You’ve heard the term “bounce rate” before, but do you know what it means? Your website’s bounce rate is a metric that indicates the percentage of people who land on one of your web pages and then leave without clicking to anywhere else on your website. These can mostly be categorized as single-page visitors. If visitors bounce, it usually suggests they either didn’t find what they were looking for, or the page might not have been user-friendly. The higher your bounce rate, the lower your percentage of engaged users. Here are 4 ways to minimize website bounce rates and start building leads:
Evaluate User Experience
When a user arrives at your website, is he or she greeted with a simple, easy-to-navigate site? You typically have about 15 seconds or less to convey your value to a user before they move on. Is your landing page making the sale or giving your customers the brush off? Clear calls to action with “straight to the point” content can help keep visitors engaged. Keep this in mind when evaluating your user experience.
Speed Up Load Times
40% of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. An e-commerce site making $100,000 per day could potentially lose $25,000,000 in sales per year on a one-second page delay. Fast load time is a crucial element to your website’s success.
Optimize for Mobile
Unless your website was developed in the past few years, you probably aren’t taking advantage of responsive design. Users increasingly expect to find what they are looking for when they hit your website. They aren’t going to expand the page, center your content in their viewing screen, and struggle to scroll for each page. They are simply going to move on to your competitor. If you’re not mobile friendly, it’s time to make the upgrade.
Write with Your Audience in Mind
Maintaining a blog on your website can play a crucial role in increasing leads, so it’s important that your target audience is actually reading what you write. While consumers today have relatively short attention spans, longer blog posts aren’t necessarily death sentences for your bounce rate. According to a study by publishing platform Medium, blog readers tend to drop off after about 7 minutes of reading. By testing different content forms and formats, you can discover the ideal blog length for your audience. If you do find your readers are jumping ship prematurely, consider splitting longer blogs into a series or adding pagination to break up the content into smaller, more digestible chunks.
A high bounce rate can indicate that your visitors are not looking for more content on your site, clicking on your calls-to-action, or converting into contacts. If your website is consistently running in the 70 to 90% range, it’s time to take a long, hard look at your online strategy. Not sure where to start? Drop us a line.