Display campaigns are considered a high-funnel product in advertising. This can cause a higher bounce rate in Google Analytics.
High-funnel marketing is in reference to strategies that target brand awareness over direct conversions. This might mean promoting the client's offerings through display ads as we are doing here. It’s about getting the client's name out there and serving the client's ads to an interested audience where they live.
The bounce rate can be increased since Display campaigns are higher up in the marketing funnel. This is because the user is not actively searching, but instead clicking on an ad as they browse other content. The average bounce rate for a display campaign can range between 50-90% depending on the running program type. This can also depend on the amount of traffic sent to the site. Since paid search campaigns capture users actively searching for precisely what the client has at that moment, they will typically have a lower bounce rate than display traffic. This is why it’s best practice to look at campaigns separately in GA. In launching a display campaign, expect to see an increase in your overall bounce rate.
That being said, to mitigate these high bounce rates from happening, we recommend changing the creatives every month to six weeks. A good ad should be a snapshot of what the client is promoting on their site. They should think about what the ad says or shows that makes a user want to click through. For example, if the ad has an image of a cute dog and then they click through, are taken to the client's site, and see bicycles listed, they may not stick around. And while it’s good to get traffic to the client's website, the goal should be quality traffic that will spend time there and convert.
With regards to the client's site, it is vital to consider user experience. User experience can have a significant effect on bounce rate. Because so much time is spent making sure the traffic being pushed to the site is qualified, it’s really important to ensure eligible users stick around and have a good experience. A few items to consider when thinking about a user's experience:
- Does the client's website have enough content to answer users' questions?
- Are pop-ups turning people away?
- How is the page load speed?
- Has the client optimized their site's mobile experience?
- Is the information users need easy to find?
- Is the site aesthetically pleasing, but does not necessarily cater to the user experience?
All of these items can impact the overall bounce rate of a website. For example, if the client has a lifestyle video of a woman walking and drinking coffee in a park, but the product is a coffee shop, it would be best to show her interacting in the shop itself before she leaves on her walk.
When the client looks at their marketing campaign, it is essential to remember that bounce rate is not a direct metric of campaign success.
For additional GA questions, please refer to our Google Analytics FAQs article