When you own a website, of course, your ultimate agenda is to have the right audience and retain their interest in your site. But how will you ever know if your viewers are valuable to your construction business? One particular metric that is extremely useful in determining if your audience is interested in your business or not is “Bounce Rate”.
In this blog post, discover what bounce rate is, the ideal bounce rate you must target, and some of the most effective ways to lower this metric and find the right balance.
But What is Bounce Rate?
A bounce rate measures how visitors visit your website and leave without checking or clicking on another page. It happens when a single user idles on a certain page for more than 30 minutes. Bounce rate is one of the most vital metrics for improving your website’s overall engagement and understanding of user behavior.
Bounce rates can vary significantly – they can either be high or low. Below is the bounce rate grading system that shows differences.
- 25% or lower: Something is possibly broken.
- 26% to 40%: Excellent
- 41%-55%” Average
- 56%-70%: Typically, higher than normal
- 70% or higher: Bad and/or somewhat broken
Bounce Rate Vs. Exit Rate
Before we dive into the many ways to lower your bounce rate or determine your target bounce rate, it is worth knowing that bounce rate and exit rate, which are often confused with one another, are not similar. Google Analytics 4 measures bounce rate as the percentage or ratio of users who visited a site and left a page without interacting. In other words, the bounce rate is generally calculated by dividing the number of bounce(s) by the number of sessions.
Exit rate, on the other hand, measures the percentage of visitors who left a website from a specific page.
To illustrate the difference between these two important metrics, imagine a user lands on your Homepage and clicks through the About Us page. If the user leaves your website after viewing only the About Page, this can be counted as a “Bounce”. But if the user continues and views your Contact Us page and then leaves your site, this will be counted as an Exit from the Contact Us page.
How to Determine Your Target Bounce Rate?
Of course, it is not enough to know the bounce rate. Essentially, you should also know how to determine and break down your “Target” Bounce Rate. Knowing your target bounce rate can help you better understand your direction. And this often involves considering the following factors:
- Ads: Are my visitors sent from a specific ad campaign or source?
- SEO: Are my visitors come from organic search engine results or perhaps from a specific keyword?
- Device: Are my visitors use desktops, mobile devices, or tablets?
- Browser: What browser are they using to access your construction website?
- Page views: How many web pages are your visitors viewing before they exit?
- Site content: Is the content on your construction website relevant to what people are searching for?
- Time on site: Are the visitors spending a few seconds or minutes on your site?
Ways to Minimize Bounce Rate on Your Site
Below are the steps you can take to reduce your site’s bounce rate successfully:
1. Display exit surveys
While Google Analytics can instantly tell you what your site’s bounce rate is and which pages have a higher bounce rate, it does not give you reasons why people are actually leaving your website. Your first action will be doing a lot of guessing, trying to decrease your bounce rate.
Instead of doing guesswork, we highly recommend you implement website exit surveys to ask your visitors why they leave your website directly. Surveys like these are best to place on your critical pages and should pop up once a user is about to exit.
2. Optimize page load time
No one likes to navigate to slow functional websites. Did you know that 53% of web visits are abandoned if pages take longer than two seconds to load? In other words, if your construction website loads slowly, your visitors may not even wait until it fully loads. In short, they will instantly close the page and may never come back.
You can start checking how fast your website loads using Google Page Speed Insights. With this tool, you can get a report that will display information about how long your site takes to load and what you must do to boost website performance further.
If you find out that slow speed is indeed the major reason why people leave your site, below are some tips you can follow to fix the problem, making your bounce rate lower:
- Optimize all images on your website.
- Switch to better hosting services
- Reduce the number of plug-ins you use on your website
- Minimize style and script files
- Make use of a content delivery network for your images and static files
3. Display clear Calls to Action
Another obvious reason your bounce rate is high is a lack of clarity. And we will be going to talk about Call to Action. If your CTAs are unclear or compelling enough, your web visitors will not know what you want them to do, and they probably will not stick around trying to second guess. So, always ensure the CTAs you will use and place on your website are clear and powerful.
The CTAs you will use vary depending on your intention and what you are offering to your target prospects.
4. Improve the mobile user experience
According to Statista, during the first quarter of 2023, mobile devices generated 58.33% of global website traffic. So, if your site is not mobile-friendly, you may lose a huge chunk of potential customers.
Use tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool to know whether your construction website is mobile-friendly or not. In a matter of minutes, you will get a report that shows you insightful results. If the results are not what you hope for, here are some tips to achieve that “mobile-friendliness.”
· Use a responsive theme on your website. 57% of Internet users stated they wouldn’t recommend a business with a poorly designed website on mobile. So, this is where the responsive theme comes into play.
- Make sure all the form fields are easy to fill out by the users, especially on smaller screens.
- Use large buttons that can easily be clicked on tablets and smartphones.
- Ensure input fields on the forms are configured to activate the correct keyword. For instance, the number keyboard must be activated in the phone number field, etc.
5. Use of exit-intent pop-ups to minimize bounce rate
One of the most highly recommended ways to minimize the bounce rate on your website is using exit-intent pop-ups. And using such a strategy is also very effective in growing your email lists.
One of the best practices you can start now is to offer a lead magnet in exchange for the email. If you are wondering what a lead magnet is and how it works – it is practically anything as long as it delivers value to your target audience. Depending on your business niche and lead acquisition strategy, you may consider offering guides, discount codes, and special deals.
Overall, the entire strategy can help reduce your bounce rate because it sparks user interaction. In addition, you can also get an opportunity to grow the list of your subs.
6. Add social proof to your landing pages
People prefer to do business with the ones they know, like and trust. On the other hand, when people trust you, they will be more included to partner with you and avail services from you.
Below are some of the ways you can build trust whenever a visitor lands on your site for the first time:
- Display all the testimonials you have collected from your existing customers.
- Display logos from any online outlets your company has been featured in.
- Feature your accreditation badges related to your professional associations.
When you both have testimonials and online media coverage to show off, your visitors will be more likely inclined to take a look at what you offer. And the longer they stay on your website, the higher the chances of them converting and becoming your customers on the spot.
Before You Bounce Off…..
Hopefully, you find this article helpful and instructive. We aim to help you fully understand what bounce rate is and how complex it can be. We also hope that all tips and tricks we share with you in this blog will help you reduce your site’s bounce rate should you start implementing them.
Once you have completed a website audit, you may realize that the best course of action is a full website overhaul. Revisit and reassess your construction website now and consider partnering with a full-service online marketing agency like ConstructionMarketing.io.
Our agency specializes in SEO, Web design and development, social media, etc., focusing on your website, online reputation and entire marketing campaign. We devise strategies tailored to your goals and cover all your marketing needs. And it won’t be long before your bounce rate finds its direction and balance – thus, boosting your conversions.
Trust that we can help you combat bounce rates and generally drive marketing success to your construction business.