Whenever a user visits your website and leaves very quickly without clicking or browsing any further, it definitely means that if your website has a lower bounce rate, your site gets the number of visitors that are actually interested and might even buy your products or avail your services. Lowering the bounce rate would mean that you have turned visitors to loyal customers for your store!
Well, that said, what exactly causes a visitor to bounce? What elements in a website can be fixed to engage users better? All these questions are important, as high bounce rates can adversely affect your digital marketing efforts. If Google sees that visitors immediately leave your site, it is a clear indication that your website does not provide accurate and relevant information to your visitors. The reasons for this could be plenty. The most common reasons for a higher bounce rate are poor design, irrelevant content, advertisements that are an obstruction in site navigation or the website is just too slow!
Website visitors are really low on their patience levels and hence for the success of your website, including all the following elements during WordPress Development itself.
Page loading times
A slow-loading website is sure to have a higher bounce rate. Website visitors are an impatient lot. They will not wait for long. In case you notice that your website takes long to load, typically more than 3-5 seconds, you can try the following:
Compress images using smush.it uses WordPress Plugins for caching. Try CDN Services – Content Delivery Network Compressing your code is a good idea A minimal theme that is light on graphics could do the trick Check for hosting/hardware problems
Avoid pop-ups
Pop-ups clearly annoy people. Although you may think that they are a good way to get subscriptions, it’s a good idea to do a little testing or research whether it will actually help or annoy people.
Analytics
To understand why people are leaving your site, you must first work out why people are visiting your site. Get an insight into what works and what does not. Check what search terms are getting you maximum traffic and check how you can build on that. Make sure that the search term and the page content has relevant information or products – else your bounce rate is justified! Well, make amendments by looking at your Google Analytics statistics.
Content
Make your content easy to skim through. Visitors do not generally read word to word. If users find what they are looking for within a glance, you’ve got your conversion! Well, make the paragraphs short, use bullet points wherever necessary bold important phrases and give customers easy access to the next step – either to call you or to click on “buy” etc.
Navigation
The last thing you want is confusing navigation. Your site should be very clear in directing the customers as to where to click next. Install related links or related posts plugin to ensure that your visitors get all relevant information instantly. YARPP is one such plugin.
In order to achieve your business goals, you must get people to stick around your site longer! WordPress Development and customization could provide you with some great plugins to achieve this. Reduce your bounce rate and half your job is done!