Have a High Bounce Rate? You Need Interactive Content

A high bounce rate is the bane of any digital marketer. It’s one of the best metrics to look at in order to see how well a site engages its visitors, because it shows how many people exited the site from the same page they landed on. This traffic is “bouncing” off that page without stopping to explore everything else your site has to offer.

A bounce rate of 50% is pretty average, but if your bounce rate is pushing 80% or more, it’s a definite sign of trouble. You can drive thousands of people to the site with pay per click ads or other campaigns, but it will all be in vain with such a dismal bounce rate.

The good news is, now that you know what the basic underlying problem is, you can do something to fix it. While there may be some navigational issues at play (visitors won’t explore your site if you don’t make it easy for them to get around), the most important thing is to produce truly engaging content. The absolute best way to do this is with interactive content.

What Exactly Is Interactive Content? 

One way to think of interactive content is in terms of what it’s not. It’s not content that expects you to be a passive reader, skimming through a blog post until something else catches your attention. Interactive content requires the reader to be engaged in the content, and not just intellectually (although intellectual engagement plays a big role).

The value of interactive content was first recognized in a different setting: schools. Researchers noticed that students who were taught concepts with more hands-on, get-your-feet-wet methods were more likely to retain information and truly understand it, leading to more overall success in their academic careers.

Retention of information and a true understanding is your goal with content too, even if you haven’t thought of it that way before.

You want to provide readers with valuable information, and you’re confident that the information you present is, in fact, valuable and tantalizing enough to bring in the traffic. Great! But is the content honestly valuable if your readers forget it almost instantly? To ensure retention (and that visitors remember your site as the source of information), you need interactive content.

What Interactive Content Actually Looks Like

• Quizzes and Polls. Any kind of playful content will be readily shared, but quizzes and polls are among the most popular and the easiest to make. When you make content that is purely fun, it’s okay to make it unrelated to your brand, as ultimately its purpose will be to drive traffic to your site. Make sure your site is appealing enough when people land there and you’ll be good to go. Personality quizzes, trivia quizzes and matching games are other common formats.
• Interactive Infographics. Interactive infographics invite the user to click on the images or graphs to reveal more information. The ability to manipulate the image is extremely appealing and people will likely explore extensively to see what else they can “make the infographic do.” It also means they’re more likely to share with friends, ultimately driving more traffic to your site.
• Choose Your Own Adventure Videos. An excellent way to bring playful content to sites like YouTube, choose your own adventure videos put the viewer in the driver’s seat. The user has to make choices to influence the outcome of the story. As it’s an uncommon format, it’s quite likely to be shared.
• Prevent People From Bouncing Away From Forms and Surveys. Yes, it’s possible to create a form or survey that isn’t tediously boring. We’ve all abandoned a form or survey halfway through for one reason or another. Making the form customized (based on answers to previous questions, for example) and visually appealing ensures that more respondents will make it to the end.
• Embedded Social Media Content. People don’t always think to share something with their friends or followers, so put the idea in their heads by embedding social media content. They can retweet, like or follow you with an easy click of a button. Pre-written tweets are also popular as not everyone is skilled at writing 140 characters or less.

Ultimately, interactive content achieves several goals. It keeps people engaged with a piece of content for a longer length of time, thus reducing your bounce rate. It also makes it more likely that people will become repeat visitors because you’ve provided an enjoyable and memorable experience. Make sure it’s an integral part of your content marketing toolbox.