What is Bounce Rate?

How to interpret your website’s Bounce Rate

When you’re asked about your website’s bounce rate, do you find yourself wanting to bounce right out of that conversation? We get it. But let’s break it down and make it less painful because the bounce rate is important.

Your bounce rate is how many times your customer drops by your site and then leaves pretty much immediately—at least before clicking through to another page. 

Why is this a problem? It’s harder to convert visitors to customers if they’re leaving your site without looking around, and a high bounce rate can translate into your site not ranking well in search results.

3 bounce rate rules for the DIY-er

You can achieve a lot on your own to elevate your website’s performance by paying attention to a few basic things and give your visitors an experience that converts.

1. Earn their trust. Provide quality content that is both interesting and convincing. Don’t bore your audience to tears (they’ll leave), and don’t lose their trust (they won’t come back). Build your reputation as a brand worth listening to, and buying from.

2. Make it easy. If your home page is difficult to navigate, read, or understand, your visitors won’t find what they’re looking for. Don’t overwhelm people with lots of text and busy content. Make it skimmable. White space is your friend. And remember—today’s customer is likely searching for goods and services on their mobile phones. Make sure it’s responsive and mobile-friendly.

3. Think ahead. If you manage to capture your customer’s attention but fail to give them something worthwhile to do with that information, they will leave your site. Give them a clear and convincing call to action—free content, samples, trial periods, coupons or discounts for first-time users. Get creative.

A little website expertise goes a long way

We recently worked with a beloved local pizza franchise in the Twin Cities. Since pizza takeout and delivery businesses are so popular, they needed a web presence and digital strategy to compete for new customers. Their website had an outdated look and feel and a 43% bounce rate (while that is considered average across industries, think about the last time you went to a pizza website and then left—without ordering a pizza).

When we evaluated their website, we found it was built for desktop browsers, and contained too much information on its home page. It was an overwhelming experience. Not only that, but it was also optimized for search in one location on the outskirts of the Twin Cities. They needed a simplified, user-friendly website, built for users searching for pizza from any one of its many locations. It takes experience and expertise to make changes that make a difference.  We at Cazarin Interactive have been around for over 22 years.  The difference is in the details.

After building this pizza franchise a new user-centric website with a mobile-first design, we brought their bounce rate down by 32% year-to-year.

The reality is, buying behavior is complex and can change year to year. There’s no shame in reaching out for expertise that you simply don’t need to run a healthy business. After all, the client we mentioned is a pizza expert. He left the bounce rate stuff to us.

Contact the Cazarin team today to discuss your website’s performance.