When it comes to your business’s website, the goal is clear: you want to have as much traffic as possible, with as many conversions as possible. However, sometimes there will be a situation where you have high website traffic with a high bounce rate. Seemingly counterintuitive, this isn’t uncommon, and there are solutions that you can take advantage of in order to change this trend and reduce the bounce rate while keeping the traffic up. In this article, we will discuss how to do that, as well as what a high bounce rate means.
Terms to Know: Bounce Rate & Conversions
While “website traffic” is pretty self-explanatory (visitors to the site), you may be unfamiliar with the terms “bounce rate” and “conversions.” Bounce rate refers to traffic that visits your site and then navigates away after only viewing one page. The conversion rate refers to the number of people who visit the site and then take action besides simply visiting. You can calculate the conversion rate by taking your website’s number of goal achievements divided by the number of visitors. Conversion rates are one of the key indicators of how a website is performing.
High Traffic, but High Bounce Rate: What Does it Mean?
If you have high traffic, that means that your website is getting a lot of views, which is a good thing. However, having a high bounce rate doesn’t automatically mean that you are doing something drastically wrong. There are actions that a customer could be taking that still involve your business, but direct him or her away from the website. For example, a visitor could be calling the company, filling out a form that doesn’t lead to another page, clicking on an ad banner, or the customer could be accessing your products from a different commerce site such as eBay and Etsy. These actions are examples of why a high bounce rate doesn’t always mean something is terribly wrong with your site.
How to Improve upon a High Bounce Rate
In order to improve upon a high bounce rate and lower it, there are several measures you can take. First, you can try adding more links to your content. Adding links to pages within your website can help decrease the bounce rate, and if you structure the links in a way that your customer finds meaningful (what they will enjoy seeing), that will provide a valuable website experience for them.
A second thing you can try is tweaking your product pages slightly. A customer may not be ready to immediately purchase a product when they see it; instead, they may want to learn a little more about it or become more acquainted with the industry. You can add more description to your products on the page, or you can start a blog that will provide content that will keep interested customers there longer.
Check for Content-Related Problems
If you notice that a page with a lot of content is getting frequent visitors, but has a high bounce rate, that could indicate that there is a problem with the content. It might not be interesting to viewers, whether it’s because it’s not structured correctly or the content itself is not something people outside of the industry would like to read about. Take a long, careful look at your content to decide if there is a problem that needs addressing. You should also get someone outside of the industry, just a random viewer, to give an honest opinion.
High website traffic with a high bounce rate doesn’t mean the end of the world. There is a lot of traffic, and that is a good thing, and correcting the bounce rate is process of figuring out what works and what doesn’t in terms of content.
