Recently, we noticed a drop in conversion rates on one of our client’s properties. This is a site whose search performance we check at least every other day. We add quality content to it regularly, keep analyzing new and relevant keywords, and put a strong emphasis on diversifying links around the money keywords. Traffic is climbing, everything looks great. Yet the bounce rate, time on page and on-page engagement are all going down.
So we pulled out the magnifying glass and dug in ????:
- While reading a random article, we suddenly noticed something that bothered the eye when reading the blog posts. The text was fairly dense and the font was small, which hurt the reading experience. We increased the font size by just 2 pixels across all inner content sections, for easier reading
- and to increase scroll depth on the page a bit.
- We added more spacing between paragraphs and headings. This gave the CTA buttons more presence, made the page easier on the reader’s eye with clear separation between blocks of text and, again, made the page longer
- We found a lot of pages made up of nothing but walls of text. We broke them up into shorter paragraphs and added more rich content to those pages: images, GIFs and relevant videos. Google likes that, but again… it significantly expanded
- the page, created interest for visitors and, in the end, led to deeper scrolling and longer time on page.
- We recalculated our route with internal links. On some pages we added more internal links, and on others we completely replaced the classic anchors with unconventional ones. We want to give people a reason to click and get curious.
- An example of one of the anchors: “This is when my life changed forever”.
In the end, all of these changes brought a nice lift in conversion rate, driven by higher on-page engagement, longer time on articles and a lower bounce rate.
Bottom line: every so often it pays to drill down into these small details, run tests and see how they affect the big picture.
Want us to take a look at your site and find an interesting opportunity? Get in touch and we’ll be happy to take a look at your site.
