Have you been struggling to convert your visitors into clients?
If so, your site’s bounce rate may be too high.
What is a Website’s Bounce Rate?
A site’s bounce rate is the percentage of its visitors that enter a page and leave without taking any further action. Visitors who bounce do not click on any links, select a menu item, or engage with the website in any other way.
A high bounce rate is a clear signal that there is an issue with the site.
Those issues could be:
- Sites design is confusing
- The link to the page is misleading or incorrectly labeled
- Your pages information is not useful
For most sites, a bounce rate above 70% should be looked into.
How Can You Improve Your Website’s Bounce Rate?
Once you have identified that your website has a bounce rate problem, it is vital that you take swift action to address it. You can do so in the following ways:
Improving Your Site’s Loading Times
When users search for information on Google or Bing and click through to your website, they expect to find the answers they need quickly. They do not expect to spend an inordinate length of time waiting for the page to load.
If you keep them waiting, they will quickly leave and head to your competitor’s site instead.
So, how quickly should web pages load? Research has found that around half of all consumers expect pages to load in less than two seconds.
If users consistently wait more than three seconds to view your site, you may wish to take some of the following steps to speed things up a little:
- Reduce or eliminate redirects
- Optimize your images
- Enable browser caching
- Boost your server response time
Once you take these speed-boosting steps, it won’t be long before you notice an improvement in your bounce rate as well.
Improving the Readability of Your Content
If a user visits your website and immediately sees a massive wall of text, they will probably leave. Nobody wants to spend time scouring through dozens of compacted lines of content to find the information they need.
To encourage your visitors to stick around, you should try to focus on making your content as easy-to-read as possible. You can do so by:
- Using relevant headings
- Using plenty of subheadings
- Keeping paragraphs short
- Using bullet points and numbered lists
- Including relevant images
If your users enjoy reading your content, they are much more likely to click through to another page. As a result, your bounce rate will drop.
Setting External Links to Open in New Tabs
Your website is almost certainly filled with external links. They are an excellent way to show your users that your content is thoroughly researched.
There is one problem, though. When one of your visitors clicks on an external link, they are directed away from your website. This fact can cause your bounce rate to skyrocket.
Fortunately, there is an easy solution: Setting all of your external links to open in new tabs.
In taking this action, you retain the benefits of external linking without driving users away from your site. As soon as they have finished finding the information they need on the external web page, they can exit the tab and immediately return to your site to continue browsing.
Your visitors will most likely enjoy the usability of not having to hit the back button to reload the page.
Perfecting Your Call to Action
When striving to improve your bounce rate, it is vital that you have a compelling call to action (CTA) on just about every page. No matter how readable your content is or how quickly your site loads, your visitors may still leave if you do not encourage them to take another step.
At FZA Digital, we recommend following these easy tips to create a highly effective call to action:
- Use Strong Command Verbs: Consider starting your CTA with words like “buy,” “subscribe”, or “order” to encourage visitors to take immediate action.
- Give Users a Reason to Act: The best way to convince your visitors to click through to a new page is to offer them a discount, free item, or another incentive.
- Use Numbers Where Possible: A CTA that reads, “Order today to get $50 off!” is likely to perform far better than one that says, “Order today to save money!”
- Make it Obvious: Your CTA should stand out from the rest of your content. Consider using a different color or putting it in a box to draw the user’s eye.
Before long, you will have a CTA that your visitors won’t be able to resist and your bounce rate will be massively improved.
Need a Little Help?
The team here at FZA Digital has been helping businesses optimize their web presence for many years. As such, we understand what it takes to create an effective and user-friendly website.
If you need some assistance implementing any of the bounce rate-reducing strategies outlined above, please do not hesitate to give us a call at (424) 229-2923 or contact us online.
