How to Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate

A key component of construction marketing is building a website that showcases your work and establishes you as an industry authority. But a shiny new website isn't worth much if consumers don't stay on your site long enough to connect. That’s why it’s important to talk about website bounce rate.

Bounce rate describes the percentage of visitors leaving your site without moving beyond the home page. It’s used to measure a website's overall engagement and helps determine where your digital presence is succeeding and failing. The average bounce rate is 26% to 70%, with a healthy bounce rate landing between 26% and 40%. Alternately, a bounce rate hitting between 70% and 90% is considered poor. 

We understand a large portion of building industry leads come from existing relationships and word of mouth referrals – and that creating an online presence isn’t your biggest priority. But investing in a website with engaging content and low bounce rates will only help you grow.

In most cases, higher bounce rates mean visitors aren’t engaging with your content. This could take the form of case studies that don’t apply to their needs, messaging they don’t identify with, or poor site design. Luckily, there are steps you can take to improve bounce rates before hiring a digital marketing expert. These include: 

Analyzing content.

Consider the user experience. What questions are consumers asking Google that led them to your site? Are you answering those questions with your case studies and content? Are you answering questions the same visitors didn’t even know they had? You should be. 

Offering more “calls to action."

Prioritize making it easy for site visitors to get in touch with you, especially if they are first-time visitors. Include calls to action on multiple pages and use your About Us and Resources pages to build credibility. Give the user incentive to fill out your contact form by making them believe you can answer their questions as soon as possible.

Reducing the loading time on your website.

Consumers use the internet because it’s supposed to make things easier. If they’re visiting your website, it’s because they don’t want to pick up the phone and talk to someone or take the time to stop by your shop in person. If your website loads slowly, they will get bored and leave. 

Checking your links and imagery.

Do you have lots of broken links and imagery that won’t load? Anything that makes it more difficult to navigate your site will scare visitors away. If they can’t see content on your homepage within seconds, you’ve already lost them. 

When thinking about bounce rates, you’ll want to consider the different ways visitors are currently leaving your site. Popular exit habits include clicking on a link to another website, clicking the back button to return to a search engine or previous website, closing the browser window or tab, typing a new URL into the browser, and timing out the session.

And remember that different pages have different purposes and traffic levels. For example, you may have some pages on your site – like a viral article – that appeal to a mass audience but have a high bounce rate. You might also have local case studies, which attract fewer visitors overall but keep them on your site longer. Those pages will have a lower bounce rate and probably translate to more real clients. 

Lower bounce rates signify that you provided enough reasons for the user to stay on the first page and click through to a second page. But even if your bounce rate is lower than 20%, you’ll want to confirm it’s for the right reasons. Aggressively low bounce rates are often the result of incorrect implementation of event tracking, third-party add-ons, or duplicate analytics code errors. You don’t want this to be the thing killing good traffic. 

As you can see, much can be done to decrease website bounce rates. Just remember: The longer someone stays on your site, the better they will get to know you and the more likely they will be to follow up. That’s the goal.

Source: Parachute Design