Are visitors bouncing off your site? Find out why

How will you convert visitors to your website into customers if they’re saying “Let’s bounce” as soon as they walk into your digital door? They don’t even have time to see all your technologically advanced medical devices or read all your cool and persuasive healthcare marketing copy. You want to keep them on your site so they can come to understand just how amazing you and your products really are.

So, you need to find out why they’re bouncing. A high bounce rate can be indicative of a couple of things.

What is the Bounce Rate?

When a user visits your site on any page and leaves without visiting other pages on the same domain, that’s a bounce. So, bounce rate is single-page sessions divided by all sessions, or the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server.

One potential problem is poor user experience. Your site is slow or ugly or poorly laid out or all the above. So, they say buh-bye. There’s a sleeker, faster site just a quick search and click way.

So how do you keep visitors glued to your website? Here are 11 ways to improve your site, so you get fewer bounces, and with luck (and some great marketing), more conversions.

  1. Make sure the page downloads in under three seconds. If not, get a web mechanic under the post haste..
  2. Improve content readability. In this day of petite attention spans, think short paragraphs, snappy copy. Break up the copy is broken up with subheads, pull quotes, and lists. And pay attention to grammar, spelling and sentence length.
  3. The page must work technically – NO BAD LINKS, fast download times, easy to follow navigation. If the page is extremely long, would it be easier for the user as separate pages?
  4. Write the search title in the meta tags is similar to the headline of the story. The idea is to confirm to the user that they are in the right place.
  5. Create headlines that communicate the essence of the story. Don’t bury the lede.
  6. Improve your storytelling. Get creative with your content and make it compelling. Dry, boring copy makes for itchy clicking fingers.
  7. Keep it fresh. Regular blogging keeps your site fresh and provides new stuff for visitors to peep. And more reasons for visitors to click around on your site.
  8. Optimize your meta descriptions. The optimal length for a meta description is 155 characters, so make them count. Check for accuracy and match meta to the content.
  9. Avoid Popups. Don’t disrupt the flow with annoying popups.
  10. Open external links in new windows. You don’t want visitors to click away and leave you.
  11. Be mobile-friendly. It's non-negotiable these days. Most visitors are now looking at your site from their phone. And fun fact: 75 percent of Americans admit to using their phones while on the toilet.