Improving Your Bounce Rate

What you might think is interesting and relevant information on your website may not be for people visiting your website for the first time. Just having a website online is just not enough, being at the top of the search engines is not enough, your site is just as an important selling tool as anything or anyone else in your business.

There are a few things that you must keep in mind when trying to reduce what we call a ‘bounce rate’. The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that click onto a website, and leave again within the first few seconds without viewing another page or going any further. This is a good metric as to whether or not your site is working in an effective manner.

If your bounce rate is too high, then there is something wrong with the page that the viewer is being directed to. Be realistic though, try not to compare your site with others but as a rule of thumb, if your bounce rate is somewhere around the 50% mark you are doing well.

Bounce rates can be high for any number of reasons but usually you can narrow them down to just a few.

• The page is designed in a poor fashion, making it difficult to understand what you do.
• The information on the page the user landed on is not what they were looking for.
• It takes too long to load the website.
• There is too much irrelevant content on the website.

Methods to decrease bounces and increase conversions

1. Clarity and Conciseness: The homepage that you are directing users to is the most important part of your website. Don’t confuse customers with information that is irrelevant, make it easy for them to navigate their way to the correct information.
2. Design: Design your homepage in such a way that the users see what they want towards the top of the homepage. It should be clear and concise, tell them what they want to know on the relevant page.
3. Content: The simpler and more relevant that you keep your content, the more likely the user will take the time to find out more information. Unless the information that you place on your site directly relates to what you do and how you do it, you will be wasting your time.
4. Make the site work for you: Over time, the site will become the cheapest salesperson you employ. The cost per customer acquisition is much lower than using a salesperson when you design a site correctly, so why not provide users with offers or vouchers to help convert them into customers.

If you still believe that you have a high bounce rate, then you will need to look at what type of traffic you are driving to the site. Ensure that the person who built your site has added the correct ‘meta-tags’ so that you will be found in the right places. If you do all of this you will see a much improved performance from your website and have it working its darnedest for you.

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Tags: Bounce Rate, SEO, Small Business, Websites