A high bounce rate can have a major impact on your hotel, resort, or vacation rental company’s bottom line. It can cause a drop in bookings and cause your brand visibility to suffer. But unless you’re investing in help from the right Utah hotel marketing management company, narrowing down the cause of your high bounce rate can be a challenge.
If your website’s bounce rate is suffering, keep reading. We’re breaking down what your bounce rate means, some reasons it could be rising, and how the team at Vibrant Management can help.
What is Bounce Rate?
According to Google, the term “bounce” refers to “a single-page session on your site.” Put simply, this means that a web visitor arrives on a page on your site, and clicks out of your site rather than clicking on links or menus within your site. The bounce rate refers to how often bounces occur. A bounce counts towards your bounce rate no matter how long a web visitor stays on a single page on your website.
A high bounce rate isn’t always a bad thing. If a website consists of a single page or a page that contains a high level of information, it might be normal for web visitors to only visit a single page. For example, consider a blog that utilizes a single, continuous webpage. A web surfer might land on the blog, scroll through the page to read a few posts, and then head to another website. The web visitor may have gotten the information that they were looking for, without needing to visit another page.
However, when it comes to websites for businesses in the tourism industry, a high bounce rate is often a bad thing.
Say that a web surfer lands on your hotel or vacation rental website’s landing page. But instead of clicking around within your site, they leave your site completely. They never check out the types of rooms you have to offer, take a closer look at any amenities, or, ultimately, book a stay.
Reasons Your Hotel Website Has a High Bounce Rate
A high bounce rate means fewer bookings for your property. Reducing your bounce rate can help increase your bookings. But how can you decrease your website’s bounce rate?
The first step is to get to the root of the issue and figure out why web visitors aren’t sticking around or clicking around within your site. Let’s take a closer look at a few possible reasons why your site has a high bounce rate.
Your Site is Slow to Load
One of the most common causes of a high bounce rate is a website that’s slow to load. When it comes to web surfing, most of us have short attention spans and little patience. If a website doesn’t load quickly, we won’t stick around and wait; instead, we’ll click to another website. In the case of hotels and resorts, your web visitors might find themselves searching your competition if your site doesn’t load quickly.
Research by Google found that more than half of all mobile website visitors left a web page if it didn’t load within just 3 seconds. But pinpointing the cause of a slow-loading website can be challenging, especially if you don’t have web design or coding experience.
Sites That Aren’t Mobile-Friendly
Today, nearly 60 percent of all web traffic is visiting mobile sites. This is a fairly recent phenomenon, as tablets and smartphones have become increasingly more advanced and common in the past decade. As a result, many older websites lack mobile-friendly versions.
Websites that aren’t mobile-friendly or that lack a mobile-friendly version can drive a high bounce rate. These sites often load slowly on smaller devices. These smaller screens may obscure or jumble the website, making it harder for web visitors to read your content or to find your menu to navigate around your site.
A Lack of Quality Content
A lack of website design experience can result in a site that isn’t mobile-friendly or that loads slowly. But even an excellent website design isn’t always enough to produce a low bounce rate.
If your website lacks high-quality content that your web visitors are interested in, they aren’t likely to stick around for long. When it comes to hotel, resort, or vacation rental websites, your content should be catchy and informative. From your homepage, visitors should instantly be drawn in, as they see just how special your property is.
How Utah Hotel Marketing Management Can Help Lower Your Bounce Rate
These are far from the only reasons why your site may be experiencing a high bounce rate, but they are among the most common. If your site is suffering from a high bounce rate, fixing these three issues first can help you rule them out as the cause, and hopefully help you boost your bookings.
Unfortunately, if you don’t have web design or marketing experience, fixing these issues can be challenging. Luckily, the right Utah hotel marketing management company can help.
At Vibrant Management, our experienced team has the skills and knowledge to get to the root of your high bounce rate, and fix it at the source. Whether you need to improve your website’s design, utilize hotel video marketing to capture your web visitors’ attention, or need to start from scratch with a whole new marketing plan, we can help. Check out our services today to learn more about how our agency can help your business thrive!