If you’ve been working to drive traffic to your website but aren’t seeing many conversions from that traffic, your bounce rate may be too high. A high bounce rate means that the people coming to your website are not staying long; they simply “bounce” before exploring your content or filling out a contact form.
What Is a Good Bounce Rate?
To understand how your website is working, let’s discuss what a good bounce rate is so you can compare this number to your site’s bounce rate. It’s important to note that what one company considers a good bounce rate may be horrible to another company, so it really depends on your site and your business goals. However, here are some general percentages to keep in mind:
- 26–40% is considered excellent
- 41–55% is considered average
- 56–70% is higher than average
- 70%+ is usually considered bad
Regardless of these numbers, companies should be viewing their bounce rate as an indication of their site’s usability and appeal and working to reduce their bounce rate as much as possible. In this post, we’ll look at the five most important ways to do just that.
Top 5 Ways to Reduce Bounce Rates
1. Optimize for Mobile
Mobile usage continues to increase year after year, and you can bet that if your site is not optimized for mobile, you will see high bounce rates! Even if your website shows that the majority of visits come from desktop users, you still do not want to miss out on any visitors who do come from mobile devices, especially since we know that number is likely going to keep increasing.
2. Optimize Speed and Page Load Time
People want to be able to gather information quickly and at the moment they need it. So you can be sure that if they have to wait longer than a view seconds for your page to load, they will likely leave to find what they’re looking for somewhere else.
3. Optimize for Relevance
Irrelevance is one of the biggest contributing factors to high bounce rates. Keep in mind the specific keywords you want to target and make sure that your website’s content accurately reflects those keywords. Also, consider what a prospect is looking for when they search for those keywords. Are they looking for information or to buy something? Make sure the content you provide on your site serves those specific needs.
4. Focus on Navigation
To keep people on your website, you need to make it effortless to navigate. As we said before, people do not want to waste any time figuring out where to find what they need. So, if you’re website is not laid out in a simple and clear fashion, many will likely leave immediately.
5. Include One or Two Calls to Action
When a visitor arrives at your site, you want them to take specific actions. However, if you include too many call-to-action buttons (CTAs) on one page, they may be pulled in too many different directions. By including just one or two very clear CTAs, you can ensure that the viewer can easily understand where they need to go to find what they’re looking for.
With these five ideas in mind, look at your own website. What can you improve to reduce your bounce rate? Start working through each of these items, and monitor your bounce rate over the next year. You should start to see a dramatic improvement!
For more help with optimizing your companies website, or if you're looking for a Des Moines web design company to build a brand new website that increases your revenue, schedule a consultation with Blue Frog today!
