Understand Your Website Traffic And Why Users Are Leaving

Marketing a website takes a lot of work.

Not only do you have to design and build a website, fill it with quality content and spend hours getting it just right, but then you need to get the word out.

You create a marketing strategy and invest marketing budget to attract relevant users who are in the market for your product or service.

After you put all of this time, effort and money in, it’s frustrating when you realise a large portion of your visitors are leaving your site without converting. Why are they doing this and more importantly, what can you do to fix it? Here’s what you need to know:

Check Your Website’s Analytics First

Before you start making drastic changes to your website, the first thing you’ll want to do is examine your site’s analytics. There are several factors that could be causing people to leave your site, and by examining your analytics first, you can often pinpoint the exact reason.

Once you open up Google Analytics, or whichever analytics platform you use, you’ll want to focus on two stats in particular – bounce rate and the average time on page. Your bounce rate is the percentage of people who come to that page and leave without visiting another page. The average time on page is the amount of time a user spends on that page before leaving.

Remember that a high bounce rate isn’t automatically a bad thing, and the average bounce rate for your whole site isn’t particularly useful.

Look at it page by page, and by marketing channel for useful clues. Some pages will naturally have higher bounce rates by nature – blog posts, contact pages, and pages designed for people in the research and information gathering stage of the buying cycle.

Also remember to look at whether the percentage of users that bounce on a particular page return to your website later. If it is a page for those at the start of the buying cycle, it may have done its job perfectly.

For time on page remember to take into account the page type and purpose. Spending ages on a page might be normal for long-form content like blogs or services. But it could also highlight issues on pages which are geared to a simple and quick purpose.

If your contact page is simple but users are on it for a long time and then exit never to be seen again, maybe it is buggy or your form is too complex.

Keep these two stats in mind when you’re exploring the possible reasons below.

#1 – Your Page Loads Too Slowly

One of the most common causes of a high bounce rate is slow loading pages. Studies have shown that you only have a few seconds to grab your visitor’s attention. People will often go elsewhere if a page is noticeably slow.

In fact, 55% of people spend fewer than 15 seconds on a page before leaving. If your page takes more than a few seconds to fully load, chances are that visitors will just leave without giving it a chance.

Luckily, it’s typically easy to improve page speed. For starters, make sure all of your images are optimised for the web, focusing on mobile devices too.

Large image files are often the culprit when it comes to slow pages. After that, try to simplify your pages. If you have a lot of fancy animations, perhaps use them more sparingly. If you have a lot of WordPress plugins and 3rd party scripts that need to load, it’s going to slow things down.

Finally, consider your hosting setup. If you’re running your website on a crowded server or one not equipped to handle the traffic numbers you receive, this will slow everything down. Switching to a better server and optimised hosting environment could result in a much faster website.

To test your site’s speed and get suggestions on improving it, you can use Google’s Page Speed Insights or GTmetrix. These tools will also help you learn how to improve your Core Web Vitals, a Google ranking factor related to page speed and loading.

#2 – Visitors Aren’t Finding The Information They Want

When someone visits your website, they will likely have a very specific goal in mind. Maybe they are looking to learn more about your product, or find out how they can engage your services.

If the visitor is unable to find the information they want easily, they’ll likely just leave your website. This will be evident in a high bounce rate, with a low average time on site.

To fix this, take each page one at a time and think about why someone would visit that page. What are they looking to get out of it? Once you’ve answered this question, you can make changes to that page to emphasise the important information.

You can format the page to make the important points stand out, put your contact information in a larger font, or remove distracting items that draw focus away from your content. Keep your user in mind whenever you’re planning out a page. Think about what their main goal is, and whether you have content for each stage of the buying journey.

It is also worthwhile interrogating traffic source on these pages.

For example, if it’s predominantly PPC traffic that’s not converting, does the page match the intent of what those users are searching for and your ad copy?

Many businesses will run paid activity and send all ad traffic to their homepage. Often this is not a page that best matches their query. You are then expecting them to hunt out what they need. Is there are more relevant page on your website or could you create a landing page specifically for this?

#3 – Visitors Are Given No Clear Direction

Once someone is done reading your page, you need to give them something to do. This is called a Call to Action. Let’s say you’ve put together an entire page outlining a common problem amongst your target audience.

After they finish reading the page, they understand the problem, but they don’t know what to do about it. If you don’t offer them an action to take, they’ll visit another site for some clearer directions.

Ensure your pages have an onward journey for your users that is the next logical step. Like “Contact us today to learn more about our solution for this challenge” or “Click here to see our product that solves this issue”.

This simple action gives your readers a clear signpost for where to go next. They will be less likely to wander away when they’re done reading.

To tell if this is your problem, check your average time on page numbers. If it’s high on a page, but so is the bounce rate, that means people are reading a lot, but still deciding to leave. This is often an indication that the reader was given no clear direction as to what to do next. To learn more, here are some tips on how to create a great Call to Action.

#4 – Inattention To Detail

Finally, you may need to go over your pages with a fine-toothed comb. Sometimes we miss little details on our page, but our visitors pick them up. Since you only have a short time frame in which to make a good impression, it’s important that you pay attention to the little details.

What sort of details? For starters, make sure there are no typos on the page. Typos make a bad impression, and visitors may want to look for a more professional company.

Another thing to look for is broken links. If you have a link that says “Click here to purchase” and the link leads nowhere, this will frustrate your visitors.

So take time to go over every element on your page and make sure it’s absolutely perfect. Sometimes all you need is a few small tweaks to improve the impression you leave on your visitors, and get them to stick around.

Don’t forget to make sure everything looks and works right on mobile devices too.

Keep An Eye On The Important Stats

As you make the changes above, keep an eye on your bounce rate and time on page stats. If you made the right changes, you should see an improvement in these metrics before long.

However, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes your stats are bad, but no matter what you do you can’t seem to figure out why. If that’s the case, contact us today about our expert UX audits. We can take an in depth look at your website, and provide recommendations for any issues we find.

You’ve spent so much time getting your website up and running. Don’t let it go to waste by settling for a high bounce rate or an inefficient page. Take steps to correct these problems, and before long your page will start bringing in the customers you’ve been after.