For example, imagine your website is an open box, and a visitor is a bouncy ball. If you were to throw that ball into the box, chances are it would ‘bounce’ out of the box (or your website) as soon as it enters. Obviously this is a bad thing, since you want visitors to stay or interact with your website, rather than immediately ‘bounce’ out. The same applies if someone goes to your website and does nothing for a long period of time. The assumption is that a bounce is counted when a) someone leaves your site immediately, b) someone goes to your site, and does not click on any buttons or pages for a long time.

The Bounce Rate is the percentage of people who fall under one of the two categories above. Therefore the lower your bounce rate, the better it is for your website. Usually, a bounce rate below 50% is considered decent, and anything above should probably be addressed.

Over the past few months, evidence has indicated that Google may be using bounce rate as a measure of how relevant or reliable a website is for its visitors. As a result, Google may be using this measure to determine where a website ranks. Obviously, this means that it’s in the best interest of website owners to lower their bounce rates as low as possible.

There are some easy tips that can be followed in order to encourage visitors to interact with your website, browse your inner pages, and therefore lower the bounce rate. While it may take plenty of testing and experimenting to improve your conversion rate, you can start with these small steps:

Page Speed

Make sure your website loads quickly. Just like Google loves speedy websites, people like their images and content to load in time. If it takes more than a few seconds to load your homepage, chances are people are going to leave before giving you a chance. Start off by asking your web developer if your website code is properly optimized, or if your images are compressed well enough for slower internet connections. A great tool to measure how fast your website loads is http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/.

Simple is better

Some say that when designing a homepage or landing page, it’s best to design the site as if it was geared towards a 5 year old child. That is, make it INCREDIBLY easy to follow, regardless of the nature of the business. Therefore, think of items that are present on your page that may not be 100% relevant to the customers expectations and remove them. Make your services very evident by using larger fonts in headers, less words and bullet points to segment your content. Not only will this encourage people to want to read more (and therefore click on a page of your site and lower your bounce rate), but it’s a good way to begin optimizing the conversion rate of your online business.

Understand the expectations of your visitors

It may be tempting to make your site as effective as possible by giving people the option to purchase a product from the very beginning. For example, you may be tempted to have your homepage look like a newspaper advertisement, showcasing your product via an image and having a large button that says “BUY NOW”. However, new visitors to your site may not be ready to purchase your product, instead, they’re looking for more information about the benefits and features of your products. By being hit with calls to purchase without clear indicators where they can find more information, they may get disinterested and look for information elsewhere. There’s no problem offering purchasing call-to-actions on the homepage, but make it easy for them to look for more information (on sub-pages)  before purchasing.

As you can see, the first steps to decreasing your bounce rate are all about taking some time to think about your visitors expectations. People want fast, simple and relevant websites. If you have fulfill these expectations while also making your site optimized for your intended purposes, you can begin to gain great success in both conversions and SEO.

We could all talk about how to triple the number of visitors through various online marketing sources or sending out more emails to prospects, but the best way to increase the number of conversions for your services or products is by providing tons of value. There’s nothing wrong with having thousands of visitors running across your website every day, but it’s how you optimize their experiences that make it worth your while. Many make the mistake of primarily focusing on driving boatloads of traffic and hoping a percentage take a particular action, whether it is a sale or an email opt-in. Sure, that will probably make you a quick buck, but you’re probably going to have to repeatedly find new prospects.

So what is the best way to maximize your online conversions?

Easy. Create a relationship with them and nurture them. Don’t consider your prospects as customers, but more as friends you want to help. If you think of it that way, you’re more likely to say “Hey, here’s a bunch of stuff you should check out, I think it will help you or your business and if you like it, send me some more money to help me out and I’ll make it worth your while” instead of shoving a bunch of stuff down their throats and hoping one will take the “bait”.

It takes a lot more work to develop and grow these relationships, but in the long run, you’ll be much more successful in your campaigns and your audience will put their trust in you. They won’t feel you are trying to scam them or use them. With their trust, you can continue to provide them with value and they will know whatever you deliver to them, it will be phenomenal and they can’t wait to get their hands on it.

So even if your prospects are online instead of in person or over the phone, make that effort because it’ll be a breath of fresh air to find someone online who actually wants to help.