You may be finding that your Northampton website is having difficulties generating: 

  • Increased online traffic 
  • Email signups 
  • Leads and customers

If this is the case, then your site may be experiencing a high bounce rate.

What does the term ‘bounce rate’ mean and how does it affect your website?

Essentially, it means that visitors and customers who visit your Northampton website or landing page bounce off before you get the chance to convert them. 

You need to understand that your conversion rate will only increase once you have reduced the bounce rate. This is the reason why you need to implement a clear content strategy for your business. 

Here are some web design tips on how to reduce your bounce rate.

1. Make sure your content is readable and easy to understand

Customers will often leave a site because of a poor user experience. Even if you have incorporated great content, if the formatting is unappealing, visitors may find it easier to bounce off than trying to decipher what you have written.

For this reason, you need to ensure your content:

  • Is readable 
  • Makes use of headlines, subheadings and bullet points
  • Incorporates images, charts, screenshots and even quotes 

You may also like to type the keywords in bold a few times but try not to overdo this!

You can give the readers the opportunity to participate by asking lots of questions. Also, don’t forget to end your blog or article with a ‘conclusion’ subheading. This is where you can nudge the reader to take action.

2. Create fresh blogs that include your brand and the right content

Creating new and engaging blogs can increase your leads and customers. However, your Northampton website should also have suitable content. This means impressing the readers while persuading them to take action.

You can connect with your readers through brand storytelling. As people tend to scan web pages, utilising eye-catching elements will often pay dividends. With storytelling, you can make customers feel special by providing high-quality content and explaining the benefits of your products.

3. Incorporate keywords that can generate the desired amount of traffic

Keywords will be critical in your Northampton content marketing campaign. If you want to generate significant online traffic, you will need to use appropriate keywords.

Now, you should utilise tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner to find these keywords. You can also conduct some research to identify which keywords your competitors are using.

4. Attract and engage your target audience with videos

Videos are better than text or images at grabbing the attention of your audience. You can use them as background or to highlight your call-to-action. 

Many web designers will provide videos and animation as part of their service for a nominal fee. 

5. Improve your site’s loading speed and make it mobile-friendly

When asked about how to reduce bounce rate, many experts mention the loading speed. Ideally, a website should load within three seconds … every second of delay can cost you sales. In fact, studies have shown that almost 50% of your customers will leave your site if it takes more than three seconds to load. It is also unlikely that they will return anytime soon.

Tools such as Pingdom can help you determine your site’s loading speed. If it takes longer than three seconds to load, you need to do some cleaning. It is essential that you find the reasons for the slow loading speed; for example, it could be due to large image files or videos.     

Remember, many of your customers will be using their mobile phones to visit your web pages. Therefore, it is vital that you design a site that will look good on any screen, especially on mobile devices. You can use Google’s mobile-friendly test tool to see if your site fits the bill. 

Mobile-friendliness is a critical ranking factor for SEO too as Google now prefers to rank mobile-optimised pages.

6. Direct the external link to open in new tabs or windows


A clever web design trick involves making sure you can open external links in a new window. This way, people won’t have to click the back button to return to your site. Remember, once they leave your site, the risk of them bouncing off increases.

7. Avoid pop-ups (if possible)

Although many website owners and advertisers like pop-ups, most users hate them. If you do decide to use them, try to do so sparingly and, if possible, make them unobtrusive. Instead of pop-ups, why not improve your site’s user experience instead? You will soon discover that providing a positive UX is a better way of ranking online and converting visitors than using pop-ups.

8. Create a strong CTA

Once you have piqued your readers’ interest, it is imperative that you prod them into action. If they are not ready to buy, at least make them think about it. This is where you need a compelling call-to-action. Don’t take even the tiniest details for granted. Sometimes, a single line of text on the CTA button can lead to a higher sales conversion rate. One way of improving your CTA is to offer free trials. This can lower the bounce rate as interested users are likely to accept your offer. And, if you do provide some freebies, make sure that this is clear in your CTA.

9. Make your site credible

For online businesses, credibility is huge. It will be a difficult task getting people to buy from you if they don’t even trust you. So, how can you make people trust your site? This is one of the main reasons why professional web design is essential. An aesthetically pleasing site will not only attract visitors, but it will also generate trust. Whilst almost anyone can design a website, not everyone will be able to make it eye-catching (although perhaps this is possible with time and appropriate training).Here are some tips on how to make your website appear credible:

  • Include a visible address and contact number – This should appear on the site’s footer. If appropriate, you can place your contact details in the header, sidebar or micro-copy.
  • Contacting you should be easy – In the navigation menu, the ‘contact’ link should be in the last section.
  • Provide a tailored and relevant message – You can use a specific message to target users based on their profile. The content should also display the information they need.
  • Use understandable and straightforward language – You need to use the same language as your customers to gain their trust. Make sure the grammar is correct and every word is spelt correctly.
  • Link to external websites – If a credible website has written something positive about your Northampton business, don’t hesitate to link the article.   

Conclusion

A high bounce rate can cost your Northampton business a huge amount of sales. Fortunately, optimising your web design can help reduce the number of bounces. The first thing to do is improve the user experience; you should ensure your site is eye-catching with easy-to-read content and attention-grabbing images or videos. Moreover, the content should be relevant and up to date. It is also imperative that your site appears credible, and you can achieve this by providing easily visible contact details and external links to other reputable websites.