Improving Your Website’s Bounce Rate

With so much information at their fingertips, it’s no wonder that the first place many consumers go to learn about a new business or find a professional to hire is the internet. There are many ways to measure whether or not your company’s website is successful in bringing in and informing new clients, and one such way is by measuring your bounce rate. A website’s bounce rate reflects how often users who visit the site navigate away from the site rather quickly. In other words, it measures how often consumers find your website but quickly determine that they do not want or need further information from or about you. Below are several suggestions that can help make your website a valuable resource that will make users want to stay long enough to learn what you have to offer.

1. Improve your website’s design. There are two crucial qualities that a user instantly notices about a website, so they often affect whether a user “bounces” away. First, the design must load well for most users. If a user visits your site but notices that the home page is taking too long to load, they may decide that the information you can offer is not worth the frustration of extended loading time every time they try to explore a page of your site. Second, the website design must look professional. Imagine this scenario: you’re looking for a dermatologist, and do a web search for dermatologists in your area. As it turns out, there are 20 dermatologists within a 30-minute drive, and you start checking their websites to narrow down your choice. If one dermatologist’s website looks like it was made with software from the 1990s and hasn’t been updated since, you’ll probably eliminate them as an option rather quickly.
2. Improve your website’s content. When creating your web content, you do want to give a good impression to the user in the hopes that they patronize your business, but your primary goal should simply be to become an informational haven for the user. It helps to put yourself in the user’s shoes. For instance, if you are a plastic surgeon, ask yourself, “If I were a patient who was starting to consider a facelift, what would I want to know? How would I want to be spoken to?” Consumers are much more likely to explore your website and find out all the wonderful things your business can offer if they feel like they’re being helped, rather than reading one giant advertisement. In addition, one of the things search engines such as Google are drawn to is new content. As a matter of fact, fresh content is the one thing, of their many recommendations to improve your search engine optimization, that Google has not changed in quite some time.
3. Improve your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). In addition to stagnant content, one reason your website may have a high bounce rate is simply that the wrong people are being guided to your website. You may have a stellar design and great content, but if you’re a pediatrician and the user is looking for information on car repair, we doubt they’ll be sticking around to learn more. When you’re using keywords in your website content, only use keywords, tags, and descriptions that are truly relevant to your subject. For instance, if you’re a physician whose sentence reads, “A fever occurs when the body temperature is above 98.6 degrees,” linking “fever” to a more detailed part of your site will prove helpful and pull in the correct traffic, while linking “degrees” could attract users who are researching universities or the weather. It’s also important to avoid SEO tactics like keyword stuffing – “stuffing” popular keywords into your copy in an attempt to attract the users who searched for those terms, even though the terms aren’t actually relevant to your site.
4. Consider marketing your website more extensively. You can do this by including your web address on your marketing collateral and advertisements, including links to your site on your social media posts, or giving consumers a specific reason to visit your site (such as to learn about or redeem a special offer, or to RSVP for an event). By maximizing the number of site visitors who come to your site directly (e.g., specifically seeking your website), rather than those who performed a search for a term that may or may not be related to your site, you can ensure that more of your visitors will be interested enough to stay and explore your site.

While these are just a few suggestions on how to do so, lowering your website’s bounce rate can help you attract more users who truly want to learn about your business and learn why you are the best provider of the service they’re looking for. But no one can be a master of all trades, so it is ideal to work with a company who specializes in full-service marketing, like McCauley Marketing Services. With our varied team of professionals, we provide specialization in graphic design, writing web content, search engine optimization, and other aspects of planning and perpetuating a marketing plan. To start discussing how we can help you grow your business, simply contact us or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.