How to reduce bounce rate on your website

Follow thirteen steps to get visitors to your website

Although not all your visitors will land on your home page, it's the one that probably gets the most traffic.

So, how do you make it sticky?

I don’t mean add toffee or treacle – sticky, in web terms, means it keeps people on your site, connects with them and keeps them engaged.

The technical term for how long people stay on your site is the 'bounce rate'. The higher the bounce rate, the greater the percentage of users who immediately decamp to another site.

Here are my 13 golden rules to follow to achieve ‘stickability’:

1. Your brand needs to be consistent and clear

This is usually the 'masthead’ (a newspaper term for the band across the top of the page where it says ‘Wall Street Journal' or ‘Financial Times’). You don't mess with your brand so it shouldn’t have to compete with search or sign-up boxes, ‘welcome to our website’ messages, page title, menus or other paraphernalia.

Strictly speaking, the masthead is above the eyeline, so any functional items are wasted here anyway.

It's a subliminal message that tells people they’re on the right site, reassuring them as they move through it that they’re still on the same site and haven’t been spirited off to a sub-site.

2. You need a menu

But just the one. You shouldn’t have one across the top, another down the side, a few key pages in the top right corner and then another at the foot of the page. Well, not unless you want to confuse your reader!

To get your menu right, get your site map sorted out.

The higher the bounce rate, the greater the percentage of users who immediately decamp to another site

Which pages are the core pages that need to appear on the menu which goes on every page? Which pages are sub pages that can be grouped under, and introduced via, a core page?

Don’t forget that the home page should be listed on the menu on every page.

3. Don’t have the page title on every page (Home, Services, About, etc)

Get your web designer to make the page you’re on change colour on the menu – that’s all that is needed. Page titles distract from your message and your ability to connect with the reader.

4. Know where your prime real estate is and use it

This is about one third of the way down the screen (including the browser headers) and about 3 inches (7cm) from the left hand side of the screen. This is where you connect with the reader, where their eyes are drawn to – so a compelling headline needs to appear here.

5. Get your headline right

It needs to focus on either pain or gain. It must reassure the reader that they have come to the right place – it can solve their problem, give them the information they want or satisfy their wants. It might be a question: “Are you struggling with . . . ?”

Or a statement: “You can get top quality . . .” But it must be on the reader’s terms.

6. Position newsletter sign-ups correctly

They’re best positioned top right under the masthead – where most people tend to look for them.

Don’t ask for anything except a name and email address, otherwise you’ll deter people. Offer them more than just a free newsletter as reward – what about articles such as ‘10 tips...’, ‘7 secrets...’, ‘6 strategies...’, etc.

7. The opening paragraph needs to build on the headline

It should draw a picture of what it can offer the user. If you’re not sure what to put here, ask a few existing clients why they buy from you or use your website.

8. Use testimonials

Testimonials are powerful marketing tools. Praise is always immeasurably more credible coming from your clients than from yourself.

The problem is, unsolicited testimonials tend to be more therapeutic for you than a bona fide recommendation. People will say how lovely you were to work with, but won’t tell specify the outcomes as they haven’t measured them or given it much thought.

A good testimonial has three elements:

1. What you did for the customer
2. What it was like working with you (the therapeutic bit)
3. What changed as a result?

Contact your customers with these three questions and you’ll get better testimonials. Not only this, but you’ll find out your strengths, which you can resolve to harness more consistently and effectively.

9. The main copy should be concise and persuasive

Remember that people don’t read on screen – they scan, in roughly an ‘F’ pattern. So the headline is the top of the ‘F’, they’ll then run down the left hand side of the text, may read in the middle somewhere, before scanning down the left hand side to the bottom.

Emboldening key words (not capitalising them) is therefore a good way of drawing their attention to the salient points. in bold (not caps) to draw attention to them, but don’t overdo it or the effect will diminish.

10. Use the right font

Serif fonts don’t work well on screen. A serif is the little line that crosses the bottom of letters like ‘l’, ‘h’ and ‘k’. Times is a serif font, so are Palatino and Garamond.

Because the screen has only 72 dots per inch, serif fonts are too ‘busy’ to read comfortably. Stick to Verdana (which was developed especially for the web), or Arial, Tahoma or Trebuchet, which are all nice clean fonts.

Don’t be tempted by fancy fonts which are hard to read and that may default to something really nasty like Courier on some people’s browsers.

When it comes to size, don’t choose anything smaller than 10pt for the main copy.

11. Choose colours carefully

Colours are another minefield. Dark backgrounds can make the necessarily light-coloured text dazzle the reader. Stick to light backgrounds and darker text.

Don’t be tempted by light grey text on a white background as it’s hard to see, especially in a dimly lit room.

It doesn’t have to be black on white necessarily. It could be navy on very pale blue or forest green on white, but there has to be a strong contrast between the two.

A graphic designer friend of mine insists that 80% black is easier on the eye than 100%.

11. Paragraphs should be left aligned, not justified

I know that justified text looks nice and tidy, but it has two big disadvantages.

Firstly, the spaces between words stretch to allow text to reach the end of the line. This produces nasty white ‘rivers’ running down the paragraph.

Secondly, a blocked paragraph doesn’t give the eye a ‘bookmark’ to track where they are. It just means that people reread or skip lines. After the second go, most people will give up!

12. End of page tip

Finally, here you are at the end of your page. What do you want people to do next? Asking them to call or email you is probably a bit unrealistic.

Your best bet is to take them to another page. This is usually your services or products page.

Don’t ask them to work too hard. Some won’t bother to scroll back to the menu so give them a hyperlink in the final paragraph along these lines: ‘Discover how you can . . . . now’

Don’t get clever with pretty coloured links – make it easy for people to identify it as a link. And remember, 'Read about the new ... product' is always preferable to 'Read about the new ... product. Click here'.

13. Bonus tip

Every picture tells a story – as well it should!

Ensure that any visuals on your website help get your message across. If they don’t, leave them out.

Pictures are great and do add visual appeal, but stock photos of people grinning at the camera in suits don’t do anything for your image.

Graphs and charts showing how people have increased profit/productivity/job satisfaction, etc, as a result of your activity are effective. Diagrams showing how something works are good, so long as they’re not too complicated and they appear on the relevant page rather than the home page.

‘Before and after’ pictures work well too.

Your website should get your message across with the minimum of effort expended by the reader.

Lesley is an expert in readability - that’s knowing not only WHAT people read, but also HOW they read. She writes commercial copy for the web, brochures, marketing, press releases, newsletters and articles. She is also a professional non-fiction editor and celebrity speech writer.

Getting traffic to your website is only half the battle – keeping them there is the next step.

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