You may or may not have heard of the term, bounce rate. This simple word has a lot of meaning behind it and plays a crucial role in the success, or failure, of a website. Simply put, the bounce rate is the percentage of users who view your site and then quickly navigate away. If your bounce rate is high, this means that your site is not holding its audience. Users are coming onto the site, just to leave after viewing just one page.
If you have a high bounce rate and are looking to increase your conversions and increase search traffic, you need to reduce your bounce rate. Having a high bounce rate is a serious issue that can hurt your site, but there is hope. Luckily, there are steps you can take to help improve your bounce rate.
We probably sound like a broken record by now, but this simple statement is far from being wrong. Having well-written content is a crucial factor when it comes to your website’s overall success. It’s no surprise that poor content will increase your site’s bounce rate. Who wants to waste their time reading plagiarized, “fluffed” content? Give people what they want so they will be more likely to return.
There’s no better way to annoy the viewer and increase your bounce rate by having multiple pop-ups. While one or two are not so bad, you can still run the risk of aggravating people. Keep in mind, depending on what your audience is using to view your site on, pop-ups can become a bit of a challenge to close. On a small sized screen, pop-ups don’t always appear correctly, and this can make it difficult to close. If you want to have a call to action, use a more creative and less annoying way to get your point across.
There’s nothing more frustrating than having a poorly designed website. There’s no better way to run off your audience by having unreadable text and by having a hard to navigate menu. If your site is not well designed, is not pleasant to look at, and doesn’t provide a clear path for your audience, expect to see your bounce rate rise. However, if your site is easy to read and has a clear and easy to access navigational menu, users might be more inclined to stick around.
One of the worst mistakes to make is to have a heavy, slow site. Nine times out of ten this is the nail in the coffin. Unless you have a site that is the only one that provides a particular service or content type, don’t expect users to stick around. According to a report from Sean Work, today’s internet users are becoming less tolerant of sites that take forever to load. Almost 50% of people said that a website page should load in 2 seconds or less. Nowadays, having a slow site can hurt your conversions, so speed it up.
Another good way to lose your audience is to have an archaic website that is not mobile compliant. In today’s day and age, many internet users are utilizing handheld technology to view the web. Smartphones and tablets are commonly used, so if your ancient site is not up to date, you will likely lose some of your audience. To help ensure proper navigational flow throughout your site, your site needs to be responsive to small screen sizes. Remember, if users can’t find a clear path, they will likely turn away.
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