Your Website Isn’t Broken. Your Messaging Is.

Why your bounce rate is high, your traffic’s flatlining, and what to do about it.

Let’s start with a hard truth: most websites don’t have a traffic problem. They have a messaging problem.

I know this because I’ve seen it across client sites, and yes, even on my own. You check your site stats hoping for good news. And what do you get? A bounce rate that’s climbing, a homepage that doesn’t convert, and blog posts read by three people and a search engine bot.

It’s not that people aren’t visiting. It’s that they show up, take one look, and go: “Nope.”

Your homepage should do one job: tell people who you are, what you do, and what they should do next.

Most don’t. Most try to do seventeen things at once. Or worse, they say nothing. Just “Welcome to our website” and some vague fluff about synergy and value-driven offerings.

If someone has to guess what you do, they won’t bother. If they land on a blog that hits hard but you give them nowhere to go after, they’re gone.

Let me give you an example — mine.

Like a lot of small business owners, I create content that works. My blog posts get read, shared, and people stay on the page. One recent post held attention for nearly seven minutes. That’s not skimming, that’s reading.

But here’s the honest part. My site is still fairly new. It takes time to see how a website performs and where people drop off. The content is doing its job. The site structure is being refined based on real data. Not because anything was broken, but because this is how smart businesses evolve. You test. You tweak. You improve.

You don’t need to rebrand. You don’t need to hire a web designer for four grand. You need to say the right thing to the right person, right away.

Try this: one clear message above the fold. No fluff. No waffling. Internal links in your blog that guide people to your services, not just your feelings. A “next step” at the end of every post, even if it’s just “If this resonated, read this next.”

Make your website feel like someone walking them through a conversation. Not a lost-and-found bin of content.

People don’t come back later. They don’t have a quick look around. They click, skim, and either click again or bounce.

Your job isn’t to impress them. It’s to connect. Quickly.

If your traffic’s doing laps and your bounce rate’s doing gymnastics, don’t panic. Start simple.

Look at your homepage like a stranger. Does it make sense? Would you stay? Is there a reason to?

Start there.

You’re not broken. Your site just needs to say what you actually mean.