Every good business owner knows how important their website is. Even if you’re not selling products through the website, it’s how most potential customers are going to find your business. But if you are selling products on there, it’s even more important that you know how to drive a lot of traffic to your website. However, that’s only half the battle because even if you get a lot of people to visit the site, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to buy anything.
High bounce rate is a phrase that strikes fear into the hearts of marketing departments. If you didn’t know already, bounce rate refers to the number of people that visit the homepage of the website and then leave without exploring and, most importantly, converting into customers. Even if you’ve got a good level of traffic coming to the site, it doesn’t mean anything if your bounce rate is too high.
If you aren’t measuring metrics on your website and checking your bounce rate regularly, you absolutely should be. It’s one of the best ways to see how effective your website is and if you’re struggling to make sales, high bounce rate is often the reason why. It’s important that you identify this problem right away and do something about it. There are a lot of different reasons for a high bounce rate but the good news is, the majority of them can be solved fairly easily. If you’re struggling with a high bounce rate on your website, these are some of the potential reasons why and what you can do about them.
The Wrong Traffic
Not all website traffic is created equal and it’s not enough to just get people visiting the site. You need to make sure that the right people are visiting the site and that means potential customers who are actually likely to have an interest in your products, otherwise, people will see the homepage, decide that it’s not for them, and leave right away. There are a few different reasons that you might be getting the wrong traffic on your site but SEO is one of the more common ones. A lot of businesses find that they’re ranking well on search engines but you might be ranking highly for the wrong keywords. For example, imagine that you’re a company that sells kitchen equipment. If you rank highly for the word ‘kitchen’ a lot of the people that are searching that term will be looking to buy an actual kitchen rather than equipment for cooking with. It’s important that you use more specific keywords like ‘kitchen knife’ or ‘pots and pans’ if you’re going to direct the right traffic to your site.
Mistakes in your social media marketing campaign could be causing you an issue with the wrong traffic as well. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that it’s simply a numbers game and you should try to get as many followers as possible, regardless of who they are. But if they’re not your target demographic and they have no interest in your products, you’re wasting your time. It’s far better to focus your efforts on connecting with the right people and have fewer followers than it is to market yourself to people that have no interest in your product.
Poor Navigation
When people land on a website, they want to be able to find exactly what they’re looking for immediately. If they can’t do that, they’re likely to just leave the site and look elsewhere. This becomes a problem for a lot of businesses because they’re trying to design an original website with an interesting design and they let that get in the way of functionality. Originality is very important and you need to catch the attention of people that visit the site but don’t neglect all of the key features of a website that you would normally have. For example, if you don’t have clear menus and an easily accessible search function on the home page, how are people supposed to find what they’re looking for? It doesn’t matter how good the website looks if it’s not simple to use and people won’t stick around for long.
It’s best to stick to a typical website layout (there’s a reason that they’re designed that way) and try to add your own originality with the small details. In some cases, a completely different website design can work but more often than not, it backfires and has a huge negative impact on usability, leading to a high bounce rate.
Too Many Pop-Ups
Pop-ups can be so annoying but they’re also quite useful sometimes. It’s a good idea to have a pop-up box where people can subscribe to your email list, for example, because it’s a great marketing tool. However, if you go overboard with the pop-ups, you’ll just drive people away. If somebody enters the site and they’ve got one pop-up asking them to join your email list, one asking if they want notifications when you post new content, and another playing a promotional video all at the same time, it’s going to take a while to load and they’ll have to close it all down before they can actually get to what they’re looking for. That’s not what people want from a website, they want to browse at their own leisure without being bombarded as soon as they land.
It’s fine to use some pop-ups, for your email list, for example. However, it’s often best to have it appear if they click on a second page on the site, rather than right away. That way, you’re not scaring them off and you can be sure that they’ve shown some interest in the product before you start hitting them with promotional materials. You should also steer clear of any videos that play automatically on the website. The majority of users find this frustrating as they have to find and pause the video before they can move on and most people aren’t going to watch it.
A high bounce rate can cause you some serious problems so if you’re struggling with it, make sure that you check these things.
