How is your website’s bounce rate? Do visitors spend time visiting various pages? Or do they land on one page and then bounce right off? Since the whole point of a company website is to generate business, reducing your site’s bounce rate – the percentage of users who enter the site and then leave without checking out other pages – can increase your bottom line. But how do you reduce your website’s bounce rate? Think Forward Media are professional web developers that will maximize your performance and increase conversions.
Laser Focus Your Landing Pages
Your website has to give visitors exactly what they want. If someone comes looking for purple hammers, you have to provide them with exactly that, purple hammers. Not red hammers or purple screwdrivers. Each landing page must focus on one thing only. You might want to put some other products or services on the page because it seems like a good way to showcase them, but doing so just muddies the waters. People these days have an attention span of eight seconds 1. If they have to spend longer than trying to find what they want on a page, they will become frustrated and bounce off.
Make Your Content Easy to Consume
Not only do you want to focus on one product or service on each landing page, but you also want the content on that page organized so that it is easy to consume. Remember that most users today are accessing your content on a mobile device, and they want to locate information quickly. To this end, eliminate walls of text and instead use short paragraphs. Label paragraphs with bold headings. Incorporate bullet points where you can, and add infographics where it makes sense. The less work visitors have to do to find what they want, the lower your bounce rate will be.
Add Links to Other Pages
Adding links to other pages in your site can encourage visitors to stay on your site a little while and do some exploring. If they have found the purple hammer that they sought, then they might be interested in finding out more about your company or seeing best-selling items for the past month. Links to these kinds of pages, either in a sidebar or at the top of the page, will entice visitors to check out more of your site.
Simplify Your Navigation
While links will encourage people to explore your website, it is important to make this exploration as easy and effortless as possible. If your navigation system is too complex or causes frustration, then your users will click off to another site. The navigation must be logical and easy to understand. Links should be clearly labelled and lead to where they say they are going to lead. Most importantly, every link must work. Nothing makes a user bounce off a site faster than clicking on a broken link.
Add Video
It is a simple fact that human beings respond to pictures more than they do to text. 17% of page views last less than four seconds 2. Yet, the average time spent watching a video is nearly three minutes. This is why video is all the rage these days. It engages viewers, keeps them on a website for extended periods of time and gives brands a chance to tell their stories. Nearly any kind of video will work, whether it is a product explanation video, a fun animated whiteboard video or a customer testimonial video.
Add a ChatBox
What if a visitor lands on your site, likes what they see, but has a question? They can call you, but the chances of that are slim. They can send an email, but getting an answer can take too long. Or they can chat with an agent if you have a chatbox on your site. With this kind of engagement technology, you can keep the user from bouncing off your site by answering his question right then and there. Not only are you providing great customer service, but you are also increasing the chances of an immediate sale.
Include Non-Sales Content
Many visitors who come to your site are probably still in the early stages of the buying process and are just looking for product or service information. By providing this kind of non-sales copy, you can educate users and increase their chances to return in the future to purchase. You can also build trust by giving them something of value – the information they seek – without asking for anything in return. This trust can encourage users to check out more of your site to see what else you offer.
Add a Clear, Prominent Call to Action
What do you want users to do when they land on your page? Buy a product, fill out a form for a free quote or sign up for your newsletter? Whatever it is, you have to tell people to do it. And you have to tell them in a clear, concise way. As the name suggests, a call to action (CTA) uses action words, such as Sign Up Now, Click Here, Complete this Form. Place just one CTA on each page, and put it in a prominent position on the page, so it is easy to spot.
Ensure That Your Site Loads Quickly
It seems obvious that a website should load quickly, but many sites are still as slow as molasses. Google, in particular, prefers fast sites and says that the probability that a user will bounce off a site increases 32% when a site takes three seconds to load. The probability jumps to 106% when a site takes five seconds to load. When it comes to mobile, 53% of site visits are abandoned if a page takes longer than three seconds to load 3. The bottom line? The slower your site is, the higher the bounce rate and the more business you are losing. To increase your site’s load time, consider using AMP, Google’s accelerated mobile pages.
Every company website has a bounce rate. You can lower yours and increase your bottom line by creating highly focused landing pages, making your content easy to digest, including clear CTA on each page, adding links to other pages, simplifying your navigation, adding video, adding a chatbox, including non-sales product and service information and ensuring that your site is as fast as it can be.
Think Forward Media has improved the bounce rate for various companies and industries, ensuring you maximize your conversions. If you need help or have questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. Our team of experts is standing by and looks forward to working with you.
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