What is bounce rate, and why do I want it to be low?

What is bounce rate, and why do I want it to be low?

What Is Bounce Rate? Why Do I Want It To Be Low?

so many trackable metrics when it comes to digital marketing, with bounce rate one of those confusing ones!

Usually, we want to log into Analytics and see our metrics nice and high. So, why is it that when we talk about bounce rate, the lower the better?.

It probably goes against human nature to believe that the lower the number, the better the result… but in terms of bounce rate, that’s exactly what you want.

When someone visits your website and leaves without interacting further than that initial click and read, a “bounce” occurs. I know, it’s weird terminology, but if it works for Tigger, it can work for us. Your bounce rate, therefore, is the percentage of people that bounce off of your site.

For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to assume you’re using Google Analytics, and if you aren’t then you should be. You’ll find the bounce rate alongside most metrics, most frequently being page views. The two go hand in hand.

Websites like SEMrush will tell you that bounce rate is within the top five of important ranking factors for making sure your webpage appears in search engine results pages. Though, some others will say the opposite, saying Google doesn’t use bounce rate in its algorithm metrics. We won’t ever truly know cos it’s a secret!

Image result for bounce rate

What can I use the bounce rate for?

Your bounce, just like Tiggers, is a wonderful thing. It’s a very insightful metric that can give you actionable insights. You can use bounce rate to improve the customer experience on your website. “How?” I hear you frantically mash into your keyboard… well, let’s break it down.

Your bounce rate can be expected to be high in blogs because there is no expectation of the reader to want to go further than that piece of copy. After all, they clicked to read it for a reason. Whereas your product pages, you should expect a lower bounce rate because if a user is on that page, they’re either there to purchase an item or to find out more.

If the bounce rate on your product pages is high, then your conversions are probably low. There could be something wrong with this page. Now, this can be any number of things;

    • Your copy isn’t right for the page
    • The image of your product isn’t very appealing
    • Pop-ups could be blocking the page
    • The page is cluttered and too distracting
    • Your conversion buttons are too hidden
    • A lack of calls to action
    • Failing to provide the USP of the product
    • and so many more…

What’s a good bounce rate?

We should probably explain, there is no such thing as a “good” bounce rate. It’s going to thoroughly depend on your product or websites intention. This is something you’ve got to decide for yourself, is it valuable to you that users explore past that initial page on your site?

On average, bounce rates fall between 26% and 70%, but again, it depends on your goals. If you’ve got a bounce rate of under 20% or over 90% then you may be in some trouble, something’s not working – be that analytics or something on your site.

A great way to understand why your bounce rate might be the way it is, or to work out why most customers don’t move past a certain page on your website, is to wear their shoes. That’s right, shove on their sparkly Converse, map out their paths through your site and get going. Do they get as far as entering their card details and then stop? Get to that part of the customer journey and see why that may be. Maybe the card details box is glitchy and doesn’t work, maybe it’s asking for details they just can’t provide, maybe it isn’t there at all! You won’t know till you try and you can’t rely on potential customers to get in touch and let you know of any issues they may have encountered on your website.

We’ve put together a list of ways you can look to reduce your bounce rate and, hopefully, increase conversions on your website. Whether your bounce rate is of concern to you or not, click here to work out where you could look to improve your online efforts.

Now you know a little more about bounce rate, we hope you’ll look at your analytics with a little more understanding and be able to take some actionable insights away with you. Go on, log on now and see what you can do.

digital marketing strategy

If you’d like to learn more about using, navigating and understanding Google Analytics then check out our next workshop and get in touch. If you have any pressing questions, feel free to email us on hello@giantcampus.co.uk.

Amber Vellacott

Amber Vellacott

Content Marketing Lead

Follow us on social media for blog updates and more kick-ass learning content to grow your digital skills!

5 ways to reduce your bounce rate

5 ways to reduce your bounce rate

5 Ways To Reduce Your Bounce RAte

reducing bounce rate to improve your websites performance

This blog is here to prove a point about bounce rate in another blog, but if you’re here without that journey then that’s cool too. Hi, here’s some advice on reducing your bounce rate!

Ha. Look what we made you do, improve our blogs bounce rate! Don’t worry, it’s not just a trick to prove a point, we genuinely do have 5 ways to help you reduce your bounce rate…

  1. Improve your content’s readability
  • The user experience very much depends on whether your content is readable, legible and formatted into easy-to-read chunks. Consider people’s attention span when using the internet. Consider your audience too. If they’re coming to your website to read a dissertation style piece, that’s fine! But if it’s a blog like the one you just visited, then headings can help avoid scaring them away.
  1. Use a super duper compelling call-to-action
  • Give your readers a reason to click through your site with a call to action. Have it coloured a certain way so it stands out from other parts of your page. Make it appealing, such as “Start your free trial today”. Even a change in font can make all the difference, making the button stand out on your page like the dreaded big red button that says “don’t press”.
  1. Attract those that are attracted to you…
  • You don’t want to attract people to your website that have no interest in your product or service, there are other ways to build brand awareness. Make sure you appear under relevant search terms or advertise to your demographic, these people will want to be on your website – otherwise they wouldn’t have clicked. This’ll likely reduce your bounce rate. Quality, not quantity!
  1. Speed up your page loading time
  • You’ve probably heard it before, or even experienced it yourself, but consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less. After 3 seconds, consumers are going to move on. You can test your loading speed here with Google. If yours is looking a bit slow, then have a look at what you can remove from your site, or minimise the size of.
  1. Get rid of those darn popups!
  • Who on this digital sphere likes popups? We can tell you, it’s no one. If we go onto a site and it gets something thrown at our face demanding we sign up to their newsletter to be able to browse further, then we’re outta there! They ruin the user experience and that’s going ruin your bounce rate. Again, go through your customer’s journey to see where they are going to be annoying and amend appropriately.

These are just a few things you can do to help reduce your bounce rate but are a great start. These are things you should check on time and time again too, so why not schedule it into your calendar to have a look?

Amber Vellacott

Amber Vellacott

Content Marketing Lead

Follow us on social media for blog updates and more kick-ass learning content to grow your digital skills!

Zero to hero: how to set up Facebook & Instagram ads

Zero to hero: how to set up Facebook & Instagram ads

How To Set Up Facebook & Instagram Ads

from zero to hero – a beginners guide to Facebook and Instagram adverts

Intimidated by the hundreds of buttons and fiddly bits that appear when you go to set up and run a Facebook/Instagram ad?

Time to read through our GIANT guide to advertising through Facebook and become a pro…

If you’re here, then you probably are ok with the fact you’ve gotta spend a little to make a lot. But, if you’re not sure why paid advertising is good, let us break it down…

There are numerous benefits of running a paid campaign, especially with the hydra of decreasing organic results being such a looming threat. With just a small paid budget it is much easier to improve your return on investment, increase conversions and goal competitions and there are plenty of options when it comes to what you promote and where.

In today’s guide/blog/lesson, whatever you want to call it, we will be walking you through the whole process of setting up and running your own social ads on Facebook, as well as some tips and tricks to help.  

It’s business time

There are two main ways to run your ads, through your Facebook page or through a Business Manager account. We will run through both here but basically, running ads through your page is probably the easier option, but Business Manager gives you much more options when it comes to tracking, different ad types, and analytics. Not to mention the fact you can also use it to run ads on Facebook and Instagram at the same time. Click the tabs below to explore the two in more detail. 

Once you’ve got those set up and decided which one you’d like to advertise through, it’s time to get going.

Pick your objectives

One of the main things to decide before you get any ads running is what you hope to achieve by running them. Whether you want to increase conversions on your website or increase the reach of your posts, these will require different approaches that should be factored into your ad creation.

Thankfully Facebook makes this whole step much more straightforward.

– First, head to your business manager
– Click the three lines in the top left corner and choose Ad Manager
– Select your chosen ad account
– Click Create
– You will then be greeted with this lovely selection:

– After choosing, scroll down, name your campaign and click continue
– This will create your ad campaign. The next step is to make your ad set which requires you to choose your audience, where you want it shared and how much you want to pay.

Pick your audience

Choosing your audience is one of the most important parts of your ad creation. Too specific and you will limit the number of people you reach, too broad and you might minimise the number of relevant people your ad reaches.

Hopefully, you have a good idea who you want to reach with your ads but here are some tips to help.

  • Don’t ignore the Connections box. This gives you some interesting audience specifications such as choosing people who have responded to an event, friends of people who like your page. Alternatively, you can choose to exclude these audiences instead.
  • As you add more demographics, interests, and behaviours Facebook will make more suggestions for similar groups you should target.
  • If you aren’t sure about which audience will have better results or want to target very different ad types, you can always create multiple ads or run an A/B testing on your ads.
  • Look into setting up Lookalike and custom audiences for EVEN MORE audience options.

As you input your audience requirements you will notice that the gauge on the right side starts to jump around more than a House of Pain on a trampoline. Ideally, you want the pointer as close to the centre of the gauge as possible.

Under the graph you will see the estimated number of people you can expect to reach with your ad. As Facebook are quick to point out, this is an estimation and should be used as a guide only.

 

Placements

Now you have chosen who you want to see your ad, it is time to choose where they see it.

Though Facebook automatically ticks the ‘Automatic Placements’ box, we would recommend editing your placements (or at least having a look at where your ads are going!).

Manual placements allow for you to narrow your audiences by device type, for example, you can show your new iPhone announcement video to iOS users only if you want. Afterall, what says exclusivity more than anything Apple.

You can also choose to exclude categories, such as stopping your ad appearing on places that have Mature, Gambling or Dating related content for example.

Set your budget

Another benefit of running ads on Facebook over other platforms such as LinkedIn is that ads are actually pretty cheap.

Whether your budget is £50 or £5000, you can set your daily budget or lifetime budget, set your ad live and see great results.

For those new to social ads we would recommend starting small and scaling up your budget as your results do.

Creating the ad!

So now you have done all that it is time to create the ads themselves!

Time for more options. Yaaaaaaaay. Let’s go back to bullet points to make this quicker…

  • First off, choose to either create an ad or use one of the preexisting posts on your page (this will then ask you to pick the post you want).
  • Select your Facebook account where you want the ad to run
  • Select your Instagram account where you want the ad to run (if it isn’t here, there is a handy instruction above the box to help).
  • Choose your ad type:

  • Upload images or videos, depending on the ad you chose.
  • Choose accompanying text on the post.
  • Add links to your site if needed (UTM this and you will win extra brownie points).
  • Add a call to action and overlay if you want one.
  • CONFIRM YOUR AD

It’s alive! Facebook will now check your ad to make sure it adheres to their ad policies but it should be set live within very little time.

There are a number of other options and complexities we didn’t cover off here, such as how to use Pixel tracking, but that is a subject for another blog. Needless to say, as you get more ads live, looking into extra features is recommended.

Tips for ad creation!

And you are done!

Congratulations. Assuming your ad did not contain gambling babies with guns, your ad will be live in the world. You can monitor the results of your ad in the Ad Manager tab and make any adjustments to any part of your ad as it is going on.

If you have any further questions, pop us an email on questions@giantcampus.co.uk.

Click here to read this blog and learn how to increase views on your Facebook video content! 

Ben Hawkes

Ben Hawkes

Digital Creative Lead

Follow us on social media for blog updates and more kick-ass learning content to grow your digital skills!

Social Media: dark vs. light

Social Media: dark vs. light

Social Media: Dark vs. Light

dark web? try dark social media…

You’re much more likely to hear about the negatives of social media because that makes good news. But for every negative, there has to be a positive, right?

The light and dark sides of social media are often highlighted in the media, by your local social media company and by that grumpy old man on the bus who feels the need to comment as you scroll your feed. But you’ll seldom come across the negatives weighed against the positives.

In this blog, we’re looking at both sides of social media. For every negative associated with either an in-platform feature, posting format or effect on society, we’re going to find a positive. In the same way that you, as a business, should evaluate the potential of both sides when you post on social media.

We’ve picked a couple of topics out of a hat because we’d be here until Facebook implements a dislike button if we tried to cover everything. As you’ll see, you can choose to explore the dark and/or the light side of these social media-themed topics – a rarity to have them side by side, we’re sure.

Natural disasters, terrorist attacks and national crisis’

When natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other national crisis’ arise, social media steps up in a variety of ways. From the Crisis Response feature on Facebook, through to fundraising on your status and then onto hashtags to raise awareness, there doesn’t appear to be anything ‘dark’ about it. But there are a few people who use these opportunities for personal gain…

The Dark Side

– People used the Crisis Response feature to mark themselves ‘safe’ during the Nepal earthquakes who were nowhere near or at all affiliated with the area. This “let your friends know” and invited them to get in touch. Personal gain?

– Brands using these events as marketing opportunities to promote sales or products using trending topics and hashtags across social media. Often making a mockery of the event as they go with little sympathy.

– Users can use hashtags to spread fake news and cause scaremongering – often done through exaggeration and the spreading of rumours.

The Light Side

– The Crisis Response feature allows users to donate, find out more and offer specific resources such as clothing, food, and volunteer work. Users can share how they’ve helped in the attempt to inspire others to do so too.

– Users can use hashtags on platforms such as Twitter to keep others updated with to-the-minute news and goings-on.

– Crowdfunding and awareness campaigns are spread far and wide across social media, with many donation buttons in-app now, allowing for quick action for support and an increased reach for raising awareness.

 

The power to influence politics and elections

Social media platforms have been in trouble on and off the past year or so for the part they’ve played in influencing voters and swaying elections. But we shouldn’t forget that social media has also played an integral part in voter turnout. What do we mean? Explore the dark and light side of social media and politics:

The Dark Side

– Profiles on social media are made and used to spread propaganda, looking to scare-monger with fake news and exaggerated opinion and influence the way individuals vote. Something that’s happened for years in different media formats, but is next level on social media.

– It’s hard to know which social media profiles and sources are legit these days. Similarly, it’s easy for a parties social media to be hacked or misused by a member of staff (*ahem* Donald Trump’s ex-employee and the 11 minutes of silence)

– There is no regulation of automation on social media sites. You’re much more likely to believe in the credibility of a post shared by a political party if it has a lot of likes and shares, but how many of those are human? (Turns out, not many!)

The Light Side

– Brexit saw an increase in political parties using social media to get in front of undecided audiences. The Conservative party went as far as running adverts in SnapChat to encourage users to vote! Campaigns and increased social presence of the parties encourage a lot of younger voters to commit on the day.

– Social media saw politics become more accessible and understandable for many individuals. Offering discussion, availability to ask questions, and the ability to receive updates from the party leaders themselves through popular content types.

– Politicians used the platform (and so can you) to gauge the reaction of the public – giving them valuable insight to inspire their campaigns, meaning the content we saw was much more tailored to our needs and desires.

 

Growing up with and without social media

You can’t deny that things have changed a little in the past decade or two and that we, as humans, have grown alongside the internet. For the best? Well, there are two sides to every story…

The Dark Side

– The increase in online communities and groups, and the ease of getting a social media profile makes it really difficult to police the types of users online. Therefore there are accounts that are fake, posed or owned by people who aren’t meant to be online – be that because of age restrictions or other reasons. It’s difficult to know who you’re talking to.

– The ability to build communities so easily means that hate groups and trolls are everywhere. It’s much easier now to spread hate speech across social media than it is in person. Social media has allowed these communities to grow. As well as arrange events with thousands of others.

– Bullying has always been a thing, but social media has added a whole new level to what bullies can do. With a heightened sense of anonymity, bullies can do what they want, safe in the knowledge that they won’t be found out.

The Light Side

– Growing up today sees the youth faced with many ways to reach out into the universe and share an interest or celebrate their uniqueness. Wider groups of styles and ways of living exists now, and minority groups can gather great support through connections they have made on social media.

– There is, through social media, the ability to generate support for causes and more opportunity to help make positive changes in the world. For example, the rise in veganism and sustainable living are a result of trends and influencers on social media.

– Social media has allowed us the chance to be more open-minded and accepting through the education and knowledge from others. We’re much more open to different types of people, different opinions, different likes and dislikes and so much more because of these outlets.

– The introduction of online support groups on social platforms like Facebook is great. Before you only had sex education, drug advice and health advice from the speaker at your school – now, there is an abundance of communities out there offering all kinds of support.

 

Face-to-face interactions

We’re all guilty of it. Why make the effort to go upstairs and ask your other half where they put the bag when you could just pop them a message on Messenger or Whatsapp? But is social media ruining ‘human interaction’?

The Dark Side

– Trolls. We’re not talking about the animated pink haired ones that sing songs, we’re talking about the sort that sit behind the safety of the pixels on their screens and get involved with posting inflammatory or distracting things on the internet, looking to provoke and incite emotional responses. Rarely a good thing. Take away that screen and put them face-to-face with someone and we bet they’d have less to say.

– We’re more anti-social than ever before in a physical sense, ironically so when it’s called ‘social’ media.

– This lack of face-to-face can cause a lot of miscommunication. You can’t truly tell someone’s reaction just because they did or didn’t use a full stop at the end of the sentence. Although if they just reply with “K.” then it’s a 99.9% chance you’re in trouble.

The Light Side

– We’re connected like never before, with the ability to talk to friends and family whenever we want, no matter where they might be.

– Consider the ease. You no longer have to traipse into town to return an item and explain its faults, now you can use social media to chat to an advisor who can process the refund and return label there and then whilst you’re still stood at the mirror wondering why that new dress doesn’t suit you…

– Consider the fact that we’re no longer socially inept, but socially adaptable! There are so many new opportunities that people are much more comfortable to get involved with when hidden from direct view of others and able to portray a different level of confidence.

 
Targeted advertising

Targeted ads, you either love ‘em or you hate ‘em. You mostly hate them because you know that sometimes they work and you’ve fallen into the ‘trap’ as you click ‘add to basket’. But as you may have guessed from the other posts, there’s always a dark and light side for this kinda thing…

The Dark Side

– Targeting can go ‘wrong’ sometimes. We all make mistakes, and sometimes a company might select the wrong interests or age group when the set their ad live – people then get a bit aggy and this can damage the companies reputation.

– All the data you once submitted to the internet, by clicking ‘like’ on that Facebook page about eggplants, following that Instagram account of your favourite ice cream brand and updating your relationship status online to ‘it’s complicated’, can be used to target ads. People don’t realise that this is all data they’ve willingly submitted and therefore complain when they’re targeted because of this. This is a lack of education available to the average social media user on the way their online movements are tracked.

The Light Side

– Targeted ads mean you can reach brand new audiences that may not have heard of you yet, expanding your reach and potential customer base. You can make sure your content is seen by the people it was designed for, having a positive effect on not just your audience, but your bounce rate, referral rate and the type of reach it will have.

– Remarketing means you rarely have to bookmark that pair of shoes you like anymore because they will hunt you down across your Facebook page until you hit buy with that generous 10% offer they gave you to complete the purchase.

– Targeting and remarketing follow your journey in life, meaning what you see is almost always relevant to you, your stage in life and your next steps. It’s super clever! (see GIF above)

 

We’ve got to get away from the notion that social media is something we use, that it’s something we pick up the phone to open, scroll through then put down and walk away. Because, realistically, social media dictates many of our everyday decisions. We don’t do social media, it does us.

That was a whistlestop tour of some of social media’s hotly debated flaws, mixed with accompanying positives. Proving you can always find the light in a dark situation. Sure, we’re not all perfect, and some of us, as individuals, are ruining the great name of some of these social platforms, but there are equally as many of us using it for good.

Check out our blog titled ‘ffs, stop trying to cheat social media’ to see how we, as a business, tackle the darker side with some light.

Check out our social media for business workshop where you can learn to become a Social Animal by implementing strategies to use the platforms to achieve a variety of business goals.

Amber Vellacott

Amber Vellacott

Brand & Marketing | Prefect

Follow us on social media for blog updates and more kick-ass learning content to grow your digital skills!

Detailed tone descriptors

Detailed tone descriptors

Defining Your Tone Of Voice With Detailed Tone Descriptors

you’re here which means we either rank well on Google, or you’ve travled from the best blog in the digital-universe, “WTF is ToV?!”

Well, since you’re here, you’d probably like to get going with a quick exercise to help you define your tone of voice…

Below is a list of thirty-seven descriptors that can be used as a starting point to describe your tone of voice. But don’t feel limited to these! We recommend printing this list and getting your team to score them for what words they think best describe your tone.

You can even do this activity twice, once to see what they think the current tone is, and again to see what they think the tone should be.

With each team member having five ticks, get them to mark against the words and then tally up to see what words you get. From there it might be clear, but if it isn’t then it’s time for a bit of brainstorming. Let us know how you get on!

 

Detailed tone descriptors:
  1. Authoritative
  2. Caring
  3. Cheerful
  4. Coarse
  5. Conservative
  6. Conversational
  7. Casual
  8. Dry
  9. Edgy
  10. Enthusiastic
  11. Formal
  12. Frank
  13. Friendly
  14. Fun
  15. Funny
  16. Humorous
  17. Informative
  18. Irreverent
  19. Matter-of-fact
  20. Nostalgic
  21. Passionate
  22. Playful
  23. Professional
  24. Provocative
  25. Quirky
  26. Respectful
  27. Romantic
  28. Sarcastic
  29. Serious
  30. Smart
  31. Snarky
  32. Sympathetic
  33. Trendy
  34. Trustworthy
  35. Unapologetic
  36. Upbeat
  37. Witty
Amber Vellacott

Amber Vellacott

Content Marketing Lead

Follow us on social media for blog updates and more kick-ass learning content to grow your digital skills!