How to Improve Your Website’s Bounce Rate
Those familiar with Internet marketing will know the term, “bounce rate,” which is used to describe visitors who enter a website and leave the site “bounce” instead of clicking through to view additional content. Bounce rate, as a term, is used when analyzing web traffic and of course, is something that online business owners are always striving to improve.
Today, we’ll go over a few tips on how to improve your website’s bounce rate, which will in turn bring in more online business for your company.
Here are some of the ways to decrease your website’s bounce rate this year and grow your business’ traffic.
Use Headlines
Don’t waste people’s free time. Most don’t have much of it. Use headlines on your website to draw people to what they’re looking for, so they don’t have to search for very long. If they have to spend too much time digging, they’ll leave. Something as easy as a headline that says, “Click here for more,” will make sure that your customers don’t have to question what they need to do to get what they want.
Don’t Shy Away from Graphics
Whether it’s a photograph of your product, or a graphic that better explains the copy to follow, images draw people in and make everything clearer. It’s often useful to illustrate text, so it breaks up streams of copy on your website and keeps people interested.
Minimize Scrolling
Make sure all of your important information is at the top of the website so that visitors do not have to scroll down to find what they’re looking for. As mentioned, if it’s not in front of their face, people wont go searching for information.
Know Your Demographic
Speak to your target in a language that they understand. If your target is teenagers, don’t use language that appeals to middle-aged women. If you speak their language, they will believe that you understand them, and trust that you know what they’re interested in, causing them to stick with you.
Make it Simple
How often have you been to a website looking around for something, before you decide to give up? Don’t let people have that experience with your company’s website. First of all, make sure your navigation is easy and well thought out, using sidebars and menus. Also, if you provide a “search” box on your website, people will have no excuse to bounce, when they can’t instantly find what they’re looking for.
Make Your Links Obvious
Since often, visitors leave website’s after a simple glance at the landing page, if they can’t find what they’re looking for, it’s important to make sure you have clean and obvious links on your homepage, which will take them to additional content. These internal links will help to make sure that visitors can find what they’re looking for, even though they may have to spend a little extra time.
Clean Up Your Content
If your content doesn’t get straight to the point and answer the visitors initial questions, they will leave and go elsewhere, where their questions are answered and they can find what they’re looking for. People are busy, so don’t let them spend extra time trying to find something and trying to translate your copy – they won’t bother.
Take Notes
Designing and developing a quality website is great and is really the first step in any good business, but it’s not the only thing that matters. Once your website has been up and running for some time, it’s time to look at your content and find out where people are bouncing from, what content they’re looking at and how they’re navigating your website. By analyzing this and the steps people take, you will be able to have a better understanding of how you can improve your website’s structure and make sure that visitors are having an optimal experience.
While these tips are not difficult, they’re certainly important on their own and when done in combination with each other, in order to better the navigational experience on your website and decrease your website’s bounce rate. Remember, a decreased bounce rate means more money traffic to your website and more money for your business in the long run.
