Six simple ways to reduce bounce rate on your B2B landing pages [Infographic]

When it comes to bounce on B2B landing pages, the numbers are depressing. Marketers put a lot of time and energy into these crucial pages, and research says the large majority of businesses depend on landing pages as part of their lead-generation strategy. Yet the majority (more than 50%) of traffic will bounce, perhaps never to return. The waste and inefficiency can be HUGE if landing pages aren't optimised or other relevant content isn't available.

[Editor's note: This post reviews different ways to measure engagement and explains bounce rate and typical benchmarks if your not familiar with it. Bounce rates for blogs can be in the range 60-80%, so it's worthwhile designing the blog to encourage some of these visitors to engage more].

Much of the time spent developing effective landing pages focuses on content optimization and enticing calls-to-action (CTAs) to grab conversions – typically a contact form, registration or some sort of gated content offer. Those elements are key, but there’s more to the story.

We’ve reviewed research on how different B2B audiences bounce and the most effective bounce-fighting strategies into this infographic. We spend a lot of time here at BrightInfo studying the bounce reduction/lead generation relationship, and we’ve brought together all our insights into one visual tool.

The good news is that the best fixes for bounce are remarkably simple, ranging from the basic (keeping copy short) to the sophisticated (automatically recommending personalized alternative content at the last second to re-engage interest.)

Our research indicates that up to 90% of all LP visitors ultimately bounce, and 98% of those won’t come back. But our data also shows that those figures don’t necessarily reflect the true potential of those visitors.

One thing it does reflect is short attention spans, users have very limited time and patience, and if they don’t find something of interest promptly, they bounce. But if you can get more opportunities for relevance into that short window, you hang on to more of those potential leads. Again, something as simple as quick-read copy or testing out different CTAs can help dramatically.

Interestingly, you can get a significant reduction in bounce with some just-in-time content recommendation, another way to inject more potential engagement into a short user attention span.

By strategically offering visitors a relevant content alternative just prior to their exit from your landing page, up to 9% of will click and take a second look. That last-minute exposure to alternative (and relevant, thanks to a few clever behavioral tracking techniques) content evidently works as a safety net to keep those exiting users from dropping off your site.

Even more striking, of those you re-engage with alternative content, more than half will become leads. So, that one technique (which with automation technology is anything but complicated) can significantly alter the bounce dynamics of your landing pages – plucking leads from among the bouncers.

This example underscores our point about the real potential of your traffic. The best practices recommended in this infographic help you:

• 1. Optimize the quality of your traffic (and thus the concentration of potential leads) with tactics such as smarter ad targeting, and
• 2. Give your visitors every possible opportunity to gain a foothold on your site and move toward conversion.

Beyond generating immediate leads, providing a better landing page experience and exposing users to relevant alternative content likely has a carryover effect, too. Even those users who still end up leaving without a conversion are more likely to return at some point and reconsider – taking a bite out of that 98% percent figure we mention above.

Of course, bounce is caused by many factors. Some completely inappropriate visitors can end up on your landing pages because of a vague ad or errant click, in which case a bounce is the best possible outcome. But among your bouncers there are potential leads or at least visitors willing to be nudged one or two steps closer to conversion, if you use your landing page to your advantage.

So, take the data and our tips to heart, pin the infographic to your wall, and you’ll start to get better traffic, get more leads from the traffic, and lose fewer potential leads to the black hole of bounce.