All the website traffic in the world doesn’t mean anything if your bounce rate is too high. Are your visitors clicking away without engaging? A high bounce rate can be worrying, since there’s no way to ask your visitors why they’re leaving – chances are they won’t stick around to take a survey before they hit the back button. Luckily, web users are predictable, and there’s plenty of data out there on what makes people click away from websites, never to return. Need to lower your bounce rate? Chances are you’ll see dramatic improvements by fixing one of these common errors.
#1: Your Website Is Too Slow
One of the biggest reasons websites are abandoned is because of slow loading times. Almost half of all consumers expect websites to load in 2 seconds or less, one in four people will abandon a website that takes over four seconds to load, and many of them will never return to try again. Reducing your site’s loading speed will not only lower your bounce rate, but could also boost conversions and increase your revenue: it’s estimated that online stores lose billions in revenue every year due to slow loading speeds. Not sure how fast your website loads? You can sign up for a free FoxMetrics trial to see your page load speeds. If your site takes longer than a second or two to load, try boosting your speed by:
- Using a CDN (content delivery network) like CloudFlare or MaxCDN.
- Switching to a faster web host, or upgrade your web hosting plan.
- Getting rid of any themes or plugins that are slowing your site down.
- Optimizing your images.
#2: Your Website is Too Difficult to Use
Your visitors don’t want to have to wait to read your content, and they don’t want to have to work for it, either. If your website is difficult to navigate, uses tiny text or flowery fonts, or if the colors hurt their eyes, they won’t bother sticking around to see what you have to say. Here’s how to solve this issue:
- Make sure your website has a responsive design. You can use a tool like Viewlike.us or Screenfly to test what your website looks like with different resolutions.
- Test your color contrast to see if it meets usability guidelines using a tool like WebAIM’s color contrast checker.
- Use an easy-to-read font in a size large enough to read easily. Some sites find that increasing their text up to the next size is all they need to do to lower their bounce rate.
- If your website uses light text on a dark background, consider using dark text on a light background instead. Dark text on a light background tends to be preferred by a majority of users.
- Use a tool like UserTesting or Feedback Army to get feedback on the usability of your website. You might find out you need to redesign your site in order to improve its usability and lower your bounce rate.
#3 Your Content Isn’t Scannable
Users don’t read websites; they scan them. If your website visitors are greeted with a wall of text, they’re more likely to click the back button than take the time to dive in. You can make your content more scannable by:
- Using shorter, snappier sentences
- Breaking up large paragraphs into shorter ones
- Using more subheadings
- Emphasizing important points with bold
- Use more lists and bullet points
- Using more multimedia
- Use image captions
#4: They Don’t Know What to Do Next
Maybe your visitors are reading your content, but they’re not sticking around to engage any further. It could be because they just don’t know where to go next. What do you want your visitors to do next after they read a blog post? You need to tell them using a clear call to action. Try getting your visitors to engage with your site more by:
- Linking to related blog posts or products on your site.
- Including a clear call-to-action on every page.
FoxMetrics also has a variety of tools available to get your casual website visitors engaged. To keep them from clicking away, you can:
- Analyze your paths to conversion and see where they’re being abandoned.
- Set up triggers to engage your visitors automatically.
- Create pop-up surveys to gather feedback.
Check out our full suite of tools here, or request a free demo to get started lowering your bounce rate today.
If you’re thinking of personalizing the experience of your visitors, try FoxMetrics for free and Subscribe to our Newsletter get recent updates and news.