If you work in the HVAC industry, getting more site traffic is probably high on your priority list. You may run promotional campaigns and invest in professional HVAC SEO services to capture website visitors. However, even a huge traffic boost won’t help you make a profit if many of your visitors bounce — that is, leave your site without taking any action.
What makes bounce rates climb, and how can you encourage more people to stay on your website? Learn how to decrease bounce rates using ten effective methods.
What Is a Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate is the percentage of actionless single-page session visits on your site out of your total visits. This simple bounce rate formula tells you how many of your site visitors leave without taking any action, like browsing your services, booking a call, or requesting a quote.
For example, let’s say 50 out of every 100 visitors click back or close the browser after arriving on your landing pages. They don’t engage with the page in any way (like filling out a form or clicking a call-to-action button), and it’s the only page they visit on your site. This would make your website’s bounce rate 50%.
Understanding the key difference between bounce rate and a related metric known as exit rate is important. While the bounce rate tells you how many visitors left the first page they landed on without engaging with it, the exit rate shows what percentage of your visitors left from a specific page. In the second scenario, the visitors may have also browsed other pages or taken action on your site. Thus, a bounce is always an exit, but not every exit is a bounce.
What Is the Average Bounce Rate for HVAC Websites?
You’ll always have some percentage of bouncing visitors, even with an attractive site offering intuitive navigation and a superb user experience. However, you should compare your website’s bounce rate with industry benchmarks and take action if you notice high percentages.
The average bounce rate for websites offering business and consumer services, like HVAC sites, hovers around 40%. Any numbers significantly above that mean you could benefit from a site audit to see how you might retain more visitors. Ignoring this in the hopes that customers flock to your site organically would be unwise.
Additionally, bounce rates will vary depending on the traffic source. For example, people who arrive on your site via ads will likely show a higher bounce rate than traffic from referral links. With Google Ads, you’ll typically see bounce rates between 40% and 60%. People who access your site from mobile devices are also likelier to bounce.
How To Track Your Bounce Rate in Google Analytics
How do you know whether your site has a good bounce rate or a suboptimal one? Google Analytics is a helpful tool for tracking your site’s bounce rate, among other key metrics. In the Landing Pages report, you’ll see a line graph showing your visitors over time. You can add the bounce metric to view trends and break them down by landing page and traffic source.
Why Are Your Bounce Rates Higher Than Usual?
Why would your site have a high bounce rate? This can happen for many reasons. Here are some of the most common ones:
- Slow loading times. People don’t have the patience to wait for pages to load. If your page load time is longer than a few seconds, your user experience will suffer, and the bounce rate will soar.
- Misleading title tags or meta descriptions. Users come to your site looking for specific content. If they don’t find what they need, they’ll click back after spending only a few seconds on one page.
- Technical errors and blank pages. If a page comes up blank or shows a 404 error message, you’ll see an overwhelmingly high bounce rate for that page.
- Bad referral links. We all love referral links, but they can increase your bounce rate if they send unqualified visitors to your site or use anchor texts that fail to describe your content properly.
- Low-quality pages. Your landing pages will have high bounce rates if they aren’t easily scannable, with relevant content, plenty of headers, and images or videos to break the text into more manageable blocks.
- Poor user experience. Visitors may leave if your site is too heavy on ads or popup call-to-action buttons or if your site search function is difficult to use. Consider asking a friend or two to navigate the site and give you feedback for improvement.
- Lack of optimization for mobile devices. Mobile traffic accounts for about 60% of web traffic worldwide. Your bounce and engagement rates will drop if your site displays poorly or loads too slowly on mobile.
An in-depth site audit will typically reveal these issues and help you determine ways to decrease bounce rates.
Why You Need a Good Bounce Rate
How much does it matter if your site has high bounce rates? Not all bounces are negative or point to a bad user experience. Depending on the search intent, it’s OK if a particular session starts and ends on the same page.
For example, let’s say someone finds your site as a search result for “When is the best time to schedule an HVAC inspection in my area?” If a blog post on your site gives an instant answer to this question, the user might not need to visit a second page or click any call-to-action buttons.
However, in most cases, a bad bounce rate shows that your site performance could be better. As a business owner, when a visitor lands on your site, you want to convert them into a client. To do that, you must increase user engagement and reduce your bounce rate.
Moreover, the issues that cause a high bounce rate may also harm search rankings for service and eCommerce sites. Slow loading, poor-quality content, and a bad mobile user experience may all push your site down in Google search results. Resolving these problems will help you reduce bounce rates, improve conversion rates, and rank higher than other sites.
How To Decrease Bounce Rate
How can you achieve a lower bounce rate? While there’s no magic solution, service sites with a good bounce rate often use the following strategies.
1. Audit and Improve Your Landing Pages
You need to understand what makes your site visitors bounce shortly after viewing a single page. You may get a nice traffic boost from ads and referrals, but a landing page does the heavy lifting of engaging and converting users.
Are your pages visually appealing and easy to scan? Is your content well written, up to date, and relevant to the audience you’re targeting? Does your color scheme provide enough contrast, even for users with visual handicaps?
A content upgrade could significantly reduce your bounce rate. Even something as simple as bullet points or images could make your pages more appealing. To improve readability, go for shorter sentences and paragraphs.
If you aren’t sure whether your pages need improvement, check your top-ranking competitors’ sites. This can give you ideas for making your content more engaging and improve a high bounce rate.
2. Create an Exit Intent Popup
While not everyone likes exit intent popups, they can help recapture visitors and reduce bounce rates. Besides, you have nothing to lose by incorporating these popups since they target users who would leave anyway.
Exit intent popups typically appear when a mouse cursor moves toward the X button (for desktop users) or when a user presses the Back button (on mobile). These popups should grab website visitors’ attention and entice them to spend more time on your site and/or answer a call to action. For example: “Wait! Would you like 25% off HVAC maintenance and repairs for an entire year? Enter your email to get your coupon code.”
3. Optimize Your Site for Mobile Devices
If you provide HVAC services, most of your visitors will be local mobile users who value fast, concise information. User intent may differ: Some visitors may look for HVAC repair and be ready to book a service call, while others may research HVAC systems or upgrades they plan to buy.
When a mobile visitor clicks your link, you need the page to load quickly and show clear, compelling content that leads to a conversion event. Your website should employ a mobile-first, responsive design. Choose mobile-friendly fonts, buttons, and menus, and make your site clean and inviting on a small screen to reduce bounce rates.
Since mobiles have more compact screens than desktops or tablets, you should focus on displaying your most important content for the best user experience. It’s often better to drop some non-essential page elements to achieve a cleaner, less cluttered display on mobile.
4. Prioritize Fast Loading
Your pages should load fast on all devices, or you’ll lose visitors. Different web analytics tools can check your page’s speed and give you a target to aim for when recalibrating your site with loading times in mind.
There are a few ways to help pages load more quickly. Sometimes, switching to a better web host is all you need to improve loading speed. If you run a WordPress website, check your plugins and remove those you don’t use. If a certain plugin slows down your site, look for an alternative plugin that does the same job.
Use a content delivery network (CDN) for your image files. A CDN uses caching and chooses the servers nearest the visitor to optimize image delivery and improve load times.
5. Check Your CTAs
Do your pages feature a prominent and clear call to action? The CTA should depend on the user interaction you’re hoping to achieve. Your most valuable target audience probably consists of local people who need an HVAC technician right now. However, maybe you’re promoting your annual maintenance program or trying to boost the number of subscribers to your newsletter.
A welcome popup can be an effective way to get your CTA in front of visitors’ eyes. Be careful with popups, though, since many people hate them. A popup should offer instant value (like “Book your free inspection today” or “Get 30% off all upgrades”). Popups should also be easy to exit if the user wants to continue browsing.
6. Add Internal Links
You should also include strategic links to your other pages. This will encourage people to visit multiple pages on your site and stay around longer. If a visitor reads a blog post or checks your service page, an internal link allows you to offer related information. Confirm that all links open in a new tab so users can easily flip between pages.
Internal linking could help reduce bounce rates and boost your Google rankings. A site with a solid internal linking structure will be easier for Google to crawl and index. Internal links can also improve page authority.
7. Enhance User Experience
A poor user experience and a high bounce rate go hand in hand. Top-notch UX will help you achieve a low bounce rate and simplify conversion rate optimization.
When users open your page, they should see an easily navigable service website that displays all key information at a glance. Service sections, products, and Request Quote buttons should all be clearly visible, or users will bounce. Also, include a convenient search option for visitors looking for something more specific that may not appear on your main navigational menu.
8. Evaluate Your Design and Branding
Your site’s design should convey professionalism, credibility, and the brand values you want to broadcast to your visitors. Anything less does you and your potential customers a disservice.
Color psychology also matters: People typically associate red with heat and blue with cooling systems. Blue is also a color that projects trustworthiness and reliability, making it a popular choice for HVAC sites. Green, brown, and beige are other colors often associated with trust and can work well for service pages.
9. Include Video Content
Videos work like a charm to keep users engaged and lower your bounce rate. You could add a sleek and professional video showcasing your company and your work or a more down-to-earth video in which loyal clients share their experience working with your business.
As an HVAC professional, you could also create guide videos (e.g., “How Can You Spot a Refrigerant Leak?”) that underline your authority and let potential clients know they can trust your expertise.
10. Target the Right Audience
When you’re an HVAC pro, getting lots of traffic matters less than attracting the right traffic. You can lower bounce rates by catering to your core audience.
With HVAC sites, this often means creating highly location-specific content. For example, you don’t want to attract out-of-state visitors if you serve one county or metropolitan area. These people may click your link, but if they’re looking for a technician, they’ll see you don’t serve their area and leave your site.
Using the right keywords for your content is critical. When aiming to rank for certain keywords, ensure your content delivers what the user expects. The more on-topic your page is, the likelier your visitors are to find what they’re looking for and follow a call to action.
Capture More Clients With Superpower SEO by Relentless Digital
At Relentless Digital, we help your HVAC site turn visitors into clients. Our campaigns cover all the important SEO metrics, including organic traffic, click-through rates, and conversions.
Are you interested in decreasing your bounce rate and growing your customer base? Contact us today to book a strategy session.
