High bounce rate is a bad news for business. Simply put, bounce rate is the percentage of people who landed on your website and left (or bounced) without interacting with it.

In terms of business, bounce rate means that you are killing your prospects and chances of sales.

It’s like this. Prospects land on your website to investigate your product, to understand if your business solves their problems and meets their requirements. But at the end of the day, you might not be getting any calls or mails for a purchase.

So what happened to all those prospects? Well, they bounced away, that is, they landed on your page and left without interacting with it or surfing any other page on your website.

There’s no such thing as the ‘perfect’ bounce rate and depending on the industry, there are different levels of acceptable bounce rates.  But, generally, this is how people judge bounce rate levels:

• 30% or less is excellent
• 30% to 50% is good
• Over 60% is poor

For instance, a 60% bounce rate means that 600 out of 1000 visitors left without engaging with your website. Say you could earn $99 from every user, then that means you lost $59,400. Of course, it’s highly unlikely that all 600 of them would make a purchase but many would, and that’s the reason why you should cut down the bounce rate to a healthy level i.e. 30% to 50%.

In this article, we will tell you how to make visitors click and reduce that unhealthy bounce rate.

BOUNCE RATE IS 34% LOWER ON PAGES WITH VIDEO  

At a time when the average human attention span (8 seconds) is less than that of a goldfish (9 seconds), you must grab your visitor’s attention the moment they land on your site. Videos can help you do that.

Just putting a video on your landing page can reduce the bounce rate by an average 34%.

However, that doesn’t mean you should put a random video. Sure no one can resist to watch a cat video but that wouldn’t align with your business (unless it’s about cats).

What works best is a business overview video, which tells your visitors what you do and how your product solves their problem in less than 2 minutes. It’s like a sales pitch made better for a video-phile generation. 

Popularly called explainer videos or marketing videos, these overview videos are used by the majority of companies on their homepage (and elsewhere) to provide visitors a quick and exciting summary of their business. This way you ensure that visitors watch your product video and don’t just bounce away.

Case Study: RankWatch

An explainer video on homepage helped RankWatch reduce its bounce rate from 62% to 35%.

For a SaaS company like RankWatch (or Crazy Egg or Dropbox or Rypple), explaining to non-technical people how their software works is the difficult part. And, then it’s not like people are patient; a survey that 55% of visitors spend fewer than 15 seconds on your website.

If the information on your landing page looks intimidating (or dull), then visitors will bounce away.

RankWatch had a similar problem. They got thousands of visitors each day but only a small percentage signed up for the free trial. Without the explainer video, the bounce rate was 62%. It meant that visitors were not reading.

After they put on the explainer video on their homepage, visitor engagement rose and the bounce rate fell to 35%. Best of all, RankWatch saw a 27% hike in free trial users.

EXPLAINER VIDEOS CUT BOUNCE RATE. BUT HOW?

1. The Brain Says “Watch It”!

Did you know that videos are 41% more likely to get clicked than text post?

It’s because our brain associates videos with entertainment. So when a visitor lands on your website and notices your explainer video, the brain says “watch it”. And, as simple as that, visitor engagement rises and the bounce rate falls. Cool, right?

2. Consumer Prefer To Watch Video Over Reading Text.

A study revealed that the senior executives at Forbes, 59% of them, preferred to watch a video over reading text, if both were available on the same page.

And, it’s not just business executives but average customers too will rather watch the video than read text. Don’t agree with us? Well, here’s a page from New York Times, which puts you on a similar situation. It has an interesting article from film critic A.O. Scott and there’s the video counterpart as well, entitled “Oscar Animated Shorts Roundup”. You can choose either to read the text or watch the video.

Test: Open up this New York Times page, and see which one you prefer to do first: watch video or read text?

3. Explainer Video Makes Visitors Spend At Least 2 More Minutes At Your Site

Your visitors are busy people, with no patience for paragraphs of information. A survey revealed that 55% of visitors spend fewer than 15 seconds on your website.

By putting an explainer video on your landing page, you could make your visitors engage with your site. They would watch the video and stay at least 2 minutes longer on your site than those who don’t view videos. Compared to the 15 second initial stay, explainer videos boost the time-on-site by a whopping 800%.

TIPS TO MAXIMIZE EXPLAINER VIDEO ENGAGEMENT & MINIMIZE BOUNCE RATES

1. Give Your Explainer Video An Attractive Thumbnail

People love to watch videos but that doesn’t mean they will watch every video they stumble on. There’s a matter of choice as well. If the thumbnail of your video looks appealing to them, then it will get watched. Otherwise, not.

So depending on your target audience’s taste and the spirit of the video, you should design a thumbnail that grabs their attention and excites them onto watching the video.

2. Put Your Explainer Video Above The Fold

Explainer videos are meant to be put above the fold or on the top section of your homepage. By doing so, you ensure maximum visibility. People landing on your website would notice the video, click play, understand your value proposition, and may consider a purchase. 

Case Study: Rypple

Rypple used an explainer video on top of its landing page and saw a 20% increase in conversions.

3. Place Your Call To Action Button Next To The Explainer Video.

The job of an explainer video is to educate the prospect about your product and set a mood for purchase. Just watching the video won’t magically raise your sales. You have to help your prospects take the next step, and that means placing the call to action button next to the video.  

Case Study: Dropbox

Dropbox’s homepage only featured two components: the explainer video and the download CTA.

It contributed 10% increase in conversion, leading to 10 million additional customers and $48,000,000 in extra revenue.

Case Study: Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg placed its explainer video under a powerful headline and placed a persuasive CTA button just below it. It made it easy for prospects who loved the video to take the next step, that is, buy Crazy Egg’s service.

Study says that the animated explainer video helps Crazy Egg to earn an extra $21,000 every month and boosted the conversion rates by a whopping 64%.

CONCLUSION

If you are doing marketing, a high bounce rate (60% and over) is an indication that you are wasting your money and effort in those PPC campaigns and such advert strategies. Because visitors are not just converting. And, spending on advert doesn’t make sense when your landing page is not converting well. So to get the ROI from your marketing efforts, get an explainer video made by a professional agency and put it up on your landing page. Then, follow the tips mentioned above to cut down your bounce rate to a healthy level.  

By: Sadbhav Shah

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