S
StaceyRicci
Guest
Let's say you want to raise sales on your site. What will you do?
The answer "increase traffic" will not be wrong. But if you think one more time, you can find a more intelligent solution.
Optimization. That’s what clever boys and girls do when they want to increase their incomes.
There is one important but often underestimated metric, which makes it very easy to understand that your site needs optimization. It's bounce rate - the percentage of visitors that leave your site after only viewing one page. Bounce means that the user left your page for another site, closed the tab in the browser or got everything he wanted on that single page and didn’t go anywhere further.
The higher your bounce rate is, the more likely the site needs to be tweaked and developed. By lowering it, you increase conversion rate, CTR, and user experience in general, which will definitely be good for your sales. Do you catch the connection?
Now a few tips on how you can reduce the bounce rate.
1. Speed up the site loading
There are such statistics: 47% of consumers expect that the web page will load in 2 seconds or less. Even a simple logic prompts that people value their time.
An easy way to speed up the download is to implement a Content Delivery Network (CDN). A CDN will cache your assets on the edge servers all over the world and deliver them at the lightning fast speed to your users. The physical distance to the server will no longer be the delay in the download.
2. Use popups with caution
Let’s be honest: popups are annoying. You yourself hardly like it when a popup interrupts you from viewing content. On the other hand, practice shows that they greatly increase the conversion, but only when used wisely.
Set the timer so that the popup does not get out the moment when the user just hits the page. Let him first get what he came for - so he will be more willing to subscribe to the newsletter or whatever you want from him.
Another option is the exit-intent popup, which is shown only when the user hovers over the close tab button.
3. Make sure your website is responsive on mobile.
If users complain that your site is difficult to view from mobile devices, IMMEDIATELY take action. In the most areas, mobile traffic has caught up or even left behind the desktop traffic. Just imagine how many conversions you miss, if half of the users come to your site from the mobile.
Necessarily test any changes on the site from mobile devices. Another option is the free Screenfly service. It can simulate different screen proportions and resolutions. It won’t make you free from testing on physical devices, but it can help to find and fix quickly some of the issues.
4. Make a cool 404 Error page
Of course, you should fix broken links firstly, so that users would meet with a 404 error as rarely as possible. But if that happened, make sure that the user didn’t leave the site at the same time. Google has got an excellent guide about how to make good 404 pages.
Use humor to sweeten the bitter pill of failure. A good solution will also be to add a search bar to the page so that the user can momentary find what they were looking for originally.
5. Think, if the links should be opened in a new window
This is a very ambiguous topic. Smashing Magazine has a great article about why you don’t need to open links in a new window. But there's a delicate moment - If your audience is not too technically advanced, it might make sense to open links in new tabs in order to reduce the bounce rate as some people might not find their way back to your site as easily.
The correct solution here will be to test both options and compare the results.
The answer "increase traffic" will not be wrong. But if you think one more time, you can find a more intelligent solution.
Optimization. That’s what clever boys and girls do when they want to increase their incomes.
There is one important but often underestimated metric, which makes it very easy to understand that your site needs optimization. It's bounce rate - the percentage of visitors that leave your site after only viewing one page. Bounce means that the user left your page for another site, closed the tab in the browser or got everything he wanted on that single page and didn’t go anywhere further.
The higher your bounce rate is, the more likely the site needs to be tweaked and developed. By lowering it, you increase conversion rate, CTR, and user experience in general, which will definitely be good for your sales. Do you catch the connection?
Now a few tips on how you can reduce the bounce rate.
1. Speed up the site loading
There are such statistics: 47% of consumers expect that the web page will load in 2 seconds or less. Even a simple logic prompts that people value their time.
An easy way to speed up the download is to implement a Content Delivery Network (CDN). A CDN will cache your assets on the edge servers all over the world and deliver them at the lightning fast speed to your users. The physical distance to the server will no longer be the delay in the download.
2. Use popups with caution
Let’s be honest: popups are annoying. You yourself hardly like it when a popup interrupts you from viewing content. On the other hand, practice shows that they greatly increase the conversion, but only when used wisely.
Set the timer so that the popup does not get out the moment when the user just hits the page. Let him first get what he came for - so he will be more willing to subscribe to the newsletter or whatever you want from him.
Another option is the exit-intent popup, which is shown only when the user hovers over the close tab button.
3. Make sure your website is responsive on mobile.
If users complain that your site is difficult to view from mobile devices, IMMEDIATELY take action. In the most areas, mobile traffic has caught up or even left behind the desktop traffic. Just imagine how many conversions you miss, if half of the users come to your site from the mobile.
Necessarily test any changes on the site from mobile devices. Another option is the free Screenfly service. It can simulate different screen proportions and resolutions. It won’t make you free from testing on physical devices, but it can help to find and fix quickly some of the issues.
4. Make a cool 404 Error page
Of course, you should fix broken links firstly, so that users would meet with a 404 error as rarely as possible. But if that happened, make sure that the user didn’t leave the site at the same time. Google has got an excellent guide about how to make good 404 pages.
Use humor to sweeten the bitter pill of failure. A good solution will also be to add a search bar to the page so that the user can momentary find what they were looking for originally.
5. Think, if the links should be opened in a new window
This is a very ambiguous topic. Smashing Magazine has a great article about why you don’t need to open links in a new window. But there's a delicate moment - If your audience is not too technically advanced, it might make sense to open links in new tabs in order to reduce the bounce rate as some people might not find their way back to your site as easily.
The correct solution here will be to test both options and compare the results.
