It comes as no surprise that humans have terribly short attention spans. In fact, a study by Microsoft[1] put a number on it: 8 seconds – less than the attention span of a goldfish. The implications for online marketing are huge. In a noisy and highly competitive online space, you either grab a visitor’s attention the moment they land on your website or lose them – possibly forever.
Bounce rate[2] is an important metric for measuring how users engage with a website. It indicates the percentage of visitors who navigate away from your site after viewing only one page.
Think of the times when, as a web user, you visited a website and immediately headed for the back button. While the decision to exit the page may have been made unconsciously, the reality is that certain ‘unappealing’ elements on the website influenced that decision. This is the basis of behavioral design. The rationale is that if certain elements of a web page can drive users away, then there must be other characteristics that can make them stay.
Leading behavior scientist, BJ Fogg, has extensively studied how technological solutions influence behavior and outlines a three-step method[3] for using design to change behavior. These are:
- Getting specific about the desired behavior
- Making it easy for users to reach that outcome
- Using triggers to prompt the behavior.
If we apply this method to bounce rates, then the first step is clear. The goal is to get your site visitor to click another link. But how do you fulfill the other two obligations? How do you create an environment that encourages users to perform this action? Here are three strategies to