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When visitors land on your website and leave without taking an action or visiting any other page, it’s called a bounce.

And the bounce rate represents its percentage of sessions.

Don’t know how to calculate bounce rate?

Here’s the bounce rate formula for Math geeks : 

Bounce rate = Number of single-page sessions / Total number of sessions X 100

I know this question might come into your mind – Is bounce rate important?

Yes, it’s important. More than you think.

What if I tell you your current bounce rate can have a huge impact on your sales?

Now, before ‘bouncing’ off our website to check your current bounce rate, please read this post to fully understand what I mean by it.

Bounce Rate Higher or Lower Better?

Before understanding how bounce rate can impact your sales. You need to understand what classifies as a good or bad bounce rate. 

Researchers have classified anything between 50-70% could be classified as a good bounce rate.

“So, is a low bounce rate good?”. 

Yes as per the data, it is.

You might be wondering : “But why is my bounce rate so high?”

Let me make it clear for you.

The bounce rate that you can have also depends on your website.

A landing page (with a single CTA) generally has a high bounce rate. Same as informational posts or articles. 

Basically, the website that usually gives visitors what they want without needing them to get redirected to another webpage generally has a high bounce rate.

This also answers a common question: Is a high bounce rate bad?

So, a high bounce rate doesn’t always mean bad. Some things are just designed to be this way.

A general rule that can be used for bounce rates: The lower, the better.

What does a high bounce rate indicate?

A high bounce rate GENERALLY means you are doing something wrong.

Most people who know about bounce rates have these questions : 

“Do bounce rates affect seo?”

“Is bounce rate a ranking factor?”

Let me answer them for you.

When visitors bounce off your website, this can signal Google’s algorithm that visitors dislike your website. If so, Google can move your website to rank lower than other websites.

So yeah, bounce rate does affect your ranking and seo.

And if you don’t rank high, there can be a conversion drop. Which means losing sales.

Although indirect but still bounce rate has an impact on your sales.

“Alright I know now, but how to reduce bounce rate?”

Don’t worry, by changing just a few things on your website, you can fix it.

Below are what we think are, reasons for the high bounce rate on the website. Fix them immediately to not lose any sales or conversions.

Slow Loading Speed

“There’s connection between website loading speed and bounce rate?”

Yes. There is. A big one.

If your website takes more than 2.5 seconds to load, visitors bounce off.

People don’t like to wait anymore. Please don’t make them.

This is also a common confusion : bounce rate vs exit rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave a website after viewing only one page.

While exit rate is the percentage of visitors who leave a website from a specific page, regardless of how many pages they viewed before exiting. 

Essentially, all bounces are exits, but not all exits are bounces. 

Make sure your website loads lightning fast to avoid a high bounce rate.

Poor / Misleading Content

Does your website load fast? Great. 

But what about its content?

When people search for something and open a website, they want to see the answer that they searched for.

Poorly or vaguely written content fails to engage visitors and leads to bounces.

Same with misleading content.

For example, when someone searches for “Buy dog food online” and your website ranks on the search result, but when the person opens it and finds articles about dog food, they bounce off due to frustration.

Make sure to take time in editing the content and accurately use title tags and meta descriptions to avoid misleading and frustrating visitors.

Poor User Experience (UX)

User experience and bounce rate go hand-in-hand too.

Did you know a company was able to change its 50% bounce rate to 5% just by changing its website’s design?

Yes, the UX matters THAT much. Forget converting visitors with those old-looking websites in this day and age.

Make sure your website is easy to use and navigate. If they need to figure out things on your website, like a game, they are out.

Don’t forget Mobile Optimization. According to newframedigital, this year, mobile devices account for 63.3% of the total web traffic.

If you read the article, it also says that mobile bounce rates are between 58-60% whereas desktops are 48-50%.

This means that although your website will get a large amount of traffic from mobile devices, they can easily bounce off if you haven’t optimized your website well for mobile devices.

Make sure to give importance to user experience (ux) while maintaining your website for bounce rates.

Technical Errors

We’ve all been to websites that take forever to load. 

Also, to those websites that are always under maintenance or show ‘404 not found’.

Not to forget those that don’t allow us to do things for which they were made. Like signing up or completing a payment to buy something.

These kinds of errors frustrate the user, and they’re left with no choice but to bounce off.

Make sure to fix any broken links or errors on your website as soon as possible. 

Annoying ADS and Pop-Ups

This one personally annoys me the most.

Few websites on the internet bombard us with so many ADs that I feel they solely earn money from them.

As soon as you click on the website, BOOM. 

As if they were waiting just for you.

Same with the Pop-ups.

When I click on the “X” mark, why are you popping up on my screen every 5 minutes?

Please don’t be like this.

Even if you want to add a pop-up to your website, don’t show it to the visitor as soon as they land on it; instead, show it after a few minutes. This way, they get the impression that you care about their experience, unlike other websites.

And make sure not to bomb your users with those annoying ADs and pop-ups.

Conclusion

That was the post. 

These were the most common reasons for a high bounce rate on a website, according to us. Also answering common questions like – How to decrease bounce rate.

Please make sure to fix them if you haven’t, and see if it makes any difference.

Need help doing that?

Hire Us!

We help businesses convert their dead websites into a constant revenue-generating machine, avoiding all of the above (and more) website design errors.

Book a free call and let us help you.

Yes, a 2002 Stanford research proves it.

It also proves that you, as a business, need to not only give importance to how your website functions but also how it looks.

Let me share a little secret with you: Internet judges. Real quick. In 0.05 seconds, to be precise.

Yes, that’s the exact amount of time you need to make an impression in OR say bye to 38% of your visitors as they stop engaging with the website if they find the content/layout unattractive, says Adobe’s 2015 study.

Yes, how your website looks is THAT important.

Maybe you know all of this. Maybe you are designing your website and putting your content out there.

But the real question is: Are you doing it the right way? 

Yes, there’s always a right way to do things, even when it comes to designing your website.

What if I tell you that by doing it the wrong way, you are doing more harm to your business than good? 

Read till the end to find out if you are making these common website design mistakes that are costing you more than just a fortune.

Slow Loading Time

This easily comes in the “top 5 website design mistakes to fix” list.

According to BigCommerce, just a 1-second delay can lead to 7% reduction in conversions.

Here’s another shocker…

Shopify reported 40% of shoppers will abandon sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load.

In this day and age, humans have an attention span less than that of a goldfish (Thanks to TikTok/Reels). 

So, making them wait = making them skip.

Make sure your website loads within the blink of an eye.

Forgetting Mobile Optimization

According to Statista, in 2023, 95.8% of people used the internet via their phones, and 63% used desktops.

Logical right? Smartphones are small, handy, and can be used anywhere, unlike desktops/laptops.

Another logical point – Ignoring those ~96% people can be a bad decision for your business.

Make sure to optimize your website to look good and function well for all kinds of devices.

Improper Navigation and Layouts

This alone can make your website look like one of those “bad websites”.

Website navigation mistakes are the worst.

When users land on your website, and if they can’t easily navigate through it, they’ll simply abandon it—no second chance given.

To avoid this, make sure your website has a proper navigation panel that has clear labels for its use and for other links. 

Showing too much information on the webpage can also confuse. 

Instead, show your users enough so they can focus on one thing at a time.

Progressively disclose content. 

A progressive disclosure web design means revealing more information or features on a website as users progress through it. 

Allow room for white space. Let your content breathe.

Avoid too many pop-ups, bright colors, excess animations, and autoplaying videos/audios.

Make sure the website is simple, easy to use, and navigable.

Messing up Call-to-Actions

If someone asks me: what’s a website design mistake that can secretly kill conversions

I’ll answer this: Call-to-actions (CTAs)

A Call-to-action lets your users know what to do next. 

Until and unless you tell them, they don’t know what to do, what steps to take.

If you mess up this step, forget converting your users into customers.

Make sure you use simple and clear call to actions (like ‘Buy Now’, ‘Sign-up’, or ‘Learn More’) to guide your users through every step, telling them what to do next.

Inconsistent Topography and Brand color

A cluttered website design is also equally bad.

The content on your website should be consistent across all the webpages.

Same font. Same 3 line/2 line paragraphs. Same everything. 

Or else the audience leaves due to confusion and frustration. Consistency is the key to audience retention.

Brand consistency in web design is also important.

Remember Netflix’s iconic “Red-Black” color? 

Even if Netflix removes its branding from its website, you can still identify it as Netflix because of that color palette. That’s called a brand color, by the way. 

Using a consistent brand color helps your users associate the colors you use with your brand. Making your website stand out and worth remembering.

Just remember not to let your website look like a painting by the way. It can backfire.

So, make sure to use the same font everywhere and maintain a consistent brand color.

Conclusion

One sentence to summarize everything in the post: Make everything easy for them.

Just decide what you want your users to do on your website (or how you want them to use it) and just make it stupid easy for them to do it.

That’s the secret to generating constant revenue from the website without losing conversions.

So these were what we think the website design mistakes to avoid while designing your website.

By the way, if implementing all these things seems hard for you or you lack time…

Hire Us!

At Growigh, we work with small businesses and startups to turn their website into their most valuable business tool, avoiding all of the above (and more) website design errors.

Book a free consultation call and let us help you.