5 easy steps to decrease bounce rate of your website.

In this article I am listing few changes you can make in your homepage, so that your visitors will stay and spend more time on your website.

What is Bounce rate ?

The percentage of visitors leave away your website without viewing only one page and without clicking or interacting. High bounce rate is the sign that your website is not delivering it’s purpose.

You can check your bounce rate in google analytics.

While there are might be many reasons that causes a high bounce rate. But here are few little changes you can make in your website to lower the bounce rate:

1. Load Time

According to surveys, the average wait time for a website to load is 2 seconds. 40% of web users leave pages that take more than 3 seconds to load.
You can test your website load time here :
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

You can also analyse your website through google’s page speed tool, which also gives you suggestions on how to improve your page:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/

Faster load times will make sure users don’t have to wait for a long time to check your website.

2. Content Layout

Most internet users look at a web page in a “F” shaped pattern. That means they check through the first few section horizontally, then a little below horizontally and then vertically the left section.

So you must position your most valuable contents within these F area, so that when users scan your site quickly, they get the most interesting stuff and be compelled to check more.

Other important things:
– People will ignore lengthy paragraphs
– Most people check bullet lists
– Most people check first few paragraphs only, that too, if they are short.

So placing your content strategically will help reduce the bounce rate.

3. Trust & Social Proof

If users don’t trust what your webpage is telling, they won’t stay. There should be trust factors in your content.

These are few factors that can improve the trust:
– Include Social proof
– Showcase social media (facebook/twitter) followers
– Integrate social media live feed
– Showcase media coverage and links
– Display logos of valuable customers
– Include real reviews and real photographs of your customers
– Do no use stock photographs, Use real photographs
– Do not use pre-made templates or themes for your website

4. Proper CTAs

CTA = Call-to-actions ( links, buttons )

If your web page does not properly guide a visitor on what to do next, where to click next, the visitors will navigate away instead.

– Do not put too many links and buttons.
– Put as few buttons, as possible
– Emphasize the important CTAs ( make bigger, prominent, use color )
– Tell what happens next
– Increase the urgency, tell it will take only few minute/seconds.

5. Design & Technology

In today’s fast tech era, the design and technology your website using, also affects how much time a user want to spend on you.

if you are still using a website designed in 2006, visitors will instantly think you are an obsolete and non-operational company.

Also, new technologies can be used to design the website in such ways that visitors can get the information easily, in less time in interesting ways. That can force them to stay connected with the page and its content.

– SuMoksha, Designer/Founder at Moksha