VERY high bounce rate on my site, what gives?

Hi Quad312,

I took a quick look at your website.

Some of the causes of you high bounce rates are obvious to me, there are many landing page best practices that are not implemented on your landing pages.

1. Headlines
Headlines are arguable the most important element on the page, headlines lets users know what the page is about and hints at a your unique selling proposition. Your category pages lack a clearly recognizable headline.

2. Sub-headlines
Sub-headlines help to draw users into reading the first sentence of your sales copy. Your category pages lack a clearly identifiable headline or sub-headline.

3. Sales copy
Sales copy describes the problem you products solve, and why your audience should consider your product over another. Your category pages are devoid of sales copy.

4. Attention Ratio
Attention ratio is the ratio of escape links to the number of links to your primary CTA.
Your category pages have a relatively high Attention ratio

5. Negative Space
Use negative space to make your sales copy comfortable to read and to emphasize the most important page elements. Your category pages do not use negative space to emphasize the primary CTA.

6. Primary CTA
Using location, color, size and placement to make your primary CTA stand out as the obvious next step. Your primary CTA does not use color, or placement to make it standout from other page elements.

Aside from theses landing page best practices, there could be campaign structure issues that are also contributing to the relatively high bounce rates.

I'm not sure I understand this question, it seems to implying that a 95% bounce rate is "an audience who responds very well to targeted ads", and then asks why. I would say that a 95% bounce rate implies the exact opposite, that they are indeed not responding very well. So I am not quite sure what you are asking with this question, please clarify.

I think since the bounce rate is high, it could very well be an issue with the targeting. Keep in mind that Facebook targeting only targets an article based on behavior, interests, location and demographics. It is often less precise on relevance (timing and intent) than Search traffic.

You can check the search term reports on your search traffic campaigns to spot any relevancy issues.

Drill down into the data on individual audience segments in Facebook audiences to spot for any overlooked issues or opportunities for optimization.

HTH,

Thanks very much for the detailed response! First to answer your question about my question:

I think I phrased it wrong. I'm wondering, if a targeted audience responds very well to an ad that's relevant to their interest (10% CTR), why do they bounce at a rate of 95% once they get to the landing page? If they're clicking at such a high rate to view a product or category, where's the disconnect between that and 95% of them leaving right away?

Your point about timing is interesting - perhaps that's the answer, they're just interested in the ad and aren't prepared to buy right away. I'm in the process right now of drilling down by age, gender, and location (different states have different climates) so I'll be able to super-target groups at even lower costs moving forward. So at least if the conversion rate is very low it doesn't cost much.

Hi, I can think of two possible reasons why despite higher CTR you are not converting on anything:
1. The message in your ads is different from the message on your landing page. Or may be, when a prospect lands on your page, he finds difficulty in navigating to the message that brought him here in the first place. Make sure your ads and landing page content complies with each other.

2. As dburk has mentioned in great detail, your sales page copy is kinda difficult to grasp. Headlines and subheadings are helping hands that take prospect's hand and guide them around the landing page till they finally convert. You should probably replace your section of "Find a cover for your car" with some nice headings and description (not too long) followed by your find a cover section.

P.S I have noticed you are asking your prospect to fill in a survey if they'd not brought from you(through a box that appears when I move away). What? Are you serious? People hate filling surveys. Please, replace it with something that GIVE your reader something, instead of TAKING something from them. For example, giving a 10% discount coupon with a nice headline "We understand your struggle with credit Bills. But we are not greedy. Here's your 10% discount coupon." A small tweak like this can decrease your bounce rate by a considerable value.

Thanks
Junaid

Great suggestions, thank you. I'll work on the category landing page and try for some improvement. I thought that by keeping it simple and having the "find a cover for your car" at the very top, that would be the highest converting format. But it does make sense to guide them, as you say, with headings and some text above it. And yes, I took the survey down! Not just because of your comment, but yours was one of a few similar comments.

I could be wrong, but I would think that the older a car is (unless we are talking antiques), the less likely someone is going to want a car cover. With that in mind, I would think that your largest audience would be people with brand new cars.

Unfortunately there are very few car covers available for 2016 car models. I know that is the first thing I noticed because there was not one available for my 2016 car, which is a very common model. I then checked other manufacturers and it was the same case there.

With the 2017 model year release dates rapidly approaching, you'll only fall further behind for people looking for covers for their brand new cars.

For sure, that can't explain away all of the bounce rate but it may very well be a significant percentage of it.

Maybe I misread your original question, but I think you referenced Facebook Ads as your primary traffic source. Social networks are pretty notorious for having extremely low conversion rates. Its only natural; nobody goes to a social network with the intention of buying something. When people do a search on Google for "car cover" and click on an ad, at least you know those people were specifically shopping for a car cover at that time. It doesn't necessarily explain the bounce rate (but may), but it certainly accounts for the low add to cart rate.

It would be interesting to see if the bounce rate and Add To Cart rates was identical across all paid advertising referral sources.