5 Design Tips to Get People to Stay on Your Website - UPDATED FOR 2021

Updated for 2021

Have you ever gone through your website analytics and come across a bounce rate percentage of 85% and thought to yourself: Why is it so high?

Let me take you back to help you understand what bounce rate actually means.

If you find that your website has a high bounce rate, there are generally two main reasons why this may have been the case:

• The visitor was unable to find what they were looking for; or
• They found that your website was too difficult to navigate, so they became frustrated and left

In my experience, I have often left websites due to it being difficult to navigate. To address this issue, I place a lot of trust in my UX Designers when developing new websites for my clients. UX is a term for User Experience and these guys can help you get things right for your clients from day one.

So, what actually contributes to a bounce rate?

A visitor to your website can 'bounce' in the following ways:

• Clicking the back button to leave the site
• Typing in a new URL
• Clicking on a page link that directs them to a different website
• Closing a browser or tab
• A session timeout has occurred

So what can be done to improve this?

Well... there are a number of ways to improve bounce rates. 

Average bounce rates differ depending on the type of website or page it is. For instance, a service website has lower rates than retail websites do, as do content pages in comparison to lead generation pages. The general goal, however, is to have a bounce rate of anything lower than 50%. It is important to analyse your website and improve upon this figure to ensure you're providing customers with what they want and need. To do this, use best practices and A/B testing.

I am going to approach this from a Website Design perspective and give my 5 top tips below:

     1. Remove Pop-Ups

One of the first things I would advise when creating a new website is not to have a pop up on the site. From a user perspective, they are irritating and simply just drive people away from your website. In addition, it is best to remove music which plays automatically when a page is loaded. You can have helpful pop-ups that are no-intrusive at a delayed rate, to ensure that the viewer has become accustomed to the site and gets a pop-up that is relevant to their needs. 

     2. Attract the Right Users

Time and time again websites are losing people because they are not providing them with the right content. Ensure that you have each page optimized correctly from an SEO perspective. This will ensure that you are attracting the people that are interested in your products or services. Chances are, if they land on the right page they will stay longer. The goal is for each user who visits your site to have an engaging user experience that fulfill their needs. 

     3. Have a Responsive Website

Using Google Analytics you can track what percentage of people are landing on your website from mobile devices. The UAE has one of the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world. 91% of the population uses the internet on their mobile device from almost 8 hours on average per day. This is a total of 8.75 million people. If your website is not mobile responsive, the user has to pinch and scroll to navigate and more often than not, will end up frustrated and leave. In addition to this, speed is important, so ensure that your website does not lag when loading. 

        4. Color Contrast

The end user on your website can easily become bored and distracted. Having color contrasts can make the page engaging and hold the users attention longer. In fact, the correct use of color contrast can make a dull looking page come to life. Try and use color to attract the user to important points on the page, such as highlighting a call to action or the very crucial search bar - people want to find what they need with ease. 

       5. Don't be Afraid to Make Design Changes