A website is a true representation of your business or brand. Your website should be engaging and complete in every aspect so that visitors can spend more time and interact with relevant services or products. In responsive web design, you need to keep all the elements in your mind, so that you can design it in a better way. If your website design is not good, then the visitors may come and go, this will increase your bounce rate making your website less user-friendly. Due to this, you will not be able to increase your search traffic and attract more customers because to do so, you need to retain your traffic. Today, I will explain how you can reduce the bounce rate by following our tested web design Boston methodologies. We have implemented these web design strategies for our Boston based clients and I hope this will help you out too.

What is Bounce Rate?

As per the definition by Google Analytics: The percentage of single-page visits. (That’s the visit in which the person left your site from the entrance page). It is a measure of visit quality and a high bounce rate indicated that site entrance (landing) pages are not relevant to the visitors.  The bounce rate information is used by Google as one of the factors to evaluate the ranking of your website. 

 

You need expert Boston web designers so that you can reduce your bounce rate by making your website attractive to visitors.

To help you out, here are 18 web design tips to reduce bounce rate and retain web traffic:

1. Faster Loading Time

The first and the primary web design tip to reduce bounce rate is to make your website load faster. Let’s face this, this problem is common. Most of the time we click on a website but leave it in frustration because it takes several seconds to load. The ideal website loading time is 3 seconds. If your website is not loading within this time limit, then you might lose valuable customers. Here’s a helpful guide on how you can balance the information density in web design. Moving forward, the following web design tips will help you to increase your site’s loading time:

Trim Image Sizes: Images take up a lot of bandwidth, so optimize your image size to make loading faster. Choose images with less bandwidth but do ensure that their quality is good.

Get Rid of Plugins: If you are having too many plugins, then it is slowing down your website. It is recommended to remove or uninstall the plugins that are not necessary.

Shorten your website’s code: No matter in which format ( HTML, JavaScript, or CSS mode) your website is built, minify your website code. This also improves the load time.

Quality Web Host: It is a very important and worthwhile investment. If your web host is slowing your website down, switch to the new one.

According to studies, one second delay results in 11% fewer page views, a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and a 7% loss in conversions. So, improve your website design to decrease your bounce rate.

2. Craft Compelling Call-to-Action

Once your visitor has landed on your website, are you guiding him on what to do next by your call to action? If there is no call to action then your visitors are just blank, he does not know which pages to view. So, crafting completing the call to action is necessary as they are a source of direction for your visitor. According to Go-Globe, 47% have a clear call to action that requires a time of 3 seconds or less to see the website. If your website is one of them, then it is good for you but if not then you need to fix this to make your web design more effective. Some good calls to action are “shop now”, “Get in touch”, “Call us”, etc.

3. A Visual Hierarchy is Must

What if you got all the beautiful things but they are not aligned or managed properly? This will not be liked by any of us! As mentioned earlier you need to guide your visitors, so moving ahead you also need to enhance your visual hierarchy so that viewers can see things properly. To attain this, use bold, large text sizes to enhance the readability, and bright colors. To check your website’s visual hierarchy do a squint test!

For a squint test step back from your computer screen and squint so that the whole page becomes a blur. You will notice only those things that are large, bold, and colorful. Are these the areas you want people to focus on? If yes, then you have achieved your goal.

4. Use of White Space is Necessary

White space or known as negative space. It refers to the blank areas of the web page between text and images. It is an important design feature. If your website is full of multimedia, the user may get distracted and can exit without moving on to your call to action. If you are smartly using white space, it can make a huge difference in terms of appearance, readability by giving enough space to picture, photos, content, or videos. You might be interested in these free helpful tools for web designers. The list has free generators that can accelerate your web design Boston process. Anyway, as I was saying, white space is quite necessary to improve the overall aesthetic of your website. This will also improve the bounce rate.

5. Embed Social Share Buttons

 Have a blog for your website? Is there a social share button on every blog? If the answer is no, then the following web design tips will help you.

Ensure that every blog post features a button in the corner, enabling readers to easily share your blogs on social media without leaving your website. Have social share buttons reminding your users that they can share your blogs, especially encouraging those people who might not have thought of it. In this way, you can socially connect with your customers as well.

6. Effective Use of Colors

No use of a website if your reader can’t read things properly. Similarly, if things are small with no proper use of color to highlight, then the reader can see them or read them. Make sure that the text on your website is in contrast with the background for good readability. Emphasize your content to make it easy to read. The use of contrast colors is essential because if the colors used are not complementing each other, then there will be an issue of visibility and readability. You can consult this in-depth guide on the complete color theory. Keeping this fact in mind, this is the reason that 99% of books have a white page with black text on them.

7. Use Unique, Real, and Attractive Images

As mentioned above, white space is vital to enhance the website look. Just like that, the correct use of images makes your website look great. Avoid using too many pictures as they will distract your customers. To attract customers, use high-quality images that are unique, real, and eye-catching. Decorating your website with a few high-quality images is significantly better as compared to adding dozens of low-quality images. If you are not able to do this, contact Boston website designers to get your website built by skilled designers.

8. Go for Sans Serif

Serif fonts have small flourishes at the ends of their letters, similar to Times New Roman. Sans serif fonts are similar to the Helvetica and Arial fonts but these fonts lack these flourishes. When talking about website design, it is best to use sans serif fonts, as they are easier to read. Serif fonts are beneficial but they should not be used for headlines or branding. Use it in body text for easy readability.

Giving clear readability enable the visitors to see a thing in detail and to spend more time on the website. You can consult the best Boston web design agency for free in this regard. We like to help out designers in getting the best out of their web design effort. Get in touch for free suggestions. Remember one thing do not use a different types of fonts in your website. This will make things messy and confused. Limit the use of fonts for good web design!

9. Add a FAQ Page

While going through the website many questions arise in the mind of a visitor. So, to answer the query, you need to have a page specifically for answering the frequently asked questions. If they are having any questions, then the FAQ is probably the first place they will look. If you don’t have an FAQ page, then this might disappoint your visitor and they may leave your website soon. Furthermore, do update your FAQs by answering more questions about your product or services. FAQ pages also improve search engine rankings and help to streamline site navigation!

10. Include A Contact Page

Generally, people do not focus on the contact page. Most businesses squeeze their contact information into the footer of their website. That’s a big mistake! The contact page is one of the most important pages on your entire website. Through this page, your potential customers will contact you to know the answers to the question they have in their minds regarding your services or products. So, make sure that your contact page is more than just a list of information or a contact form.

Use the contact page as an opportunity to explain to the visitors why they should contact you and how you can help them in finding the solution to their problem? A popular contact form for WordPress is Contact Form 7. You can also directly download Contact Form 7 from WordPress. Add as many different types of contact information as possible. Everyone has their preferences so just a phone number may turn some people away from your website.

11. A Responsive Layout

Currently, more than half of all website traffic comes from mobile devices. This percentage is increasing day by day as the number of mobile devices is increasing. If your website layout is not responsive, then you are losing a huge percentage of customers. To avoid this, optimize your website, make it responsive so that it can be viewed on mobile as well. If you will not make your website layout responsive, then mobile visitors are likely to have a higher bounce rate because the website is not appealing and not optimized properly, to be viewed on mobile and other devices.

12. Add a Blog (extremely helpful)

What if you are looking to share tips to create a better web design with your customers? For this, you need to add a blog to your website. This will help you in boosting your SEO. One thing to be checked is that the content you are uploading should be relevant according to your audience. Frequent posts will develop an identity of your brand, create trust among the customers, will make you a leader in the field, and make more people return to your website that ultimately become customers. This GoDaddy guide will help you in adding a blog to your WordPress website. As discussed earlier, make your blog be shared on social media via share buttons on each blog. It is a great chance of increasing website traffic.

13. Simple Navigation

The navigation of your website should be simple. If you are not aware of how to do it, then follow these web design tips to improve the navigation of your site:

• Use menu bars.
• Add button which people can use to click back to your homepage from any other page
• An informative footer.

A website’s menu bar should be horizontal across the top of each page. It should include links to important pages including specific product pages, a contact page, an FAQ, or even testimonials. If you have many pages, then you can organize them with drop-down lists that pop up when someone scrolls over the main categories of your menu bar. You might be interested in giving a read to our comprehensive guide on the points to consider before building your website navigation. For instance, if you sell sports attire, your menu bar may have a page for shoes, jerseys, and equipment, but when somebody scrolls over “shoes,” a vertical list should show up with links to the pages related to different brands, colors, sizes, or styles.

A common website practice that should be implemented is to have your company’s logo added on the top left corner of every page. Make the logo clickable, so that when customers click it, they are directed to the homepage, no matter where they end up on your site.

A footer is the last thing people see on your site. In this section, you  should include a few important things like:

• Addition of links at the bottom of each page that include contact information.
• Buttons that link to your social media sites. Sometimes people directly scroll to the bottom to see items.

In addition, you should also add a search bar at the top of each page. This enables people to navigate your website quickly and find exactly what they need.

14. Go for Infographics

Large blocks of text can make visitors confused. So, if you are having a large piece of information, then consider making infographics. Organizing website information into concise and easy-to-read infographics will not only keep your webpage informative but also captivating as well. Here’s a guide on why you need to use infographics in your website design.

15. Add Testimonials and Reviews

Building trust about the product or services is the aim of every business. The quick way to achieve this is to include real, honest reviews or testimonials from previous or current customers directly on your website. Approximately, 90% of online shoppers read reviews before making a purchase. Here’s a guide on how to get reviews for your business. Add your reviews either on corresponding product pages or on a separate review page, this makes it easy to find and navigate.

16. Fresh and Appealing Content

Frequently updating your content is the key to attracting more visitors. Engaging and appealing content is necessary. In addition, properly placed content with proper space give a good look to the website as discussed earlier. According to HubSpot business, the business that updates their content regularly gets 126% more leads as compared to others who don’t. So, now you can understand the importance of content. One more thing engaging in contact will help you build a relationship with your customers. Use words we, you, yours, to give solutions for the problems faced by visitors.

17 . No to Popups- It Disrupt UX

In website design, UI and UX are the two important aspects. So, if pop-ups are appearing on a website, most of the users don’t like them. They also act as a hurdle for the UX. If you are annoying the user it might lead to a higher bounce rate. On some websites, pop-ups are very helpful as well, as they are guiding or provide information to the reader or visitors. So, when designing your website, make sure if you are going to add pop-ups, then you should make it helpful instead of annoying.

18. Never Stop Testing

Every business is different, you can’t stick to anything. You should test out things to find out the better one for your business. In the world of website designing, things are updating frequently. You should continuously optimize your site and update it. Give a read to our comprehensive guide for small business web design. This will help you in getting the best out of your web design Boston small business. Furthermore, check your website regularly to make sure everything is running smoothly with no bugs.

Use Google Analytics to know about the adjustments in your website. You can even review heat maps to analyze how people are navigating your website to identify any areas where the layout may not be clear or hard to follow. al 

Get The Best Web Design Services In Boston

Hope these tips will be helpful. Still, if you are confused to make your website design responsive and scalable, then contact web design Boston experts, Top Notch Innovative Technologies to get your project designed and running in no time. Call us directly at (888) 355-8880 to get a free quote within an hour. We are one of the top-rated Boston web design experts and can completely revamp your website for improved responsiveness, scalability, easiness to navigate. This will overall reduce the bounce rate of your site and increase traffic by 10 folds.