Operating a website isn’t easy. Business owners need to be aware of search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization, and a great deal more. However, one element that must never be overlooked is the bounce rate, as a website is only effective when visitors stick around to learn what the company offers. Following are four possible reasons a user leaves the site and how to fix these issues.
Change the Way Content is Written
Imagine arriving on a web page to see one solid block of text. This is enough to turn people off because they are used to paragraphs and page divisions. By simply breaking the text up into small blocks, a website owner finds the bounce rate decreases. It’s likewise helpful to add infographics, videos, or images to break the text up even further.
Ensure the headline catches the viewer’s eye right away and make use of bullet points or subheadings to provide a logical organization for the material being presented. By changing this one element of a page, the website owner can quickly see a decline in the bounce rate. Fortunately, with the help of performance-optimized website designs, creating content that draws people in has never been easier.
Eliminate Pop-Ups
While a pop-up serves as a great tool for delivering a message, it’s not effective. In fact, this type of advertising often leads to the visitor departing the site, as he or she is trying to read the material and keeps getting interrupted. In fact, 70 percent of internet users in the United States state these messages are annoying. Furthermore, Search Engine Land found pop-ups remain the leading reason people block a site.
The key is to know when to make use of this technique and when to avoid it because some pop-ups are actually beneficial to the reader. When a pop-up offers relevant material to the user, this technique can be of great help. It’s a matter of knowing how to distinguish between the two.
Meta Descriptions
Carefully craft a meta description that truly reflects what the internet user will find when he or she arrives on the page. Furthermore, do this succinctly to ensure the entire description shows up on the search engine results page. While it would be nice if the user could fully understand what the site contains with this snippet on the SERP, it simply isn’t possible. Don’t mislead search engine users, however, by providing an inaccurate description. They’ll arrive on the site, learn it doesn’t contain what was promised, and head elsewhere.
Page Load Time and Bounce Rates
Users need to actually reach a site to benefit from the information provided. However, humans have a very limited attention span and a page that takes too long to load will quickly be abandoned. The page load time is so important that both Google and Facebook now take it into consideration when presenting materials for their site users.
A page that loads in only two seconds loses less than ten percent of visitors in this time frame. In contrast, a page that loads in five seconds will lose approximately 22 percent of its visitors in the time it takes the page to load. This demonstrates how important page loading speed has become to the overall user experience and bounce rate of the site.
Make changes to the site today, factoring the above in when doing so. Small changes do make a significant difference in the way a viewer engages with a page or site. With each change made, a company sees a decline in the bounce rate and benefits greatly as a result.
