High bounce rate is a term that strikes fear into the heart of marketing executives everywhere. If you don’t already know, it refers to the number of people that leave your website (or bounce back) after viewing only one page. Obviously, if that’s happening then you aren’t getting any sales out of your website and there must be something going wrong somewhere. There are a lot of different reasons why you might have a high bounce rate and if you don’t do anything about it, you’ll really struggle to bring in any revenue. If you’ve got problems with a high bounce rate, it could be caused by one of these things.
A Slow Website
There’s nothing people hate more than a slow loading website. Most of us will only wait a couple of seconds before we give up and move on. There are quite a few things that could cause a slow loading website; it might be the template that you’re using, the size of the files that you’ve got on there or perhaps it’s just not been finished before you put it out.
However, the most common cause of a slow loading website is bad hosting services. Choosing the right hosting service is vital, not only to avoid slow loading times but also to make sure that you’ve got good support if there is an issue. Check out this host review table at WHSR for a list of the best ones on the market. Don’t just go for the cheapest one you can find, it might seem like a sensible move but you’ll get what you pay for and you’ll end up losing money when people don’t stay on your site.
Bad Layout
Even if your site loads quickly, people are still going to be impatient to find what they need. If you don’t make it easy for people, they’ll get frustrated and leave. That’s why it’s important that you have clear categories on the front page so people can jump straight to the right section of your website. You also need a good search bar if people can’t immediately find what they need. If people land on your homepage and they’re not sure where to go from there, they’ll just leave.
Low Quality Content
People make a snap judgment about your site as soon as they hit the first page. If they find something that puts them off, they’re not going to stick around for long. Bad quality content on the first page is going to increase your bounce rate massively. That means anything that isn’t really relevant to the user or content that is badly written or laid out. Spelling and grammar errors are another big turn off for potential customers. It immediately gives the impression that your company is careless and doesn’t care about quality. That’s not the kind of company people will want to deal with and they’ll leave the site straight away.
When you’re looking at your bounce rate, you should be worried about anything higher than 70 percent. Between 50 and 70 isn’t cause for immediate concern but you should keep an eye on it. If it’s exceptionally low, that might mean you’re doing an amazing job but it could also mean that your analytics tools are broken so double check that the figures are accurate.
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