Bounce rate is the % of people who leave your website after only visiting the page they landed on. We have put together some helpful tips on how to reduce the bounce rate of your website. If you currently don’t know how your website is performing it would be a good idea to install some visitor tracking software. Our Business package allows easy one click installation of web tracking software but if you are a Starter or Home+ useer there is nothing stopping you adding Google Analytics to your website to start recording your visitors’ behavior.

1. Clear Navigation

Make sure that when a visitor lands on your website that the navigation is clearly identified and easy to use. Multiple drop down menus may look fancy but can sometimes distract and confuse visitors if not done correctly – if you have a fairly low amount of pages keep it simple.

2. Reduce page loading time

There a lots of things you can do to reduce your website’s loading time. We have listed some of the key things you can do to reduce loading times below.

• Remove third party scripts from pages that don’t use them – a common example is a site loading an AJAX script for a slideshow when the slideshow is only on the home page
• Make sure your images are optimised – if you have re-sized images via HTML it is a good idea to actually re-size them in an image editor tool to speed up the loading time.
• Again with images don’t use too many, it can distract from your message and will increase the loading time – get a happy medium while still maintaining the look you want.
• Gzip your website via the .htaccess file – if you don’t currently have a .htaccess file you can easily create one via a text editing tool
• Put your style sheet(s) at the top of your site and make an external css file

3. Make sure your title is relevant to the content

Your title is one of the 1st things a visitor will notice, make sure it clearly outlines what your page or article is about.

4. Get someone else to test your site

It can be tricky to find the areas of your site that are hard to use if you’re used to using it regularly. Get a friend or family member to use your site and see how they get on. Ask them what they found easy and what they found difficult to use.

5. Break the content down

Breaking the content down into chunks makes it easy for visitors to skim read a page and concentrate on a particular area. Some visitors will be put off by massive chunks of text.

6. No popups!

Adding a popup to your site might sound like a good idea to attract a visitor’s attention but it will most likely annoy them and they’ll leave instantly – instead make sure the page clearly outlines what you want them to see without shoving it in their face.

7. Be careful with ad placement

Similar to the above, if your website is over crowded with adverts your visitors may instantly be put off and leave the site – meaning your adverts won’t get clicked on. Also stay away from adverts with sound, they’re just annoying. Stick to a clean layout with clear advert placement, this will insure your visitors spend more time on your site and are then more likely to click on a ad when they’re ready.