheadlines can make that writing very, very difficult or more challenging for people to read.

Also, just in the actual flow of the site, the way the site is laid out: if it’s confusing when somebody gets to your site and it’s not clear which way they should look, then that could be a reason why people are clicking back and not actually staying on your site.

So consider all of these elements as far as design is concerned, because even that (even if you have a great headline), having a bad design can encourage people to leave your site.

3:28 – Avoid using external links on your home page

The other thing I also recommend for my clients through Super Savvy Business and Super Savvy Websites is to avoid having links to external sites on the Homepage. What happens if you do that, is people will might click on a link and then leave your site. You have spent a lot of effort trying to get that traffic to your site so the last thing you want to do is sending that traffic away.

3:51 – Not all social media buttons are ‘equal’

For example, a YouTube button is a really great thing to have on your site to encourage people to connect with you on YouTube, but did you know that you can have a YouTube ‘Subscribe’ button actually embedded on your website so people can subscribe to your YouTube channel without having to leave your website?

4:11 – Why the Facebook ‘Like’ box is so efficient

Now talking about social media, I’d like to also bring up the idea of social proof, because this in itself can be a great way to encourage people to stay on your site. I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with or have seen the Facebook ‘Like’ box on a lot of websites. If you don’t have one of these then it might be worth considering whether it is appropriate for your business and your market. This Facebook ‘Like’ box is very, very clever. What it will do is actually show the faces of the people that your web visitors are actually connected to. So these are people that they already know.

So if you can imagine that Jane comes to Super Savvy Business, and when Jane arrives at my website she sees three of her friends have already liked my Facebook page, that is social proof for her; that shows her that three of her friends are already connected with me, already trust me and like me, so that will encourage her to maybe look further into who I am and what my business is all about.

It’s a really simple strategy, yet it is extremely effective.

5:16 – Including internal links in your website content

Another way to keep people on your site longer is to include internal links to other pages in your site. So, for example, in your content, make sure you interlink them to each other, so as people are reading they might click the link and land on another page of yours and continue reading more relevant content to what they are interested in.

This is a very simple tactic to employ in your website, but it’s certainly something that Google encourages us to do, and it can also even help with the strength of your site in the eyes of Google. Because the longer people stay on your site, the more authority your site is seen to have on your particular topic.

5:57 – Having a strong CTA on each of your pages

The final thing I’d like to touch on is to ensure that each of your pages has a strong call to action (CTA). Tell people what action you want them to take, what you want them to do next. This is something that we don’t just do on the home page; this really should be incorporated into every single page of your site.

Do you want them to register for an e-course? Do you want them to ‘buy now’? Think about all these things: what action do you want people to take?, and make that very, very clear.

This also, of course, relates back to the Direct Response Copy. Even your little buttons – if you have, for instance, a little optin box with an offer for a free e-course – rather than having just the word ‘Submit’, you can have words such as ‘Get Free Access To The E-Course Now!’, which is really a lot stronger than just the word ‘Submit’.

These are just a couple of tips about plugging the holes in your website and trying to keep traffic on your website for longer, and then also getting that traffic actually to convert by taking the action that you want them to take.

I hope that you found these tips useful. If you’d like to stay in touch or if you haven’t already, make sure you subscribe to these weekly training videos at SuperSavvyBusiness.com. I will look forward to seeing you next week.

My name is Fiona Soutter, stay tuned for our next Word of the Week update!