Boosting traffic to your website is definitely important but it’s certainly not the most important metric out there. In fact, having traffic that’s much higher than expected can be a bad thing due to the fact that it’s often accompanied by a high bounce rate. This bounce rate is a metric that is frowned upon by Google’s algorithm, due to the fact that it makes the algorithm suspect foul play. To help you avoid worrying about this, here are six tips that will help you reduce bounce rate and increase your conversions.

1. Reduce the Number of Alternative Offers

The first mistake that you need to avoid is overloading your visitors with more information than they can digest. There’s one study where the surveyors divided test participants into two groups and gave each of the group members a $1 coupon for jam. The first group was presented with 6 varieties of jam, while the second group was offered 24 different jam types. People from the first group were 10 times more likely to make up their mind. If there’s something that you can learn from this it’s the fact that sometimes, less is indeed more.

2. Answer Audience’s Questions

Your audience has simple questions like – what do you do, how much do you charge, what are your contacts, etc. Unfortunately, they’re unlikely to go through your website in order to find the answers, regardless of how long it takes. This is why you need to be quick to make a formal introduction. Of course, you don’t have to discuss prices right away (unless you’re in the e-commerce industry) but stating who you are, where you’re from and what is it that you do are definitely priorities. Even though this is something that you’ll discuss at length on your ‘About us’ page, it’s definitely worth providing some answers as soon as possible to keep users interested.

3. Improve Response Time

The next thing you need to work on is professional web design with a focus on responsiveness. You see, an average audience member expects your website to load within 2 seconds but if it fails to do so about 25 percent of them will immediately leave. For this reason alone, it’s a good idea to entrust the design of your website to professionals. It’s also smart to work with a local agency, one whose reputation you can easily check through referrals. For instance, an New South Wales based agency should look for a reputable web design Sydney agency. This way, you get to handle branding and responsiveness at the same time.

4. Pay Close Attention to Your Spelling and Grammar

The simplest way for your website to look unprofessional is to have a plethora of grammar mistakes, and yet, this lapse in attention can happen to even the best of the best. So, how do you handle this issue? Well, it’s simple. You get someone to proofread all of your website content for you. In addition to that, you need to pay close attention to your website’s URL, in order for it not to come out as unintentionally inappropriate. You would be surprised to learn just how often this happens.

5. Invest in Organic Reach

Tricking people into coming to your website is a strategy that will always backfire. Click-bait is a perfect example of why high bounce rates happen in the first place. By creating a title that’s captivating but has little to do with the content itself, you’ll have people arriving in droves but also leaving as soon as they figure out what this is all about. The same thing goes with buying email lists versus growing your own lists. People who learn of you through your organic reach are qualified leads and, as such, much less likely to bounce.

6. Adjust Your Content to a Target Audience

Both underestimating and overestimating your audience can be quite dangerous. For instance, if you oversimplify the topic that your audience already knows by heart, your content is not providing them with any value. The same goes for using the language filled with terms and abbreviations that they don’t understand. On the other hand, a skilled audience may require a certain level of terminological expertise on your part. This is why you need to know what your average audience member understands, so you can develop content with that in mind.

7. Retention is the Name of the Game

The next topic that we have to cover is one of customer retention. This is important for several reasons. First of all, Google pays attention to return visits, which is why customer retention may cancel out a bit of the bounce rate. A return customer is more likely to know exactly what they want, so they’ll spend less time on the site, but they’re significantly more likely to assure a conversion. When it comes to your digital marketing budget, keep in mind that it’s five times cheaper to make a person return than it is to attract a new customer.

In conclusion

In the end, there’s no quick hack or fix to your bounce rate problem. This is simply an issue that you need to address over the course of time by practicing transparency, quality, and straightforwardness towards your audience. If they get what they expect by the time they arrive at your page, they’re unlikely to bounce. In order to figure this out, however, you first need to know what they expect. So learn what your audience is looking for, and make it easy for them to find.