HOW TO REDUCE YOUR WEBSITE’S BOUNCE RATE
We all know what a bounce rate is and how it impacts our websites. A high bounce rate can have drastic effects on the ranking of our website and a low bounce rate can greatly improve it. It is also an important indicator of how well our website is performing with respect to our target audiences.
A high bounce rate means that our audiences are not converting or buying as they should. That is something that you definitely don’t want. It means that all your hard work in building and designing the website has gone to waste. What you need is to keep people engaged and make them go to the next level of the sales funnel. That is why improving your bounce rate is crucial.
There are various ways that you can improve your website’s bounce rate. Here are some of the ways that you can do that immediately and start seeing better results.
WORK ON SITE SPEED
Your website’s speed directly affects your bounce rates. Just one second of delay and your page views can drastically drop. On an average, if your page is taking longer than 8 seconds to load, you are losing valuable customers and your bounce rates will see a rapid increase.
People now have a whole lot of options and not a lot of time to go through all of them. What they want is quick solutions to their problems. Even a second’s delay and they will leave your website and start looking somewhere else. That is why it is essential for you to improve your website’s speed.
There are a few ways you can increase your website’s speed and lower your page load time in order to keep your visitors.
IMAGES
Images are one of the major elements that might slow down your website. Luckily, there are some plugins that you can use in order to deal with this issue.
You can go for a plugin like WPSmush to help you lower your image size. This plugin optimizes all your images by compressing or resizing your photos that are up to 32MB. It even lets you bulk optimize all your images with just one click. It offers a 30 days trial, after which you will have to pay an amount.
Another cool plugin that you can use is W3 Total Cache. It’s a simple enough tool that lets you improve your website’s SEO and user experience by increasing your website’s performance and reducing load time. It has a host of features that you can use.
BEWARE OF THE FOLD
This isn’t a term that people use on a regular basis. A lot of them aren’t even aware of it, but it is a big deal in terms of website design.
“The Fold” is a term used by web designers and marketers to describe the bottom border of your browser’s window.
Anything that requires scrolling to be viewed is said to be “Below the Fold” and everything that is visible on your browser as soon as the page loads and doesn’t require any scrolling is called “Above the Fold”.
What the viewers can see above the fold is quite important as it helps them decide whether they want to stay on your website and scroll down or leave. You definitely don’t want elements above the fold that might confuse your visitors. This ultimately results in a high bounce rate. You want elements that make the traffic keep on moving.
The best way to do that is to give the visitors something of value as soon as they land on your page.
HEADLINE
You have to use a headline that immediately attracts the visitors and communicates the value of your brand in a concise and powerful way. Use actionable words that will resonate with your audience and let them know you mean business. Don’t be too specific. You might have a list of products or services. If you focus on any one of them, you might lose the customers who are interested in other products.
IMAGES
Use powerful and engaging images that convey the mood of your brand. It might be playful, serious, happy, or anything else that you might want to communicate. Do not use generic images as they might confuse the viewers. Also, do not ever use stock photos. Stock photos kill the conversion like nothing else. Don’t use them anywhere on the website, especially not in the banner. You might include a small GIF that shows the visitors what they can expect from you or a small animation that allures and entices them. Just make sure that it doesn’t increase your page’s load time.
CTA
Using a Call-to-Action above the fold depends on the type of visitors that you have and the type of business that you have. It depends on factors like:
- Certain Visitors
- Uncertain Visitors who have visited your website before
- Uncertain Visitors who are visiting for the first time
Certain visitors who are sure about your brand will definitely interact with your CTA as they have already made up their minds about you. Uncertain visitors might understand your CTA, but they might need some information about your brand or the specific product or service that they are looking for. For uncertain visitors who are coming to your website for the first time, the CTA will not do much good as they don’t know your brand and what it has to offer.
A great way to handle this is to offer multiple CTAs. This way, you can cater to all types of visitors.
USE GRAPHICS AND VIDEOS WHERE POSSIBLE
Visual elements always engage the visitors more than text and can increase your visitor’s time spent on your website. Pages that include some type of graphic representations like a GIF, infographics, or a video get more engagement than text-only pages or posts. These elements help you get the gist of the matter to the audience faster than text.
You can create small, informative videos about your products or services that explain everything to the visitors in an interesting way. This way you can make sure that every page will have at least one video.
Another thing that is trending right now is to give an overview of your organization through video. You can introduce yourself and your products. This is a good way to connect with your visitors. Seeing real faces in a video helps them bond with the brand.
Another benefit of using videos and graphics is that they are more easily shareable than text-only content. A visitor is not likely to share a web page that he likes, but if there is a video on that page, he might just share that video on his social media
OPEN LINK IN A NEW TAB
This is a small, technical point that can help you a lot in keeping the visitors on your website. When adding a link on any of your webpages or a CTA, make sure that they always open in a new window. This way, visitors will have multiple pages of your website open and even if they close one page, the other pages will still be there.
PROVIDE VALUABLE CONTENT ON EVERY PAGE
Many web designers don’t treat all their webpages equally. That is a big mistake. You never know where your traffic is coming from. It could come through your homepage, best logo design, landing pages, or through a blog post. It all depends on how you are promoting your website and driving traffic. This is the reason why you have to treat all your pages like a landing page and provide the most interesting and eye-catching content that you can. Make sure that no matter what page the visitor comes through, they spend more and more time on your website.
You can add widgets or plugins to help you do that. You can link to your most-read blog posts. You can add appropriate CTAs to ensure that the visitors take some action.
Your bounce rate is a very important factor in your overall SEO strategy and your Google ranking. With the above steps, it is very easy for you to improve your bounce rate effectively and give your visitors something to stick around for.