What are the most important metrics about your website that should worry you?
It is the bounce rate. Most web design companies and creative agencies put a lot of thought and effort into making sure that there are no flaws leading to an increased bounce rate.
Currently, the attention span of users is 8 seconds after which if they do not get intrigued, they are quick to switch. It is of importance that the web design services you hire or the branding agencies that work for your marketing ensure a design that is both effective and efficient in keeping the bounce rate down.
Let us start by understanding in detail how the bounce rate works and what could be the reasons behind the bounce rate going up.
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Bounce rate is a term used in internet marketing and web traffic analysis. It represents the percentage of visitors who are entering your website and then navigating away from it rather than visiting further pages on the same site.
Only having a low bounce rate is advantageous as it would mean that visitors are not only sticking around on your website but also clicking on other pages. A high bounce rate means only one thing, issues with your website. It means you need to up your game because the users have found other interesting things that are not your website.
If you ask creative agencies or web design companies, these are the certain reasons that they would state as to why the bounce rate of a website is high:
Let us explore in-depth the reasons why your bounce rates are going up.
As mentioned earlier, users have a very low span of attention and they want everything quickly. If the page loading speed is low, this is a major disadvantage. With the onset of digital transformations and the induction of technology everywhere, people want things quickly and easily.
If your website does not load quickly, users would rather go to the next best option available. Another point is that Google promotes content that provides users with a good experience. Google also recognizes which content and websites are providers of poor user experience.
And, slow page loading speed is a poor user experience. Not only will the slow loading speed of your page increase the bounce rate, but it will also affect your Google rankings as they will not promote your content and push it farther away in the search results.
This is a design flaw.
Many times your customers find exactly what they are looking for on your website immediately because your content is self-sufficient. This is in a way good and in a way bad. The users will get the information correctly but this will increase your bounce rate as they are not clicking and there are no conversions.
Another reason behind this could also be that the content is optimized and good enough but due to the lack of CTAs, the customers are not exactly clicking and not really redirecting to another page.
You need proper CTAs as they are extremely important for increasing click-through rates as well as bringing and generating leads.
This is again another design flaw that your website lacks Call-to-actions (CTAs.)
Is your title and meta description precisely and accurately summarizing the purpose of the website page?
Visitors usually read the meta descriptions on the search before they choose to click on your website link. This is why it is essential that your titles, tags, meta titles, and meta descriptions be to the point and convey to the user exactly what they will find on the page.
If your bounce rate keeps going higher and higher, you need to check whether the users are getting errors or blank pages. Take a look at the most commonly used browsers and devices and make sure of where the users are being directed to when clicking on your website link.
This will help you understand if this is a design flaw, content flaw, SEO flaw, or technical flaw.
Your content could be just plain bad. People may not read till the end, may not click on the read more buttons on articles on website pages, people may not even scroll but when they click on the links, they sure are bound to read the first page that comes up on their screens.
Content may not hold as much significance as SEO strategies and designs and visual appeals toward the users but if your content is not optimized and of low quality, it can also serve as one of the reasons behind users leaving.
Your content needs to be matching with the purpose of your page, it needs to make sense and be perfectly optimized that captivates the users and their low attention span.
Is your user interface bad? Is the user experience even worse? Are you throwing pop-ups and ads, surveys, and subscription buttons at your users? Because if you are then it would be surprising if your bounce rate is not going up quicker than time.
Your site needs to be sleek and to the point. Confusing your users with things that are irrelevant and unnecessary will only cause confusion and make them seek alternatives.
Another example of bad UI/UX would be that your site is not easy to navigate for the users. If there are texts in images, the web page is too long for the users to scroll, these are the signs of some bad UI/UX.
In today’s day and age, you absolutely need to have a mobile-friendly website. Not everyone uses their laptops and desktops all day but people always carry their phones with them and are always surfing the internet.
If your design isn’t compatible enough to be mobile-friendly, that could be one of the major reasons why the bounce rate is going significantly up.
Your website is not visually appealing to the audience. Your target audience is predecided but if you fail to understand how it will connect with the users then it is a flaw that needs to be rectified and it needs to be rectified quickly.
So far we have read through the reasons why the bounce rate of your website could be going up and most of them came up to be design flaws.
Let us narrow down and understand which are the major design flaws that should be kept in mind when aiming at a lower bounce rate.
Whenever you are working with creative agencies or getting web design services, below given are the points you should expect them to take care of when handing them the project of designing your website.
The website should have the right quality and the right amount of content. Yes, quality matters and the hook is required in the content to keep the users “hooked” to the website but so does quantity.
If there is a content overload on your website then the users will get bored and quickly close or switch.
Add the CTAs already! It is a basic marketing lesson for anyone who is working on designing a website that CTAs work like a charm. If you want your customers to click, you need to give them the hook and bait to make them click.
CTAs are an effective and good way to break the page in between and captivate the audiences at the same time.
Work on improving the UI/UX of the website. If your users find the website very smooth to surf and scroll, your job is done.
The website is only complete when all the elements are perfectly in sync with good quality, If your content is good, the website is visually a sight for the sore eyes but if the UX is pathetic, the users will still end up closing the website.
As stated above in the reasons why the website needs to be mobile-friendly, if you are giving your services to branding agencies for revamping your website or building one from scratch, you need to ensure that the design is mobile-friendly.
Another aspect to work on is that you ensure the site is not just mobile-friendly but also compatible with multiple devices such as tabs, iPads, etc.
The website should be visually appealing to the users. It should have the right color combination, the right usage of whitespace, and the right amount of content that captures their eye and makes them at least stay and scroll more and more.
Users like discovering beautiful things and if your website appeals to their eyes, they are bound to reach that CTA on the page that will lead to a conversion.
Whenever you are building a website or if web design companies are building the website for you, always instruct that the images used should be of high resolution and good quality. Illustrations and images are the major parts of a website as visuals work better than texts and audio.
Your users don’t want to see blurred-out images without alt-text and metadata.
No one likes reading a page that is cluttered and messy. If your design is cluttered, messy, filled with too many images, too much information, and everything is somewhat jumbled up to fit into one single page, that is a major design flaw that needs to be fixed.
Users should have ease and smoothness when navigating from one page to another on your website. The headers and footers should be helpful with the navigation and along with that, it shouldn’t be too hard for the users to quickly find what they are looking for.
Design is actually a vast concept when it comes to website designing but under that comes UX which needs to be fixed and optimized in the best interests of your business.
If you are worried about the bounce rate going up, look at the reasons why it is happening, find the root cause and you will come to realize that oftentimes it is because of a design flaw or the other.
Fixing the design flaws in itself will see effect and changes to your bounce rate.
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