A successful website is one that helps to increase leads, sales and ROI for a business. If you want your website to help you do this, you need to reduce the bounce rate from the site as much as possible. You want people to remain on your website, and interact with it.
In order to do this you need to make sure that you tell them what they need to know, make navigation easy and use effective calls to action. Let’s take a look at these three tips for reducing bounce rate, in more detail.
What is bounce rate?
Before we look at how to reduce bounce rate, let’s examine what it actually is. The bounce rate for your website is the percentage of visits to the site which involve the use of only one page, before the visitor exits the site. For most ecommerce sites this is not a good thing.
Obviously, the situation may be different if your website exists as an information resource, or is a single page intended to raise awareness of your business. In these cases a high bounce rate is not usually a problem. But, it is if you have an online store where people are visiting your homepage and then going elsewhere before they browse the rest of your site, or make a purchase.
Are you telling people what they want to know?
Your homepage is the place where you want to grab the attention of anyone who visits. Make sure that you include any vital information near the top of the page, where people start to read. Do not tell your life story, and then finally talk about the product half way down the page. Many people will lose interest after the first few sentences, and navigate away from the page.
Keep the information succinct, so it’s easy to see what your business is all about. If you want to provide background information, you may want to think about creating an online brochure or blog.
Is it easy to navigate around your website?
If you want people to buy products from your website, you need to make it easy for them to find what they are looking for. Use clear menus, and keep them simple; steer away from making people click endlessly, to reach their destination.
When it comes to creating a checkout process, limit it to just a few steps. Collect only the information that you absolutely have to. It’s fine to offer a few delivery and payment options, but remember that providing too many options can be confusing, and off-putting.
You need to remember that people who are not just browsing randomly want to come to your site, find what they want and make their purchase. Most people expect to be able to do this in just a few minutes. If the process is confusing, lengthy or time consuming, you will lose potential customers to your competitors.
Are your calls to action working
A call to action is a valuable tool, if it’s well written and placed effectively. You need to direct people to take the action you want them to. This needs to be done as an integral part of the content of your website, but in a way that is clear and obvious.
These tips should help you to reduce the bounce rate of your website. If you are unsure of your bounce rate, or you need more help with your analytics, click this link. You need to have effective analytics in place in order to know whether you are being successful in reducing your site’s bounce rate.
