As COVID-19 forced senior living communities to pivot and refocus their marketing efforts on digital strategies, one factor that came to the forefront was bounce rate.
Marketing teams that hadn’t found time to look at their bounce rate before, finally paused to do so. What some discovered is their bounce rate was pretty high.
For senior living providers, that could be because you are attracting the wrong audience. Or for loads of other reasons related to the site itself, including the quality and relevance of your content.
What is a Bounce Rate?
If you aren’t familiar with the term bounce rate, Google defines it as “The percentage of single-page visits.”
While there are instances where it is okay, such as someone looking up your community’s address so they can stop by, it’s generally not a good thing…
That’s especially true when it comes to a topic as complicated as senior living. The longer an older adult or family member is on your site, the more likely it is they are starting to view you as an expert.
What would cause an adult child or senior to hit the back arrow on the first page of your senior living website?
Because it plays a role in your SEO, it’s important to figure out what is causing people to bounce.
Here are a few potential issues to investigate and address.
8 Reasons for a High Bounce Rate on Your Senior Living Website
- Load time. We’ve all visited and dropped off those sites. The ones that take forever to load. And by forever, we mean anything more than 3 to 5 seconds. Yes, seconds.
- Voice: While it’s not necessarily fair, people will judge the quality of your content by a quick glance at the first page they land on. If the voice doesn’t connect, they’ll hit the road.
- Jargon: Are we a jargon-riddled industry or what? If you’ve worked in senior living for a while, you might not even notice. When you are creating new content, ask someone outside the industry to take a look and give you feedback.
- Navigation: People want to be able to quickly and easily find their way around a site. If your navigation isn’t completely clear, seniors and families won’t stick around.
- Misleading headlines: News jacking is a good way to attract visitors to your site, but only if it’s relevant. Throwing a bunch of irrelevant buzz words or trending terms into your headline or copy will drive people away.
- Readability: Part of engaging a visitor’s interest is keeping it real. Write so readers don’t need to pull up an online dictionary to understand what you are trying to say. Google favors sites that are easily readable over those with long blocks of copy or obscure words.
- Design: Older eyes often find online reading to be difficult. When you consider the age of both seniors and their adult children, this one can be a big deal. Reversed copy might look great, but it’s tough to read. Font size matters too, as does how much white space you leave between paragraphs. (HINT: more is better.)
- Distractions: Is your site copy and design just too busy? It can be a distraction that causes people to go looking for another site. Have a clear content goal for each page and don’t try to throw everything you are proud of into it. Especially avoid pop ups that hit a visitor the moment they land on your site.
With so much focus on virtual tours and online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, getting your bounce rate under control is a must.
Drop us a note if your content needs some refining. In addition to creating great senior living copy, we have editors who can polish the content you create in house.
Until next time,