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You have invested time, money and creative energy in your small law firm’s digital marketing and law firm’s website. It was designed to inform potential clients and draw them in to virtually “meet” you and your law firm through various pages on your site. When a visitor browses only one page of your law firm’s website before turning back to the search engine, this overly brief visit is called a “bounce.” Your law firm website’s bounce rate (and Google Analytics) records the way visitors view your site, and if they consistently exit after viewing only one page, these interactions increase the “bounce rate” for your law firm’s website. Since you want potential clients to thoroughly navigate your site and see all that you have to offer, the lower the bounce rate, the better.
But, here is the IMPORTANT part: Reducing your law firm website’s bounce rate means that Google will serve you up before other law firm websites!
You can take steps to make your site more hospitable and accessible to visitors, and reduce the bounce rate for your law firm’s website.
Your Law Firm Website’s Bounce Rate
Your first step is to understand a bit more about bounce rates and how they impact your law firm’s overall SEO (search engine optimization) and your ability to get to the top of Google.
Web Analytics
If you are not already employing web analytics, consider doing it immediately. In the midst of all of the data provided is the bounce rate statistic, which documents the visitors who exit your site after viewing only one page. The bounce rate is figured by dividing the amount of visitors who exit after viewing only one page by the total amount of visits to the website. A bounce rate of 75% means that three-quarters of the website visitors left after viewing one page only, and the other 25% of viewers stayed on your small or solo law firm’s website to look around. A high bounce rate says that your website (or some of its pages) needs improvement in the areas of user experience, page design or content quality.
Making Sense of the Data
A law firm website’s bounce rate can be high on certain websites because visitors never intended to stay; they simply wanted quick information, which they found before quickly taking off. However, if the bounce rate for your law firm’s website is high, you can often assume that visitors found the website difficult to navigate, or they did not find what they needed. Looking at the bounce rate along with other website stats can tell a more complete story; if visitors consistently spend a small amount of time on your site (ten seconds or less), this is another clue that your website might need some improvement. A bounce rate of 50% or less is optimal. A bounce rate of 50%-70% says that your site may need some tweaking to make it more effective, and if the bounce rate for your law firm’s website is 80% or higher, this can mean that some improvements are needed, including:
- More compelling and valuable website content
- Speed of page loading
- Ease of mobile navigation
- Greater optimization for search engines
- Traffic funneled to the proper pages
7 Ways to Reduce Your Law Firm’s Website Bounce Rate
You likely have a strategy and an online marketing strategy for your small law firm to get visitors to your website. The goal of most websites is to gather guests and convince them to click around and linger (with the eventual hope that they will contact the law firm!) When it comes to your law firm’s website, the objective is to keep a visitor adequately engaged so you can introduce yourself, inform them of your services, and inspire them to contact you as a new client. Here are 7 simple ways to welcome potential clients to your site and woo them to stay awhile.
Excellent Website Design
Researchers who study website data have discovered that the average website visitor judges a website (and perhaps the company behind it) by its appearance. You may have an awesome team, helpful information, and outstanding professional services, but your website visitors will never know if they exit your website too quickly.
Additions like images, videos and infographics can help support the written content, and multimedia inserts grab the attention and help decorate your site in an engaging way. If your law firm’s website design does not look artistically pleasing, visitors might be tempted to take off and look elsewhere, so give serious thought to the aesthetics of your website.
Distraction-Free Reading
When inserting information, make sure you break up big slabs of text into bite-sized smaller chunks. Use restful white space and bullets to make reading effortless, and use bold headings and subheadings to make your website easier to scan and understand.
Website pages are most effective when they are undistracted and focused. The best landing page gives your visitors direction and guidance without distracting ads and cluttering material. In general, people despise pop-ups and sliders. These can feel like screaming interruptions, and instead of helping your law firm’s website, they are possibly harming it.
Vibrant Content
Your visitors need a reason to return to your law firm’s website, so give them fresh copy, images and information. Know your audience and create content with users in mind — that means avoiding legal jargon. One of the best things you can do to offer vibrant, relevant content to your visitors is to outsource the content writing for your law firm’s website. Why? Here are a few reasons:
- Saves valuable time
- Increased flexibility and better quality
- Fast delivery
- Content written by professional writers gets better results
- More cost-efficient than hiring an in-house team of writers
- The writing is not only informative, but also is written specifically to increase your overall SEO
Mobile-Friendly and Responsive Pages
Your law firm’s bounce rate may be elevated because mobile phone users have difficulty handling your site on a mobile device. Confirm that your website is responsive to mobile users, and that visitors can smoothly transition from phone to desktop and back again.
Fast Page Loading
Attention spans are getting shorter, and our tolerance for website annoyances is tiny.
If your website takes a long time to load, people will probably move on and look somewhere else. Google analyzed millions of landing pages and confirmed that slow-loading pages have higher bounce rates. Besides putting off potential clients, page loading speed is a key Google ranking factor, and should be a priority.
Search Bar and Healthy Links
Including a search bar on every page of your law firm’s website can be helpful, so make it easy to spot on every page. Your site should be periodically checked for old and broken links or URLs that do not function properly, because this can be frustrating for visitors.
Powerful Call to Action
Assist your visitors by directing them to what you want them to see — the core reason that will convince them to call you and ask for your law firm’s help. A call to action is essentially a message that tries to induce a visitor to perform some favorable action. Without a call to action, a website visitor might leave purpose behind and drift away. Make your call to action clear and unavoidable on every page of your website.
What Is an Acceptable Bounce Rate for Websites?
Most websites experience bounce rates between 26%-70%. Generally, law firm websites’ bounce rates between 26%-40% are excellent, while those between 41%-55% perform similarly to other websites. If a law firm website’s bounce rate is between 56%-70%, this has a higher bounce rate than the average website. Despite this, websites with these bounce rates may not necessarily be performing poorly, although this depends on the specific type of website. Any website that has a bounce rate of 70% or more is generally disappointing unless it is a blog, news site, or events page, whereby the page’s purpose is to educate the user before they leave.
When a website’s bounce rate is greater than 50%, this normally means that it is a good idea to take a closer look at the elements of your law firm’s website, or content, which might be contributing to the high bounce rate. It is key to note, though, that a bounce rate of 60% or more may not be disastrous, depending on the website, which is why you may want to set a specific baseline for your law firm’s website.
Setting Your Own Bounce Rate Baseline
According to Convertica, many people view bounce rates as a number to improve or reduce, regardless of the circumstances. Instead of concerning yourself with the bounce rates of other websites, set your own bounce rate baseline that specifically relates to law firm websites, and try to improve it by focusing on certain areas that are not the website’s news section or blog. To do this, consider the intentions of your website’s users, alongside your content’s purpose. For instance, websites that focus on events may often have high bounce rates, as their users only really want to learn certain information before leaving, such as the event’s date, time, and location. In this scenario, it is perfectly fine to have a high bounce rate as the website is meeting the users’ needs regardless of this statistic.
Consider Bounce Rates for Mobile Devices
When thinking about acceptable bounce rates for a law firm’s websites, it is also important to take mobile devices into account. Usually, these users move between websites more often than desktop users, so if your law firm website experiences lots of mobile traffic, it is likely the website may have a higher bounce rate as a result. These websites may experience bounce rates that are between 10%-20% more than websites with predominately desktop traffic, meaning it might not necessarily be an indicator of a poor-performing website.
Very Low or High Bounce Rates
Usually, a very low bounce rate below 20% or an extremely high bounce rate of 90% or more indicates that something needs correcting quickly with your law firm’s website. A very low bounce rate suggests there might be an issue with how you have implemented your website’s analytics setup, which may require external help to resolve, whereas a very high bounce rate signifies that there may be a problem with the website itself. For websites with extremely high bounce rates, this can indicate tracking code issues or browser compatibility problems. Additionally, poor web design might be causing this, such as a lack of helpful content or internal and external links.
Let Law Quill Help Your Law Firm’s Website Bounce Rate
Your law firm’s website is one of the most important tools for your business, but when visitors come and go too quickly, your law firm website is not being used to its fullest potential. If you want to reduce your law firm website’s bounce rate, start by looking at the analytics and set some goals for improvement. By taking a few easy steps, you can engage visitors more effectively, inspire them to contact you, and add new clients to your expanding schedule. Law Quill can help you by creating engaging, informative and useful content throughout your law firm’s website to help your potential clients stay longer, see you as an authority in your field of law, and eventually pick up the phone and call you. Contact Law Quill today at Support@LawQuill.com or set up an appointment at your convenience for a free consultation and learn how you can increase your SEO and have better Google rankings today.
