by: Jessica Davis

Many companies of all sizes struggle with high bounce rates and low click-through rates. The reasons why consumers do what they do is the million dollar question and millions of dollars are spent every year to answer that question. Getting visitors to click on the various pages available on your website is the key to getting that sought after “conversion” and without that next click a conversion is only a dream.

While the reasons why visitors do or do not make that next click can be numerous, there are several checks that can be done on a website to improve the likelihood that a visitor will continue deeper into the site.

Message = Page Topic

It is imperative that the message behind all marketing drive-to efforts match the information found on all landing pages. Offering “A” and delivering “B” when a visitors clicks a link to your website can deter a “next click” and hence end your chance at a conversion. Never use marketing messages that could be taken in different ways, be direct and honest with your messages. When visitors land on your website, they should get exactly what they expected.

Call to Action Exists

Once a visitor has landed on a webpage, there should be some sort of “call to action”. A call to action can be a link, a video, a button or something that makes the visitor want to take action at that very moment. Even if it is a link inviting them to browse the site, visit the products page or complete the contact form. The visitor must have some type of action to take after receiving the intended message.

Prominent Call to Action

Simply having a call to action is not enough. The call to action should be prominent and visitors must automatically know what to do when seeing it. If using a button, place the button in an area of the website where the visitor will not over look it and make it large enough so that it doesn’t just look like an image.

Although these are some very good points, this is by no means meant to be the complete answer. If you are having major issues getting visitors to explore your website or convert, you may want to think about have a root cause analysis completed on your website to find trouble spots. Having major issues on your website is like having a broken pipe, water may still be trickling through your faucet, but the amount of water being wasted can cost you major!