10 Tips to Reduce Bounce Rate on Your Law Firm’s Website

Picture this: Your law firm hosts an open house event at the office to attract new clients.

Employees spend weeks planning the party, allotting time and money on invitations, decorations and food.

The day of the event, guests are lined up outside the door. Your law firm is pleased with the turnout; after all, a lot of work was involved in getting people to come.

When the party begins, the guests file in through the door. Many of them, however, take a few steps inside only to turn around and leave.

They bounced.

Likewise, your law firm’s website records those types of short-lived interactions from users every day.

That record is called the bounce rate, or the percentage of visitors who leave a website after just viewing one page.

For most websites, the goal is to keep users clicking and reading for as long as possible. Therefore, if the bounce rate is high, then you can reasonably infer that either visitors did not find what they wanted or the website was too hard to navigate.

To be sure, part of the bounce rate coincides with users who were happy with the website and found what they needed from it right away. Many blogs, for example, have high bounce rates because visitors often go straight to the post they were looking for, read it and leave.

Nonetheless, taking steps to decrease the bounce rate can increase your user’s engagement on the website, which can ultimately lead to more clients that sign with your firm. Read on for 10 quick tips on how to get people to not only come to your website but stay.

1. Concentrate on good design
Leading behavior science researchers studied thousands of web users and discovered the average person judges a site based on its looks more than its content. Your law firm could have useful information, but if it is not presented in an aesthetically appealing way, then visitors may not perceive your website as authoritative.

2. Make things easy to read
Choose fonts that users can read on their screens with no extra effort and make sure the size of the text does not require visitors to zoom. When laying out copy, break up large blocks of text into smaller chunks. Employ headings, subheads and bullet points wherever you can.

3. Make your website mobile responsive
Bounce rates are often higher when people access websites via their mobile phones. All sites should have a responsive design so visitors’ experiences seamlessly transition from desktop to phone to tablet.

4. Open links in new tabs
When you include an internal or external link, command the page to open in a new tab automatically. This results in users staying on your website longer and potentially having multiple pages in their browsers up at one time.

5. Add a search bar
Search bars help direct users to the information they are looking for if they did not arrive at the right page. Include a search bar that can be accessed on every page and make it easy to spot.

6. Decrease page load time
People have short attention spans. If they have to wait an inordinate amount of time for a page to load, then they may be tempted to give up and look for a different source. Always know how long it takes for your content to appear and, if necessary, implement changes to speed up the load time.

7. Avoid popups
By and large, people hate pop-ups. They are the internet’s way of interrupting a user. More often than not, they will do more harm than good for your website.

8. Include a persuasive call-to-action
Help direct your users by leading them to the thing you want them to click on, e.g., what will most likely lead them to call your firm and ask for your legal team’s help. Make the call-to-action clear and visible from every page.

9. Rid your website of broken links
Sites that are older or link to other outlets, in particular, should check for broken links, URLs that no longer work. Visitors get frustrated when they click on links that take them nowhere.

10. Create new content
Give users a reason to return by consistently updating your website with fresh copy. Just remember, whenever you generate a new page or post, keep the above tips in mind.