There’s nothing more frustrating than watching customers slip through the net of your website. But the question you need to be asking is why exactly they aren’t interfacing properly with the products or services you have on offer.
Modern day consumers move quickly when searching online and if your website doesn’t facilitate this type of browsing behaviour, they’ll quickly move on to a business that does.
You bet there’s definition for this, it’s called a Bounce Rate:
Broadly speaking, a bounce rate is the measure of how many potential customers leave your site after viewing just a single page. While this lone metric must be weighed carefully against other factors that may also be affecting your website performance, it does provide a key piece of info and that’s whether your site is properly engaging visitors.
Think of how many times you’ve been thoroughly unimpressed by a website that fails to grab you from moment one, then think about the ones that have. Successful websites have two things in common that keep customers on them long after that initial click.
- They offer complete ease of use.
Customers love a site that’s as easy to click through as a social media page or news website. They want utility and usability over everything else, sometimes even your products and services.
Now it may sound a bit reductive to say that your website matters more than your business but it’s completely true.
Given the option between a poorly designed and performing website with great products, and a beautifully designed and functional website with average products, we know where we’d bet our money on the majority of customers.
- They lead their customers where they need to go.
A successful business is one that paves the way for customers to move organically through their website. Think carefully about how your products or services interact and try to draw down some logical links between them that can be worked into the infrastructure of your website.
You’ll be surprised at just how effective this technique is in retaining website visitors, as they move through your products or services on a carefully curated journey that hopefully leads to a purchase.
Lowing your bounce rate by improving these two factors can have a significant effect on the amount of successful conversions that your site experiences every year. We’ve seen even the most underperforming websites completely change their business prospects by thoroughly embracing a consumer-oriented website design philosophy.
Think carefully about how you can provide an overly positive experience for customers browsing your website, making the movement between pages as seamless as scrolling down a news feed or flicking between posts.
