The first thing a consumer asks themselves when they enter any website/webpage is whether they should stay or not. A consumer has just a few seconds during which, you have a chance to capture and retain them or else they will go. Whether or not they stay depends on a number of factors, but these are things that you can improve in on-site SEO, assisted of course by the web design and development team.
Read on to find the three biggest peeves that are causing high bounce rates on your site and how you can address them.
- 1. Mobile unfriendly design
Effect: Higher bounce rates
Currently, users are making more Google searches in mobile devices, desktop or laptop computers. As a result, having non-optimized sites for mobile searchers will disorient visitors and drive them back to the search engine results page to find a more navigable source, increasing your site’s bounce rate.
Think about what a mobile audience would want from your site and decide which mobile-friendly design option best suits their needs: responsive, adaptive or parallax design. Look at your font sizes, landing page elements, hyperlinks that redirect to new windows and tabs, page navigability among many other pertinent factors.
- 2. Click-bait articles
Effect: Low social sharing, high bounce rates
Click bait articles are those eye-catching banners which post misleading headlines to attract clicks, but instead offer unrelated content when users follow them. Implementing click bait articles meant to earn visits will disappoint your readers, causing higher bounce rates and also lowering your chances of winning social shares for your actual content.
Focus your content strategy on delivering relevant and targeted content which is valuable, keyword-friendly and gives consumers the exact value indicated in the headlines. This will improve your chances of having them stay in your site and even share the content with their social followers.
- 3. Pop-up advertising
Effect: Low rate of repeat visits
If you have popups hiding your homepage and other landing pages, you may be peeving your consumers who will simply click out of the pop-up and your site altogether. If you’re using popups as a way to implement your Calls to Action, think like the website visitor whose attention you want to attract, not like a business owner.
You can have your email opt-in box at the top of the page without offending your visitors, for instance. A better alternative to popup ads is a floating button inviting a user to opt-in for your newsletters or e-books.
If you still want to have a popup ad, consider its design. Have a clearly visible ‘X’ at the corner so a consumer can close it, having a “Not right now” button at the bottom of the ad looks spammy and antagonistic. Consider having the popup come up a few minutes into the user’s session, or even better, have an exit popup. A visitor looking for information on-the-go will simply click out of content blocked by ads.
Author bio
Vinod Jethwani is the CEO and Founder of Walnut Solutions and he helps web based companies with his SEO strategies to grown their revenue. He started his career in 2007 as a software developer with an Indian based MNC and later in 2011 became an entrepreneur. Follow him on Twitter @VinodJethwani or through his blog.
