jamesson creative

As a website owner, one often overlooked statistic is your bounce rate. For a full explanation of what exactly a bounce rate is, read this Wiki entry.

It’s quite simple. High bounce rates are bad, low bounce rates are good. If people click on your website, and immediately leave, you will get no sale. It will also inflate your stats, and deflate your CPM if you are paying for those clicks. The goal is to have the lowest bounce rate you can. There are numerous ways to lower that bounce rate, and save money on paid ads.

Lets first look at some of the reasons people leave your site the moment they arrive, leading to an excessively high bounce rate.

Slow loading websites destroy healthy bounce rates

Slow loading websites can destroy a healthy bounce rate because people (especially nowadays) are extremely impatient when it comes to the web. If a website is slow to load, the human will simply click the back button or close the window, therefore squishing any hopes you have of a sale, just like grape.

The fix

Websites that are too slow to load are generally caused by one of a few things. If a page is too graphic-intensive, it can take too long to load. That beautiful huge splash page might be nice, but is it helping your brand, or hurting your bounce rate? If you think a too-large splash page is slowing down your website, try lightening it up some, and monitor your stats for changes. Chances are you’ll start to notice your bounce % drop.

Keep in mind though, that not all visitors come to your site via your splash page. A correctly built, and properly indexed [in Google] website will have multiple pages in which visitors find your website.

Boring pages lead to high bounce rates

It’s true. You’ve certainly seen this by now. If you click on an ugly website, you are more likely to leave and move on to the next one. When one really catches your eye, you naturally stay longer on the website.

The fix

Making changes in your header graphics can often increase interest in your viewers, and thus leading to a decreased bounce rate. Talk to your favorite web developer for more on this.

Crappily-built websites hugely impact your bounce rate

The trouble with ‘old’ websites, is that they are built to outdated and antiquated standards. Look, the web changes FAST. A shopping cart that was the best today will certainly an old, outdated cart tomorrow. It might suck, but it’s just the way it is.  Websites using tables can take forever to load, because the browser MUST render the entire table before it can display the content within the table cells. Semantically correct websites however, allow content to be displayed SEPARATELY from the display, thus allowing content to be loaded much much faster.

The fix

Update that old website! Your web developer can talk to you about what all is involved in converting old table-based markup to new, modern, valid CSS & XHTML. In most cases, this does not involve a tremendous amount of work, as the graphic design is already built. You’ll be amazed at what a semantically correct website can do, compared to it’s old school brethren.

Excessive javascript and flash can fry your bounce rate

Javascript and Flash navigation can negatively affect your bounce rate. Some people disable Javascript, because they don’t like popup windows. Lots of people still don’t have Flash. Why anyone would require a visitor to have Flash or Javascript enabled in order to simply browse a website is beyond me.  If you want people on your website, you need to build it where EVERYONE can navigate it.

The fix

Changing your navigation to a more proper format will help people move around your website, instead of being stuck having no choice but to click that back button. Accommodate the widest possible range of visitors that you possibly can. That Flash navigation might be really awesome looking, but seeing ’sales = 0′ is not worth the coolest laser beam light show navigation bar. The KISS method really, really applies here.

Improper marketing text will ruin your bounce rate

There is a tremendous difference between quality, pre-qualified traffic, and junk traffic. Back in my heavy duty traffic trading days online, it was a common thing to trade someone 5-10 thousand hits per day. The trouble with junk, bulk traffic though, is that you won’t make any money. Junk traffic actually can cost you more money in bandwidth bills and ad clicks than you make.

For example, you are trying to sell funt lamp widgets for $29 each. If you make a banner ad that reads ‘click here to see Britney naked’ you will probably get a gazillion hits. But what percentage of people of all those gazillion would actually buy a funt lamp widget? Now imagine a banner that reads ‘funt lamp widgets, now only $29′. Someone that clicks on exactly what they THINK they are clicking on, is far more likely to stay at your website.

The fix

Make sure your marketing efforts are TARGETED! Pre-qualifying your traffic is one of the best possible ways to increasing your traffic!  Junk traffic does have it’s place, but not in this situation. There are times when you want to send a billion hits and you don’t care who they are or where they’re from, but in terms of bounce rate, quality destroys quantity.

So there you have it. A few really good, proven methods to reducing your bounce rate, and increasing your sales. If you are unsure of your bounce rate, we can help you find where to look and help tell if it’s cause for concern or not.