Originally posted on February 16, 2016; Updated on April 15, 2022
Are you having a hard time with increasing your organic traffic to your website? Struggling with getting leads or email sign ups? Fighting
to acquire more clients? A high bounce rate may be to blame. If you’ve had your website for a while, you may be familiar with this term. If
not, bounce rate refers to the number of visitors who leave your site (or bounce off) without taking any action or giving you any chance to
convert them. And while we hate to the point the finger, your website might be chasing away your customers! Read on to learn some changes
that you can make to your website to lower your bounce rate and increase your traffic (and in turn, leads and ultimately conversions!) Call
us today to learn more.
Improve The Readability of Your Content
A huge turn off to most people is large chunks of text to read on a screen. It’s hard on the eyes. We also want to be able to find the most
information with the least amount of effort. If it’s hard to find the information someone came to your website to find, they’ll leave and
look for it somewhere else. Ensure that doesn’t happen by making sure your content is skimmable. This means:
No big chunks of text
Use well formatted headings
Use bullet points or numbered lists where appropriate to break things up and make information stand out
Use graphics to break up text and give the eyes places to rest
Improve Your Brand Storytelling
Not only should your content be easy to read, but it should be something that your potential customers want to read! It should be
helpful and answer a question or solve a problem that your reader has. It should be relatable, dynamic, and evoke emotion. It should tell a
story. Not only should it tell a story, but your potential customer should be the hero of that story. Finally, your content should create a
sense of trust and belief in your product or service without being salesy. If your content makes people feel like you are trying to sell
them something right off the hop, they’ll likely ditch you. Tell them a story instead.
Avoid Pop Ups
Short and sweet, pop ups are annoying as can be. They disrupt user experience and chase people off your site. If you can avoid it, do not
use them. The end.
Optimize Your Meta Descriptions
You may not have paid much attention to your meta description in the past, but it matters a lot more than you think! This is the short
description that appears after your page title in the search engine results page. This gives both searchers and search engines a sneak
preview of what your page is about. If your meta description is misleading, a searcher may click on it, just to leave your page immediately
because it’s just not what they are looking for. Some tips for writing a good meta description are to keep it around 155 words, and to
include your keyword.
Make Sure Your Page Has a Fast Load Speed
If your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, your potential customer will just move on to your competitor’s site. Google is
also concerned about site speed, so not only will your bounce rate increase, but your rankings will slip. There are all kinds of factors
that contribute to your site speed including:
the size and quality of images you use
too many plugins
being on a bad server/host
heavy CSS and JavaScript use
The best work around for this is to work with a digital marketing agency that is experience in web design, like Smart WSI Marketing.
Make Sure Your Site is Mobile Friendly!!
This heading has two exclamation points for a reason. It’s 2022 and we can’t believe we still need to tell people this. Most people are
searching on mobile devices a good percentage of the time. If your website can not easily be viewed on a mobile phone or tablet because the
text is too small or doesn’t line up, or images or other elements don’t load, you best believe your potential customer is going to bounce.
Be on top of things by starting with a responsive web design in the first place. A responsive web design is intended to have the website and
all it’s elements, whether it be text, images, or interactive elements, adapt (or respond) to whatever size screen it is
being viewed on.
Mobile friendliness is also a ranking factor. Google actually indexes the mobile version of your site first. While that is not the meat and
potatoes of this blog post, it’s definitely worth mentioning. If your website is not mobile friendly, you are doing yourself no favours when
it comes to bounce rate, or SEO.
High Hopes for a Low Bounce Rate
Your bounce rate is never going to be zero. That’s unrealistic and even when people end up on your site for the right reasons, there are
going to be times that for whatever reason they leave with out making a move. That being said, there are definitely things that you can do
to optimize your website and draw in the right people and have them spend time on your site. If you can’t put your finger on what’s causing
your bounce rate to be higher than you’d hope, call Smart WSI Marketing for a review of your digital marketing strategy.
Lynne Motkoski, Digital Marketing Strategist
Specialty: Digital Marketing
Strategies Education: MA Communications
& Technology, BComm [U Alberta]
Lynne is known for her strategic approach to marketing communications, technologies, and lead generation. She has a passion for education,
keeping up with current marketing trends and practices, and helping clients keep ahead of their competition.
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