3 Ways To Improve Your Website’s Bounce Rate

You spent a lot of money on your website, you think it looks great! But does it work? Do people come, stay, and more importantly, return? When was the last time you checked your bounce rate? Wait… What’s a bounce rate? I’m glad you asked.

A Bounce Rate is the percentage of people who come to your site and leave. They never click on anything, visit a second page, or like the Counting Crows, hang around.

Your bounce rate is calculated by dividing the total number of individual one-page visits by the total number of your websites visitors. Lets say 100 people visit your website and 12 of them land on one page. Doesn’t matter the page, what’s important is that they only land on one. That would make your bounce rate 8.33% Meaning about 8% of the people come to your site and leave. Never to explore it.

Now that we understand what a bounce rate is, what do we do with it? The average bounce rate is somewhere between 26% and 70% with the optimal range sitting between 26% and 40%. ⁽¹⁾ A few things that can report an inaccurate bounce rate are duplicate code, improper tracking implementation and third-party add-ons, you know, that the fancy chat AI feature. It’s reported that a good average benchmark bounce rate for the financial industry sites between 45 – 65%. ⁽²⁾

Your average bounce rate also changes depending on the device the visitor is using. The average bounce rates per screen across all industries are:

• Mobile Devices – 51%
• Desktops – 43%
• Tablets – 45%

Simplicity Lone Beacon has been a full-service digital marketing company for the independent financial advisor for 10 years. In that time, we’ve learned a lot. One thing our Co-founder John Capuano is addicted to is the data. Words can be misleading, people embellish, data does not. Recently we took a random selection of 23 advisor websites that we developed, maintain and host and we averaged their bounce rate over the course of the entire 2022 year. Of those website Simplicity Lone Beacon’s average bounce rate is 33.25%. Based on the information above that is at the very least 12% lower than the industry average. So what do we attribute to that success? Here are 3 ways a financial advisor can improve their websites bounce rate.

While I would love to take ALL the credit for such a good average bounce rate, it’s a wide team effort. And it all starts with your content. At Simplicity Lone Beacon we swear by the statement, “Content Is King.” Never is that statement truer than in the digital atmosphere. Not only is your content the most important element for your SEO rankings, it’s also crucial for your bounce rate. One issue we find in the financial industry is the lack of content on advisor’s websites.

That’s why it’s important that your page has content, but not just any content. It needs to be content that is of value to the visitor. Content that answers questions or teaches the visitor. Content that makes you a reputable source. If all of your content is thin, vague or generic, then the visitor has no incentive to stay and interact. And that leads us to number two.

As a financial advisor you are in a unique position. How often can you update your websites content? How many times can you refresh an about us section? It’s kind of hard to have a good bounce rate if your content is not only thin, but stale. That’s why we have developed a platform that allows you to stay up to date and relevant with your clients and prospects. To keep people on your site, you need to keep their interest. And one way we do that is to create a blog and post to it once or twice a week a relevant, educational article. Articles on the new tax rules, updates to the SECURE Act, or even best books to read during retirement. A platform like this gives the visitor a sense of constant communication from your firm and at the same time it educates and or enlightens them. All while at the same time, improving your bounce rate. If a blog is not for you, consider posting timely videos or audio clips.

This last one is going to cover a broad range of things. I could write an entire post just on design elements and how they improve your bounce rate. Ultimately, what I’m doing when developing your website is attempting to convey trust, first and foremost. Next to family I would say the most important thing to a soon-to-be or a current retiree would be their finances. They certainly don’t want to turn their future over to someone they can’t trust. We treat your website, like it’s your firm’s office. Would you do business with someone whose office is a mess? Someone who has a chair on top of a table and a window right next to the toilet? Sure, these are silly examples but the point is clear. Trust is the most important trait an advisor must have. If you don’t take the time to ensure that your website represents you and your firm to the best of its ability, how can your visitor trust you will do the same for them? From ease of use, colors, fonts, layouts and images, the most important part is how your website looks and how it functions. We strategically lay out our layers and elements in an intentional way to take the visitor on the most productive path through your website. From one touch point to another, we ensure to lay everything out in the most digestible and easiest wat to navigate.

So in the end the bounce rate is important to you because it lets you know the true value of your website and its content. If you find your bounce rate is extremely high, it’s of the outmost importance that you do an audit. An audit of your content, an audit of your presence and an audit of your layout. Remember a good, heavy website can often times be worth its weight in gigabytes (GB).