For those of you who don’t know what a bounce rate is, a bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that enter a website and leave (or bounce) without visiting another page on the website. For many businesses a high bounce rate can have a negative impact on conversion rates. As a Chicago web design company, we’ve helped many of our clients understand, analyze and address issues with high bounce rates. In this blog post, we’re going to cover some of the most common problems that website owners experience with bounce rates and how to go about fixing them.
Attracting the Wrong Kind of Traffic: Case Study from a Chicago Web Design Company
A client came to us with excitement when they had over 1,000 visitors on their website every month! But they were concerned because they weren’t generating any leads from this traffic. We noticed that they had a bounce rate of 90%. How did this happen? In this case, they were receiving the wrong kind of traffic by drawing visitors in with the wrong keywords.
Part of our process as a Chicago web design company is to find the right keywords that fit the right visitors! A solid SEO strategy is extremely vital when writing copy for web pages as well as designing website layouts.
How to fix:
To find the right keywords you’ll need to filter the number of keywords in all of your web copy. A problem could be that you didn’t use the right keyword in your content on that page. Be sure to refine your keywords or the reader will bounce right back to the Google search results.
Why Should a Chicago Web Design Company Care About Bounce Rates?
Less than great design, poor navigation, and no SEO are all results of a poor website design that can lead to higher bounce rates. It’s the responsibility of both the client and the web designer to work together to build a cohesive website that is designed for the right visitors. For instance, lets say that you’re at a shopping mall and you walk past a really interesting display window. But when you walk into the store you don’t find what you were looking for. In the end, you walk out. This is a classic example of a real life bounce rate caused by poor strategy. Our job as a Chicago web design company is to think like a customer and design with goals in mind.
Attracting the Right Kind of Traffic—Weak Call to Action: Case Study 2 from a Chicago Web Design Company
Sometimes a website page is receiving tons of traffic and visitors leave after visiting that one page. It’s good that visitors are finding what they are looking for, but how is this web page converting visitors into leads? A strong call to action can help improve this web page. At our Chicago web design company, we believe that the look and feel of a website goes hand in hand with web copy and what visitors are looking for. You need to be able to keep visitors on the page long enough to entice them to take the next step.
How to fix:
If a visitor found what they were looking for and then left, including a call to action at the bottom can help make them take the next step and stay on the site for another click. Something like “sign up for our email newsletter” or “download our free eBook” are some examples of great call to actions. Maybe you want to create shorter steps like “read our next post on______” or “click to read more”. When working with our Chicago web design company, we can certainly review your own unique situation.
Attracting the Right Kind of Traffic—Poor Website Layout: Case Study 3 from a Chicago Web Design Company
As a Chicago web design company, we have worked with many B2B companies with businesses that just aren’t as straight forward or common as other businesses. In this case content needs to be clear, concise and formatted for easy reading. Another factor that leads to higher bounce rates could be that text on a web page isn’t scannable. A lot of times website owners make the mistake of thinking that they need all of their information on the home page. Don’t bombard them with all text and facts on one page. Some people think that they need all of their information on the home page. This isn’t the case, you’ve burnt them out!
How to fix:
Let your users decide if they want to learn more about your company by clicking on your about page, services page and other pages. Place your content with purpose and dedicate web pages for different information elements. It’s definitely okay to link to other pages (encouraged). But we have to keep in mind that that text layout is important for helping readers digest complex information.
Ask a Chicago Web Design Company: What’s an acceptable Bounce Rate?
We say it’s about 20-30%; if you’re at 70-80%, that’s a cause for an alarm! Many other analytics programs calculate things differently so take the numbers with a grain of salt.
Let us help you find out what your bounce rate is and help improve it. Drop us a line here.