In this presentation we review the kinds of things you need to consider to reduce the immediate loss of visitors on your high bounce pages (or web site sections) and increase student engagement, lead generation and registration opportunity for your institution.

1. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 1
15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher
Ed Website Bounce Rates

2. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 2
1. Produce High Quality Content
2. Offer Content Based on Vision Segmentation
3. Make it Clear What’s in it for your Visitor
4. Be Trustworthy and Professional
5. Correct poor Page Design
6. Make Pages Visually Engaging
7. Don’t Interrupt the User’s Experience
8. Design Information around Page Priorities
9. Go responsive web design or create a parallel mobile website
10. Improve Page Load Times for high bouce pages
11. Check Browser Performance for high bounce pages
12. Open External links in new Windows
13. Create Unique Titles and Meta Descriptions for each Page
14. Have a helpful, funny 404 message
15. A/B test your Page
Overview
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

3. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 3
Nothing beats interesting, relevant, current, visually stimulating
content.
 Keep you content up to date.
 Make sure it is at the right reading level.
 Split up your content into digestible chunks that people can
scan and then dig into.
1. Produce High Quality Content
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

4. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 4
Break down you audience into their respective segments and
provide the content each wants.
 Study the keywords visitors use to find you with. Some
bounce higher than others. Find out why.
 Analyze your internal site search to identify what people
are most often looking for on your site.
 Consider your visitors points of entry to reveal what they
are looking for and give it to them.
2. Offer Content Based on Visitor
Segmentation
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

5. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 5
 Make your messaging really obvious, be clear what you do
and what you offer.
 The features of your programs are great but visitors are
more interested in the benefits. Convey value.
 Make related content accessible. Proximity of the link will
determine the click-through.
 Make your website sticky.
3. Make it Clear What’s in it for your
Visitor
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

6. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 6
4. Be Trustworthy and Professional
 Trust is required for a visitor to engage with you and enter
your recruitment funnel. Earn it.
 Always keep your contact info front and centre. It is
amazing how many don’t.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

7. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 7
5. Correct Poor Page Design
 This is a pretty obvious recommendation but don’t take it for
granted.
 Many pages flow out of you general design, get tweaked, get
repurposed, get lost and lose their ability to engage or
convert.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

8. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 8
6. Make Pages Visually Engaging
 Visual engagement is the first hook that draws visitors into
your content.
 Use eye-tracking, check In-page Analytics etc. to understand a
student's first reaction to your pages
 Be predictable in your design, using consistent placement
and formatting so that the visitor quickly learns where to find
things.
 Whitespace is a good thing, use it often.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

9. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 9
7. Don’t Interrupt the User’s Experience
 Develop intuitive navigation so the student can see their way
into your content.
 Take people where they want to go.
 Manage multimedia very carefully – some is good at
engaging, some makes people bounce.
 Many institutions use a lot of internal “advertising”. Be
careful of it’s placement and page priority as it can be just as
off-putting as a telemarketing on a Sunday afternoon.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

10. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 10
8. Design Information around Page Priorities
 Are your target conversion or content points clearly presented
on your page?
 Can students immediately get a sense of what they should
expect to find or are expected to do while on the page?
 Respect visitor intent by making sure the page you are
presenting to visitors aligns closely with the content promised
from the source link.
 Make conversion events (ie calls to action, forms, key related
links) very clear. Place them above the fold.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

11. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 11
9. Go Responsive Web Design
Go responsive web design or create a parallel mobile website
 People searching for information about your college on a mobile device
need to see a page that is sized to the format of their device. Full web
pages served to a smart phone will almost always bounce.
 Successful student engagement through mobile pages has different rules
than for traditional desktop pages. Take a minimalist approach and then
learn through experimentation what will work best for your institutions
offerings.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

12. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 12
10. Improve Page Land Times for high bounce
pages
 Optimize content, images, multimedia etc to minimize your
page load times.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

13. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 13
11. Check Browser Performance for high bounce
pages
 It’s always possible that something in your code is not
working for one specific browser, and the page is not loading
in that browser.
 This is a sure fire way to cause visitors to bounce.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

14. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 14
12. Open External links in new Windows
A good example here would be in a university's student
ambassador blog.
 That link they embed in their story will lead the visitor
away, often with no way to return if a new window is not
opened for the outside link.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

15. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 15
13. Create Unique Titles and Meta Description
for each Page
 Create Unique Titles and Meta Descriptions for each Page
 To learn more about the importance of Mata Descriptions for
SEO and some best practices read this.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

16. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 16
14. Have a helpful, funny 404 message
 If someone tries to enter your site and gets a 404 “page not
found “message you must have a engaging response if you
hope to keep the student on you site.
 It is also a great place to have a little fun and show some
personality. See what Indiana University did.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

17. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 17

18. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 18
15. A/B Test your Pages
To really drill down at the page level and determine what is
causing your bounce problems and what will fix them, you
need:
 to start working with the A/B testing module called
“Experiments” in Google Analytics.
This is particularly useful for landing pages but remember that:
 in fact, every one of the pages on your website is a landing
page, regardless if it is a visitor being brought to that page
from a long-tail Google search or a deep link from a referring
site.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed Website Bounce Rates

19. 15 Ways To Reduce Your Higher Ed
Website Bounce Rates
Slide 19
Visit our Website: Higher Education Marketing
FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK
FOLLOW US ON LINKEDIN
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER
FOLLOW US ON PINTEREST
FOLLOW US ON GOOGLE+
Questions?
1.514.312.3968
info@higher-education-marketing.com