Getting lots of visitors to your website, but not many leads? It’s possible that your website may have a high bounce rate.
This is the percentage of visitors who leave your website shortly after arriving without clicking on another page or call-to-action button. A good bounce rate is anything under 50%. A bounce rate of more than 70% is usually considered high and is worth improving.
So how do you improve your bounce rate? To make improvements, you need to consider what is causing visitors to leave after arriving on your website. Below are some of the most common causes of a high bounce rate.
Slow loading pages
If your website’s pages take ages to load, this could be putting off visitors. In fact, some of them could be leaving your website before it has even fully loaded.
Anything over 5 seconds on a strong internet connection is usually considered slow. If your web pages are loading slowly, you may want to consider addressing this. A few ways in which you can speed up a web page include:
- Optimizing images
- Reducing redirects
- Reducing unnecessary code
- Not enabling too many ads or auto-play videos
- Migrating to a faster web host
Poor quality design
If your website is poorly designed, this may also put off visitors. This is most likely to be the case if you designed your website yourself or used a friend.
A few signs of poor quality design include:
- Clashing colors/fonts
- Buttons that don’t work properly
- Poor quality images
- Lack of white space
Consider looking into professional web design services to help redesign your website if you feel like the design may be responsible. If you’ve got a very old website, this is definitely worth updating as certain design features may be outdated.
Clickbaity titles/meta descriptions
Do your titles and meta descriptions create false expectations? If you promise someone ‘1000s of sofa designs to choose from and you’ve got 20 sofas in your inventory at your most, most visitors are going to feel cheated and are likely to leave.
It’s important that any title or meta description aptly describes the content of the page. Clickbait tactics will get you more visitors but could cost you leads.
Aggressive pop-ups
Pop-ups can be effective at getting visitors to stay on a site, but you need to use them appropriately. Bombarding visitors with lots of pop-ups the moment they land on your web page will likely come across as annoying and some visitors may leave your site out of frustration.
Instead of triggering lots of pop-ups immediately, consider triggering pop-ups after a visitor has been on your website for a certain time or just as they decide to leave. This allows visitors to absorb some of the content on your website and is much more likely to result in leads.
Lack of information
Keeping information concise can improve readability. However, you should avoid displaying too little information on your website. If visitors feel that you haven’t given them the information they need, they will leave.
Try to get all of the most important information onto your homepage like contact details, opening hours, reviews, years of experience, and a brief description of the types of services/products you offer. Provide buttons and links leading to extra information where necessary.
