Bounce Rate – How Important Is It?
All our clients receive a monthly stats report, and in that report they would see details of their site’s “bounce rate”.
Now, what are bounce rates?
Bounce rates are defined as “the percentage number of people who left a given page on your website without viewing any other pages”.
You are probably thinking “well I want my bounce rate to be as low as possible then”. However, there are circumstances where people are only likely to visit one page of the website and this is still a good thing. For example, if our search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts are working, then if someone was to Google “Teeth whitening [location]” and your teeth whitening page appeared in the search results and they clicked on this, they will be presented with all the information they need on teeth whitening at your practice. And so long as they can contact you from this page, they have no reason to click through to another page, resulting in a “bounce”.
We normally say that a bounce rate of less than 45% is good. So, what can be done to help reduce the bounce rate of your website?
Make sure the pages of your site load quickly
It is all well and good having a lovely well designed website, but if the pages take too long to load, users would have already navigated away from the site through frustration – resulting in a loss of enquiries.
There are many ways to help boost the speed of a website e.g. reducing the size of images etc.
Give Users Easy Access to the Information They Want
Another frustrating thing for users is if they have clicked through from a search result thinking they are going to be delivered the information they require, only to find that the page that has been served to them doesn’t contain the information they need.
Make sure your pages contain all the information that a patient might want to see about each treatment at your practice i.e. why would they need the treatment?, the benefits of the treatment etc and make sure that the SEO has been setup as best as it can to help Google understand that this page is the one to serve to users. Once this has been done, be sure to include internal links to other relevant pages of your website e.g. smile gallery or testimonials page, to encourage users to click through to other pages of your website to see the benefits of these treatments.
Make Sure External Links Are Setup Correctly
Providing external links to companies that supply particular products to your practice is fine. However, make sure that the links are setup correctly as you do not want a user to land on a page of your website and immediately navigate off your site to a company website.
External links can be setup so that a new window or tab opens up, leaving your webpage still open. Once a user has finished looking at the other companies website and closes the window or tab, they will be able to see your webpage again.
Site Design
A bit of an obvious one.
If a user thinks that the site is dated or difficult to navigate – especially if it isn’t mobile friendly – they are just going to leave without bothering to read the content of the webpage.
Unfortunately when it comes to websites – looks and user experience matter!
If you would like to know more about how Dental Design can help your online marketing, please feel free to give us a call on 01202 677277.
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