Recently, I conducted an audit of our website and found that we were not optimized fully and I asked myself a tough question…. Are we doing everything digitally to market ourselves to our customers effectively?
The tough honest answer I got was NO. I realized with all the changes that Google has made in their algorithms that there was a ton we could be doing better.
Like most internet directors and sales people I have a drive to be the best at what we do. We’ve all heard top industry professionals telling us to Inspect What You Expect, Marry Your CRM, and Process Process Process, and most importantly have a website that gets the customers to convert and give you the opportunity to serve them.
I live this stuff day in and day out, I love it, I breathe it, and follow Best Practices daily and each of my staff members will attest to it. However, Best Practices have changed, and in an industry constantly changing I ask myself, shouldn’t we? Our standards at our dealership are some of the toughest I’ve personally seen and they are effective. But we need to do more…. And not get blasted for asking the tough questions.
So, I wrote an email to our digital marketing team and asked three questions and referenced my research so everyone would be on the same page.
1. Does the Speed of Page Loading affect the Bounce Rate on desktop and mobile websites?
2. Could the Bounce rate or Abandonment Rate affect our overall traffic to the website and lot traffic?
3. What is our current Bounce Rate for our Pay Per Click Campaign for Used Cars.
The response I received was to be passed on to our website vender who replied to me by saying it’s not an issue, it’s out of your purview, and I quote “"As a rule of thumb, a 50 percent bounce rate is average. If you surpass 60 percent, you should be concerned. If you're in excess of 80 percent, you've got a major problem.” – Inc.com article from Jan. 2011* (1)
I was surprised to say the least at the response and forwarded it to the powers that be and then dug in. I read the above referenced article and found a number of things referenced that were mentioned in 2011 that our provider was still doing wrong today.
“If you're doing search marketing, look at your keyword report and see which keywords correspond to high bounce rates."All the time I see people run an ad that promises one thing, gets you in the door and doesn't give you that,' says Whitmore. Buying highly-searched keywords is ultimately useless if you aren't providing what the people searching for those words actually want.”
“Along the same lines, if you have an ad promising something and then redirect to your homepage, you're going to lose a lot of visitors."If you do that, now I have to learn how to use your site to search for what I was already promised,' says Whitmore. 'I don't have time to search your site over and over. I already searched and told you what I want.”
In reading the full article I am left with the lingering question…. Does my page load speed affect my bounce rate, is the money being spent on our website, the SEO, SEM, and PPC effectively being utilized, and why our website vender will not answer the tough questions.
Would love some feedback from other industry professionals
Comments
Curtice, great article and great questions, sir.
Bounce rate is proportionate to your website's objectives (not just page load speed, as some are suggesting). I just wrote this article a week or so ago that talks about Bounce ... - there are other more important questions to have answered before bounce rate becomes as big an issue as it is.
Don't hesitate to reach out if you'd like to talk about it further and bounce some ideas around.