By Gabriela Damaceno

You dedicated a lot of time developing your product or service, putting a business plan together and creating your brand online. Like many small business owners, you have a lot of plates spinning at the same time. Being a solo entrepreneur can be overwhelming, so you need to make the best of your digital marketing strategy.

Despite users visiting your website, they are leaving it straight away. Some research about user experience shows that you have less than 15 seconds to convince a visitor to stay longer on your website and take some type of action. In other words: if you don’t quickly provide something valuable to them, they won’t linger and likely won’t come back.

All your effort to generate traffic to your website goes down the drain if the user leaves your page straight away. But the good news is there are ways to fix it! Let`s start discussing the reasons why users are leaving your website.

Bounce rate – the importance

The bounce rate shows you the percentage of your visitors who bounce off the site, which means who left your website without taking any action. You will find this number at Google Analytics > Audience> Overview.

A high bounce rate can have different interpretations, according to the search optimization firm Yoast:

-The quality of the page is low. Content and design play a crucial role here to convince the user to engage with the page. Professional content builds up an image of who you are.

-Your audience doesn’t match the purpose of the page, as it doesn’t answer the visitor needs. RankBrain is one of the most important ranking factors of Google’s algorithm, which seeks to improve search results for users by better understanding their search intent. When a user clicks on your website and leaves without any interaction, RankBrain understands that your site isn’t what the user was looking for.

-Visitors have found what they were looking for. This factor is crucial for some type of business. Just to give an example, as a local and offline company, which offers construction certificates; the website of HK Certifiers was designed to orientate the user to make a call and get a quote. If the bounce rate is high in this case, it doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing. It can indicate that users came to the landing the page, found the company`s phone number and made a call. So, don’t consider just one figure isolated. In this case, it is fundamental to check the number of inquires that are coming in with the sales team.

Extra: Speed loading of a page

The average website takes 9.3 seconds to load on a desktop and 15.3 on mobile devices, according to with Google page load time study. You don’t have to be a marketing guru to know that this is enough to drive away your audience. There are a few points that have a huge influence on speed. One of them is the hosting firm you choose. Take time to go through all the information about hosting and choose the best host for what you are looking for. Also, check out Page Speed Insights by Google to see how your website is performing.

In addition to speed, you also want to be sure the hosting company has sufficient capacity to assure the reliability of your site. Nothingn turns users off more than a site that is often down due to maintenance issues or other hosting problems.

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Gabriela Damaceno is a journalist and head of online content for Media Shark, a digital marketing agency located on the sunny Gold Coast, Australia. She is representing Adco Industries Australia, world-leading safety knives supplier.