Reducing bounce rates through Web Design
Posted by mariam.shariff on July 30th, 2009
So what’s a bounce rate? Many of you will be familiar with this term if you receive any sort of analytics report on your website. Bounce rate is expressed as a percentage, so if your bounce rate is 50% it means that 2 out of every 4 visitors to your site left immediately i.e. your website didn’t give them what they were looking for. Needless to say, your aim should be to reduce the bounce rate as far as possible. While this is easy to say, it can be quite tricky to achieve. But this is where effective web design comes in to play.
By designing your website with your targeted audience in mind you can engage a visitor on the website and get them to follow deep links, keeping them on your website and allowing them to find the information they want. To do this you need to decide who your target audience is, what is the primary focus of the website, is your web page copy relevant to your audience and are your keywords all in the right places? These are just some of the questions to be answered even before a website is designed. Oh yes, it will really help your bounce rate if when directing people to your website, don’t just take them to your home page. Rather, take them straight to the page that provides them with the information they want.
When you’ve got all this in place you still need to test that this is working for your targeted audience. Don’t try to do this yourself. Be brave! Test your website by showing it to others interested in your product or service. You will be surprised to see how they pick on issues you wouldn’t have even considered. They may find that the webpage is too text heavy, failing to capture a visitor’s attention, in fact putting them off! Be prepared to amend your website content after monitoring your website stats. Of course having a Content Management system will help you do this. Making regular alterations will reduce your bounce rate, although be patient, it will take time.
Mariam Shariff
Search Engine Optimisation Engineer
Studio 2 Online – Web design Leicester
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