Increasing traffic, generating leads and ultimately accumulating customers are common goals amongst businesses of all backgrounds. Many elements factor in your website's success and it's important to monitor and analyze to constantly improve and continue to entice the people visiting your site. When people are on your site, you want them to stay and check out all the great information and products you have to offer. So when people leave quickly without really interacting with your website elements, that may be a strong indicator that a change needs to be made. Here are several suggestions to reduce bounce rate that keeps visitors from leaving your site and entices them to stay and view more pages.
What Does Bounce Rate Mean?
Bounce rate can simply be defined as the percentage of your customers that leave your website after visiting only one page or percentage of single interaction visits to a website. This means that people are visiting your website but quickly leaving. So why are people so quick to leave and how do you entice them to stay? This has to make companies wonder if there is something wrong with their website such as outdated design, not enough content or even difficult navigation. Fixing these issues should help generate more traffic and entice people to stay on your website but it's also important to pinpoint the main cause for high bounce rates and work towards fixing that issue to reduce the percentage. Knowing what can cause a high bounce rate will better inform you on the next steps to improve your website and improve your inbound marketing efforts.
How Can I Reduce My Website's Bounce Rate?
Your website's bounce rate percentage can be high for various reasons. Inspect your website and ask around to find the source of the problem to do what you can to fix it. Below are some of the following elements that can be done to make people stay on your website:
Updating your website- We all know that attention spans run short when using the Internet and people are not very fond of waiting. 40% of people will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Furthermore, 79% of web users who experience trouble with a site's performance admit they are less likely to return to the site and around 44% of them would tell a friend if they had a poor experience purchasing online (Source). If you are experiencing slow loading times, try to find the source of the problem or consider working with a professional web design company who can offer you a redesign that is updated with the latest trends and offers quick and easy access for users.
Redesign your website- Your web design may be boring or possibly too overwhelming to the eye. Colors are important not just to make the website more appealing but also to build your brand and enhance corporate identity. Colors increase web recognition by 80% (Source). The colors on your website should resemble who you are and appeal to your targeted audience so a considerable amount of thought should be given when deciding what will work best for your brand. In addition to choosing the right colors, it's also important no to clutter your website with too many colors that become overwhelmingly distracting. Take a look at your website and analyze your design and colors to find a better way to appeal to your audience and construct more effective web design solutions.
Create effective website content- Effective content on each website page is important for several reasons such as informing the reader, enhancing SEO for searchability and awareness as well as a way to describe why your products and services are better than your competitors. Try to use effective content elements such as internal links as well as blog articles and avoid annoying pop up ads. Give the information that people need and are interested because if they can't find it on your site, they'll go to a website that can. Furthermore, if your website is full of grammatical errors, it will seem unprofessional and may result in you losing credibility and people viewing you as a trustworthy source.
Ensure easy navigation- People want a website that is easy to navigate so they can easily find the information they need. If a prospect has to dig through your website to find what they are looking for, more than likely they will leave and use another source. 50% of potential sales are lost because users can't easily find the information they are looking for and 40% of those users never return to a site when they've had a negative experience (Source).
How Bad Is A High Bounce Rate?
Having a high bounce rate percentage is always something you should work towards reducing. However, it's also important to note that not every high bounce rate may mean something was wrong with your website or your services. For example, a person may have quickly gone to your site to retrieve your address or contact information and left because that is all they simply needed. It's important to analyze the page they were on or the information they were retrieving to see if the bounce rate information can be used to improve your site. So if someone is on your site reading a specific article or an informative page and quickly leave, there may be an issue with that particular content.
Check out the website redesign session below to create a powerful custom website that peaks prospect's interests and entices them to interact on your site longer.
