If you’ve ever dealt with a website, you might already know that having a high bounce rate is never a good thing. A high bounce rate means your potential customers are clicking off your site before you even have a chance to properly welcome them on board! This means you are losing out on customer conversions and ultimately, your business is losing money! You only have seconds to capture a visitor’s attention. So don’t blow it! Here are 5 quick website changes that will make a big difference to your bounce rate.

1.   Make sure your design is simple and thoughtful

This is a simple, but effective change you can make. There are many aesthetic elements that can go into a website design that will have a positive effect on your bounce rates. This includes having a design that is easy on the eyes (think colors, fonts, white space, and images) and is simple to navigate. You never want to lose a potential customer just because they got lost in an overly complicated navigation process. Easy does it! Make sure your audience doesn’t need to click six times to get the information they want when one click would have sufficed.

2.   Interlink your pages

Another quick fix is to connect the internal pages of your website together when and where relevant. This is usually done through hyperlinks. Do you talk about how you worked on a client’s account and grew it 150% in 2 weeks? This would be a great opportunity to link to your portfolio page!

Interlinking will give your visitors a reason to keep clicking through your webpage and venture further into your site. This also gives the pages of your site the ability to be accessed in multiple ways by interlinking them with other pages on your site.

3.   Make sure your content is readable, interesting, and tells a story

Making your content readable can include elements such as formatting, font choices, and the language you use to speak to your audience. We all know that readers skim through website copy, so making sure you break up bigger blocks of text is key. Headlines, bullet points, bolding, and italics are also a great way to make your content easily readable and navigable. Staying concise and relevant is a great way to keep your readers reading – or skimming!

Next, your content needs to speak directly towards your target audience. Do your words solve problems or give your audience what they are looking for? If not, you might risk alienating them right away and, ultimately, giving them a reason to click off your site. Make your audience feel as if you are talking directly to them using high-quality content.

I will also expand on this a bit to include storytelling. Make sure you captivate your audience with a good story – a story that keeps them reading. Having a story element to your copy goes hand in hand with readable content using headlines and bolding. These combined elements, when used effectively, are a great way to reduce your bounce rate.

4.   Make your call-to-action compelling

Once you’ve attracted your audience with easy to read and interesting content, it’s now time to make sure your call-to-action is a delectable piece of fruit that your audience can’t resist. This is where I see so many businesses fall flat! You always want to entice your readers to click on your call-to-action to see what’s on the other side.

A compelling and successful call-to-action will automatically have a knock-on effect on your website’s bounce rate. Having your audience click through to the next page keeps them on your site for longer – thus reducing your bounce rate – and potentially closing a sale! Win!

5.   Implement effective SEO practices

To improve your SEO, you need to have a healthy amount of content on your page. But don’t overdo it! Your audience probably doesn’t have the time to read a Thesis-length piece of copy on your website. Focus on quality over quantity. Reduce your message down into scannable and easily digestible content using relevant keywords.

Make sure that your content is directly relevant to the title or topic of each page. I would suggest that you refrain from talking about your dog on your services page. This only confuses your readers! Imagine being navigated to an About page only to find content about paleolithic dinosaur skeletons. Not. Relevant.

Conclusion

By implementing these 5 changes, you can quickly reduce your overall bounce rate on your website. Reducing your bounce rate increases your conversion rate – and conversions drive sales! So it’s important to make sure you implement these 5 steps.

I recommend conducting an audit on your site structure, interlinks, content, call-to-actions, and SEO to see how your website comes across to your audience. Make sure everything is optimized for the ease of your readers. Ask a friend or family member to look over your website. It’s important to make sure you get your bounce rates under control and make your website work for your business!

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me here. I am always happy to help you optimize your website to work for your business!