High bounce rate is a phrase that makes marketing teams cringe. It refers to the number of people that leave your website after only viewing one page. If you’ve got a high bounce rate it means that people aren’t exploring the website and, if you’re selling products on there, you’re not converting any of those visitors into paying customers. All websites have a bounce rate and it’s important to understand what is normal and what is a cause for concern. Somewhere between 40 and 50 percent is average. It could be better but it’s not a huge problem. Anything over 50 is a worry and you need to start looking at why. If you get over 70 percent bounce rate, alarm bells should be ringing. There are a lot of reasons why you might have a high bounce rate so if you’re worried, check some of these things.
You Made It Yourself
This doesn’t apply to everybody and if you know what you’re doing and you coded a decent website yourself, this isn’t likely to be the problem. However, a lot of people don’t really know what they’re doing and they build a site using a free website builder. The thing is, those website builders use basic templates that most users can recognise. Now, using one of these website builders isn’t always bad but if you’re selling products online, you should steer clear. When a potential customer goes onto your site and sees that you’ve built it for free they’ll immediately start to question your company. If you’re not investing money in vital things like your website, how well have you thought through your products? Have you invested money in your customer service department to help them if they have a problem? Most of the time, they’ll decide that they don’t trust you enough to buy from you and they’ll leave. What you need to do is get a digital marketing agency to build you a professional looking website that has more functionality than a template and runs a lot better as well.
It’s Too Slow
Speaking of running better, a slow website is one of the worst things for bounce rates. We’re all pretty impatient these days and people aren’t willing to wait ages for a website to load. Personally, I’ll wait about 5 seconds before I start getting wound up and thinking about leaving the site and I imagine most people are the same. If it’s a site that they’ve visited before they’ll be a little more forgiving but when visiting a site for the first time, expectations are higher. If your site is too slow it might mean that there’s too much going on so consider stripping it back a little. It may also be because you’re getting more visitors and your servers aren’t equipped for it.
Customers Can’t Find Anything
Another big mistake people make is forgetting about user experience in favor of creating a site that looks great. Obviously, making it look unique is good because it’s more memorable but if you don’t have clear menus that direct people to the right area of the site, and a search bar to take them straight to where they need to be, people won’t be willing to mess around for ages finding the right page. You can find out whether your site is user friendly by using website testing services that use a large sample of people to gather information on how easy it is to navigate.
Any one of these mistakes will send visitors packing so if you’ve got a high bounce rate, check that you’re avoiding them.
