How important is the look of your website? In today’s world where people use the internet for everything the first impression of your website can be the difference between a consumer choosing you or your competitor. When a potential customer first sees your website the first thing they see can have a big influence on whether they stay on your website and surf around to learn more about your company or if they close it right away and search for one of your competitors on Google. This is what we call a bounce and this is what makes up the bounce rate.

As the owner or manager of a business your goal should be to keep the bounce rate as low as possible. Although it may seem fairly obvious, if the bounce rate of your website is really high that means most people that visit your website will leave without doing anything. How do you drive traffic to your stores or have people make a purchase on your website if they leave without even clicking to another page?

For example take a look below at the four iterations of the Gaba Travel website. How long would you stay on each of the following iteration? Would you go to another page on that each of those iterations?

Pre-2012 Website:

2012 – 2013 Website:

2014 – 2015 Website:

2015 onwards website:

Our testing has shown that almost nobody stayed on the pre-2012 website but who can blame them, the colour scheme was not very attractive, the home page is filled with lines of outdated code. I myself would not stay on that website. As the website improved, so did the bounce rate. With every iteration of the website, the bounce rate has been decreasing tremendously, not only because of Website Usability but also because of pure aesthetics. Looks really do matter because the look of your website is the first impression you make on your potential client. If that first impression is not a good one, you may have just lost that potential client forever.

Don’t forget that you only have 7 seconds to make a strong first impression. “Everybody knows how important first impressions are. But not everybody knows that the “first impression” is actually only a seven second window upon first meeting someone.” (Business Insider)