If your B2B website’s homepage has a high bounce rate, it could be causing numerous issues for your business such as losing out on prospects. High bounce rates could also negatively affect the SEO ranking of your site or could be a factor in losing ROI for paid ads. According to Brafton’s content marketing benchmarketing report, the average bounce rate for a B2B homepage is 60% - so if your homepage is getting much higher than this, there’s a problem. However, there is a solution. Here are seven ways you can reduce your bounce rate on your B2B homepage:

Use consistent language in all your messaging
Write relevant headings and sub-headings based on what a user might be looking for
Do thorough research about your personas and market
Make sure CTAs are easily visible on pages
Hyper-personalise your content to make them more relevant to buyers
Make sure your website is responsive
Fix your website’s speed and loading issues

If your current B2B website isn’t performing and isn’t getting you the leads that you need, it could be down to your website’s bounce rate. This bounce rate could indicate different things such as:

The right audience isn’t finding your site
The right audience isn’t being targeted
The messaging on the homepage doesn’t match the messaging from the source

When visitors come to your site, it only takes a few seconds for them to make up their mind about your website. If they don’t like what they see, or they become frustrated by a lack of good user experience, they’ll bounce off your website and go elsewhere. When this happens, it means you’ve now lost out on a potential opportunity to have that visitor engage with your brand and convert.

Read the rest of the blog where we explain some of the most common mistakes people make on their homepage and how you can fix them to reduce your bounce rate and start getting the leads your business needs.

Content doesn’t match what the user was expecting
Content isn’t easily scannable
You’re not targeting the right people
Not having clear signposting to the next steps
Content isn’t relevant
Your site isn’t optimised for mobile
Your homepage loads too slowly

Content doesn’t match what the user was expecting

When a user types something into a search engine like Google, the search engine will attempt to bring back relevant results based on that user’s search intent. When a user clicks a link, they expect to be met with the content they were looking for. However, if when they arrive on the page and the messaging is completely different, it will only frustrate that user and they will go to another website instead. If they are landing on, and then immediately leaving, your page, this means a higher bounce rate.

Fix: Make sure that the messaging on the page matches the messaging a user has seen in the search engine results, your social media messages, adverts etc. and be sure to use the same or similar language.

Content isn’t easily scannable

People tend to scan text very quickly, especially if they’re short on time. Users want to be able to quickly determine if what they’ve found is the right type of content before they become invested in reading text in more detail. If your content isn’t easily scannable, they’re much more likely to bounce off the page.

Fix: As users aren’t likely to take the time to read everything on a page, make sure to write headings and sub-headings that relate to what the user is looking for and don’t make them strain to work out what your content is about.

You’re not targeting the right people

Getting lots of traffic to your homepage sounds like a great idea, but in actual fact, this could be detrimental to your bounce rate. If all you’re getting is the wrong people coming to your homepage, they won’t be interested in what you have to offer and will be less likely to engage or convert - all contributing to a high bounce rate as a result.

Fix: Do thorough persona and market research to understand exactly who you want to be targeting and who you want to be selling to. This way, you can make sure that everything you’re offering is targeted only to those types of persona who actually want to interact and buy from you.

your user journey is unclear

There’s nothing worse than landing on a company’s homepage and not knowing where to go next. If your navigation is confusing or a user is unable to find what they need easily - you guessed it - they bounce, and your rate goes up.

Fix: You want to ensure that you’re guiding users to where they need to go, providing them with a smooth user journey. Make your primary calls-to-action (CTAs) and CTAs to key services easily visible on the homepage so users can navigate around the site.

Tip: If you feel you’ve already correctly placed your CTAs and users aren’t still converting, conduct remote online user research sessions using sites like UserTest.IO or whatusersdo, install analytic software such as Hotjar or Crazy Egg, or hire an inbound website consultancy to analyse why people aren’t clicking.

Content isn’t relevant

Not all content will be relevant to your personas, especially if you offer a diverse set of services and/or products. Additionally, if your personas are at different stages of the buyer’s journey, they’ll only want to see content relevant to them. If all your content comes across as too generic on your homepage, you’ll be in danger of losing prospects.

Fix: Use a CMS that can allow you to write Smart Content to provide more relevant information to target different personas and provide unique messaging where required.

Your site isn’t optimised for mobile

More B2B consumers are now using mobile devices in all markets and are steadily growing. As such, 42% of B2B researchers use mobile during their purchasing process and Google has reported a 3X growth in mobile queries. Therefore, if a prospect lands on a homepage which hasn’t been properly optimised for mobile, this could certainly impact the bounce rate significantly.

Fix: Ensure your whole website has been optimised and has a responsive theme - include everything from your landing pages, emails, and your core offerings. Additionally, don’t leave your mobile site out of your testing strategy - it’s vital to ensure that everything is fully optimised for different device types and browsers. You should also use a CDN and CMS to help distribute your images at a smaller file size.

Your homepage loads too slowly

Slow loading websites have a 72% higher bounce rate than fast loading websites. If your homepage takes even a few seconds too long to load, a user will definitely bounce off in frustration and go to another site which does load as quickly as they expect.

Fix: Check your website speed using the following tools and see what you might need to tweak to make sure your website is as efficient as possible:

Conclusion

Improving the bounce rate of your homepage is absolutely vital to your business. If you take on board the advice in our blog, you can investigate if you’ve made sure that every element has been optimised in the best way possible to ensure successful lead generation. The more you can reduce your homepage bounce rate, the more you can improve your rankings in the search engine as well as your brand’s authority and credibility.