Seven Things That Affect Small Business Website Bounce Rates

When it comes to small business websites, visitors don’t often leave with a neutral impression. Instead, they will either be highly satisfied and likely to return, or quite to the contrary. Which in turn means that you need to be extremely mindful when it comes to delivering those all-important first impressions. With this in mind, here’s a brief rundown of seven common reasons customers bail on small business websites:

1. Too Much Information

First of all, be careful not to overwhelm new customers with an overload of information the moment they arrive. Winning over new customers is all about satisfying whatever it is that brought them to your website in the first place, as opposed to just burying them with a mountain of information as soon as they walk through the door. If they want more information you could consider having “read more” links from the home page so the user can click through for more information in their own time.

2. No USP

Instead of trying to convince your customers that you are the very best at absolutely everything, focus on a single unique selling point. Whether it’s quality, low prices, customer satisfaction or anything else across the board, choose what your brand stands for and stick with it.

3. Lack of Credibility

You can sing your own praises all day long, but you will not earn any credibility with new customers unless they see the evidence from existing customers. Or at least, the kinds of statistics that breeds confidence – star ratings, number of sales to date, average order delivery time etc.

4. Lack of Contact Options

One great way of sending new customers in the opposite direction is to make it difficult or awkward to get in touch with you. Contact forms are OK, but customers these days really prefer to be provided with actual e-mail addresses and telephone numbers, in order to make direct contact.

5. SEO Overload

Be sure not to make your content so keyword heavy that it doesn’t make sense. Long story short, stuff your page with spam SEO and you’ll be outed as an amateur.

6. Social Media Channels

Having a Facebook business page can be great. However, if you only update it once in a blue mood this simply screams laziness and will not do your credibility any favours. .

7. Lack of Depth

Last but not least, just because you run a small business does not mean you should be focusing on a small-time website. If all you present is a single page with a quick blurb and your contact details, you can’t expect your customers to respond as well as they would if you provided them with rich, relevant and regularly updated posts. The more you provide them with, the more likely they are to both stick around and return once again.