Are You Losing Valuable Traffic? Here’s Why!
Definition: Bounce Rate – You when you find an awesome article but the damn thing won’t load and you close the page. A large bounce rate means that you may have a tone of users that don’t want to wait for your page to load. Or your content is simply not of interest. According to Google, the main reason for bounce rates is the slow loading speeds.
Large bounce rates = low traffic = lost money.
Small bounce rates = high traffic = more visibility = more exposure = more shares = more money.
Pretty easy right?
We have previously wrote an article about the advantages of having a mobile dedicated website. If you didn’t have the chance to read it, then now it’s the perfect time. Click here.
However, in this article we will focus on one of the most important aspect of having a website – the traffic. There are a tone of pieces of advice when it comes to increasing your traffic our there. Starting from creating great content, creating a catchy design to your page, using the perfect colour palettes until the footer at the end of the page.
You did all of them and there are still no improvements in your amount of traffic you have on your page right? Well, this might comte from the skeleton and basis of your website. Ask yourself the next question – is it a responsive mobile website? Probably yes. Let’s explain why and how it affects your amount of users.
The Reason
We’ll cut it to the chase – it’s all about the speed. You have the best content in the entire world, or the best organised website, right? But do you know how fast it loads? If not, make sure you put it through GT Metrix. Now, if you do have a responsive website and your GT metrix score is down, don’t worry, it’s normal. Not good, but normal. If you get a low score, that means you’re already having problems with your bounce rate. This means, your users are frustrated with, among things, the time it takes for your page to load.
Your responsive website has it’s basis in the desktop version. Even if it’s mobile first, there is still code there that is not needed on your mobile device. Code that optimises the design and functionality of the site in desktop/laptop/tablet view. It may be extremely great optimised for desktop. However, it loses from its capabilities when it comes to the mobile version. It’s like compressing a computer to the size of a phone and expect it to run the same.
Usually, responsive websites are WordPress built. It is indeed easier for you as a provider to edit it, but it makes it much harder for the user to actually enjoy your website. Maybe you don’t even need a WordPress theme for your type of business.
Let’s see an example:
Let’s take a restaurant as a business example. There is no dynamic content. That means you will not change the information on the website very often. You may have a landing page or a home page where you greet people. Then send them to a page when they can find the menus. You might want to have an “About us” page, an online appointment page and a contact page with all the information the customers need to know to come to you. And that’s about it. You may change your menus, but that will not be very often. This scenario can apply to actually a tone of businesses. Restaurants, Mechanics, Plumbing, Exterminators (bugs of course), Lawyers, Consulting Firms, and so on. Basically, if you edit your site once every 3-6 months, you don’t need a WordPress Theme (extra cost, extra hosting for performance, for something you don’t really need.)
Which is the best choice for me?
So, taking into consideration that you have static content, why should you compromise for speed when you can have the fastest website in the business. You can get the same result with your responsive page as well. All you need is a proper hosting package, a tone of experience to set it up. Or you can pay a freelancer. However, let’s not forget, these things don’t come cheap.
Take for example our website. Our yearly bill racks in the $$$$ – $$$$$ area, due to the large amount of items we have on preview. Moreover, there are the WordPress installs that have been optimised for insane performance. These don’t come cheap. But, we post content for you, we build new stuff and share it. This is how we make our living, so the cost is justified.
However, if you’re running a static site, where most of your customers walk through your door, and you need an online portfolio, a few bits of information about you and your business and some awesome web features to show off your work. Hence, a dedicated mobile website can do the work better. And it comes to many other advantages, see the article mentioned in the first paragraph. But most noteworthy, it will directly contribute to the speed. Hence the increase of your traffic and decrease of the bounce rate.
If we did not convince you yet, than maybe Facebook and You Tube will. Even if they do not have static content, they do have a dedicated mobile website. They know that the majority of their users come from a mobile device to their website. And they do not want to lose users or some features a responsive website forces you to let go.
Mobile devices are projected to reach 79% of global internet use by the end of 2018 and according to Google, 61% of users are unlikely to return to a site on mobile if they had trouble accessing it and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead.