I work for a small technology solutions company and we are currently in the process of improving our sites' performance by increasing conversion rates and reducing our bounce rates.

Our bounce rates fluctuate depending on the landing page but in general our bounce rates are quite high at around 60%.  It is obvious that the bounce rate should be reduced but we look at the bounce rate as a filtering process.  Our company provides a varying amount of services and solutions and therefore if people are bouncing off it's because we are not suited to eachother and therefore we are naturally qualifying people out without wasting anyones' time. 

I have been researching what the average bounce rate is on a service website and I am getting values such as 28%.  Is this realistic for a small company with a variety of services to offer?  If so, what ideas do people have to reduce our 60%?

We realise our website is a little dated at present and so we are currently in the process of reconfiguring it and making it more usability friendly.  Please check it out and let me know how you think we could reduce our bounce rate.  Also, I would love to hear people's views on high bounce rates and whether anyone else agrees that they can be a positive thing.

www.sigmer.com/