Consider that people find your website and visit you intentionally. They do that because they are looking for something. They believe that you might provide a service, a product, or information that they seek. Bounce rates show us how many people are immediately discouraged upon arrival or are suddenly convinced that we don’t have what they seek when they first lay eyes on us.
Although bounce rates will vary between different online business models and the visitors they attract, to see a bounce rate that is above 60% is indicative of a problem. If your analytics is reporting bounce rates of 70% and up you are definitely driving your visitors away and need to seek a better approach.
Simplified Content
Try and remember that people won’t read much of whats on your page. This statement isn’t meant to discourage you, but to remind you to stay in a certain mindset while organizing your website. Visitors will “scan” your content as they look over it rapidly, but most often will never dedicate time out of their lives to read entire paragraphs. For this reason it is incredibly important to remember to keep it simple. Organize your website in a way that is informative and says more with less. Use bullet points and keep examples and options simple and in groups of 3.
Visual Hierarchy
One of the most powerful ways we can help our visitors find what they seek from us is to know how they are seeking information. As people scan over things with their eyes, they rapidly search for ways to organize the information available. They do this in a number of predictable ways. They read bigger text first then move their eyes to the next largest text under it. They move their eyes in an F shaped pattern as they scroll from top to bottom. Look at different websites this week and remember this F shaped pattern. In A/B tests, companies have shown increases of upwards of 35% of sales generated by just organizing the information on their page in this way.
Autoplay
Video and/or audio that automatically plays is one of the worst things you can do. It is startling and can irritate visitors at work or viewing your site when not at home. Often times it will lead to visitors just closing the browser. Visitors like to be in control of their actions and by forcing them to watch or listen you will have broken their trust right out of the gate. Conversion rates as well as bounce rates will obviously be affected.
Loading Time
Lastly, if your website is too slow its definitely time to make some changes. We covered that fully in last weeks blog found HERE. If you missed it go there and check it out.
