We all know that driving potential residents to your apartment website is just half the battle, the other half is keeping them there. 

I’ve found that many apartment websites will have high entrance traffic but also an equally high exit or bounce rate. Unfortunately, getting a lot of people to your property website is meaningless if they don’t stay long enough to absorb the important information necessary to take the next step. This next step could be scheduling a tour, adding the property name to their list of potential rentals, or keeping the tab open to return to the website at a later time. 

You may be viewing your homepage and thinking that everything looks good, which it probably does, but there could be small things that aren’t keeping people on the page. 

Here are the top reasons I have found as to why potential residents leave an apartment website quickly:

Reason #1: They don’t quickly see what they’re looking for.

One of the major benefits of the multifamily industry is that our “customers” are almost always searching for our “product” with a very high intent level. One doesn’t often browse for apartments the way you scroll through the on-sale shoe page while procrastinating on work. When a user enters your property website, it’s because they are looking for and/or need a new place to rent, usually within the next 3-5 months. 

That being said, high intent does not equal patience. 

Even if the need to move to a new apartment is urgent, if a potential renter doesn’t see what they are looking for within the first 15 seconds (average time of being on a website), they will likely exit out and keep on searching.

To reduce this occurrence, it’s extremely important to ensure that all of your property’s important information (everything a potential resident could be looking for) is near the top of your homepage or the page most of your traffic goes to. 

This starts with having a clear and defined navigation (nav) bar. The nav bar should be on the top, the right-hand, or left-hand side of your homeage and offer tabs that link to every single one of your website’s pages (i.e., amenities, floorplans, etc.). 

As well, the top of your homepage should display the location of your property, the type of property (luxury, affordable, modern), and how residents can easily contact you. 

Reason #2: There are no property images above the fold.

I know we all know how important high-quality apartment images are, but the placement of those images is equally important and worth improving when you can. 

If you’re not versed with web design terminology, when something is “above the fold” it means that it’s positioned in the upper half of a web page and visible to the user without needing to scroll. 

We live in an age where seeing is believing — and residents need to see your property. 

To be blunt, words do nothing without strong images next to or preceding them. A potential resident won’t believe the claims your property makes (being a luxury high-rise, having a beautiful design, etc.) unless there are images to back it up.

The moment a potential resident enters your website, you want them to be engaged with images of your property. 

Not only does this fact apply your homepage but also every page on your website. If anything, a user may say on your page just to look at the images and then come across something that intrigues them to start reading or scrolling down the page. 

Reason #3: They are overwhelmed. 

This reason is sort of the opposite of the first two reasons. There is such a thing as having too much on your pages. 

It’s quite annoying how you can so easily have too many words, too many pictures, or too many pop-ups on your web pages. 

It’s a slippery slope when you want to showcase everything about your property on your website — it’s truly a balancing act. 

In all honesty, the only pop-ups the homepage of your apartment website should have is the one discussed below or a contact chatbox; anything else can be weaved into the copy to have a separate landing page. 

Additionally, the optimal word count of an apartment homepage is 1,000. You can have more for SEO improvement, however, users will not read that much. 

Reason #4: No pop-up lease special. 

This is more about keeping potential residents on your website longer rather than a specific reason they are leaving. 

That being said, many residents are looking for rent and apartment fee deals during COVID-19, they almost expect it these days, so it’s possible when they don’t see a special offer, they move onto a property that does have one. 

Obviously, your property won’t always be able to offer a special deal, but whenever you do, make sure that you install a pop-up that promotes that offer once a user has been on the page for more than three seconds. 

This will intrigue them and entice them to find out how much they can save and what they’ll be getting at your property.

Reason #5: Your site is too slow to load. 

I may be singing a really old tune to your right now with this last reason, but a quick load time is only going to get more important as the years go on and technology continues to advance. 

Here are some statistics: 

• 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less.
• 40% abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. 
• A one-second delay or three seconds of waiting decreases customer satisfaction by around 16%. 

Let me pose the question to you: how often have you exited a website when it didn’t load or you felt like the whole page was loading very slowly? 

Even though a slow load time can often mean a complex web page design, in consumer’s minds, a slow load time equals an outdated website, and therefore, not worth their time. 

To check if this may be the reason why so many individuals are quickly exiting your website, you can use a free web page speed checker to test it and get your exact load time. 

If it’s above three seconds and if you can improve the speed by even a second, I guarantee you will have a lower bounce rate. 

If you don’t have much time on your hands, you can also use an apartment website theme that is built for speed and efficiency. 

Test to Improve

While I can list out all the potential reasons why users may be exiting your apartment website quickly, I can’t tell you which is the culprit and you won’t be ab;e to find out either unless you test it. 

So take the reasons that apply most to your property website and start making actionable steps. The moment you see a positive difference you’ll know you’re on the right track.