If you are wondering why visitors to your site bounce (leave after a few moments on one page) instead of converting into sales, there are any number of issues that could cause it. If your bounce rate is between 25% and 40% your site has an above-average bounce rate, and you are doing something right. For everyone else with average and below-average bounce rates, these are the most likely culprits.
Your Website Takes Forever to Load
There is a reason that Google uses site speed as one of the factors in how it ranks websites because in this day and age no one is going to wait over three to five seconds for the page to load. If you don’t know how fast your site loads; several tools like GT Metrix and Pingdom will tell you if your website is quick enough or not. If it is too slow you need to determine the cause; is it large image files that take too long to load or is it your web hosting service that is causing your site to drag?
Error Messages and Missing Pages
This problem is self-explanatory if a user arrives at your website and the first thing they see is an error message or a blank page, there is a 100% chance of a bounce occurring, and it is highly unlikely that the visitor will return to your website. Not only does this cause a drop in sales, but your brand can also take a hit as well. After all, if the only thing that users know about your brand, why would they think your company was trustworthy and reliable? Fixing broken links can go a long way to keeping visitors on your website.
Your Content is Sub Standard
If you have not updated your site since 2010, not only are you using older graphics and images, what is written on and about your website is probably obsolete as well. Not only does this make customers think that your company is lazy, but it also keeps the crawlers from search engines from ranking your company; in this way you are twice as likely to hurt your business through a higher bounce rate and the website being virtually invisible except on official correspondence or promotional items. Make sure the content on the website is clear and concise; if users have to read a dissertation before they get to your call to action, they will probably quit reading less than halfway through. Making your webpages easily scannable with bullet points and header tags will make reading much easier for visitors.
Attacking Visitors with Requests and Ads
Have you visited a website where as soon as it loaded there was a pop-up either selling something or asking you to subscribe to something? How about trying to read a five-hundred-word article where there are large ads, with sound, between every one hundred words? Did you make it to the bottom of the page? If you are like most people, probably not. A strong call to action is vital to converting visits to your site into sales, but not having so many on the page it distracts from the content. Getting rid of pop-ups and limiting both ads and calls to action will help improve your bounce rate.
Mobile Compatibility
If your site is not optimized for mobile use, what are you waiting for? Access by mobile devices to the internet has been an important fact since 2014. Chances are if your site does not load into a smartphone or tablet correctly because it is not optimized, users on said mobile devices won’t stick around to buy your products.
Correcting these five issues will improve your bounce rate and in turn, will most likely bring improved sales.
Is your bounce rate high? MosierData can help! Contact us here or call 863-687-0000 to find out more.