Ways to Reduce the Bounce Rate on Your Website

A Bounce rate includes the percentage of users who land on your website and decide to leave without visiting another page. In other words, a high bounce rate means people are not browsing your website. They are simply landing on a page and leaving without exploring all a website has to offer.

A visitor can bounce from your website by clicking on a different website URL, clicking on the close button to leave your website, opening a new window/tab, or searching for a new website.

The bounce rate is the percentage of single-page sessions in which the user leaves your site from the home page without referring to another page. It is the percentage of traffic to your website, where a visitor leaves the website without acting on any form of engagement. They do not click, read, or engage with the information on the website.

If you want to increase your website traffic, a major goal is to reduce the bounce rate of your website. If your website has a high bounce rate, that may indicate that you’re not attracting the right visitor to your website or that the user experience is poor.

Only occasionally does a high bounce rate indicate a positive user experience. This may occur if a visitor instantly found the information they were looking for and then left the website immediately.

How is a Bounce Rate Calculated?


The bounce rate comes from a simple calculation. It is the percentage of single-page sessions. A high bounce rate also indicates decreased website traffic and rank on Google. You can calculate the bounce rate manually or use Google Analytics. There are many tools available in the market to help you.

What Causes Website Bounce Rate

(1) Slow Web Page:

A slow web page decreases the visitor’s attention. There are many factors that decrease the speed of your website such as optimizing images, minimizing redirects, removing query strings from static resources, Inline CSS, defer parsing of Javascript, among others. There are various tools available in the market to check your website speed. Also, the website load time is an important factor.

Your website should ideally load under two seconds. Inorder to increase the website speed, you should optimize your images, use a better caching, CDN service, and faster web hosting provider. CDN is the easiest solution for increasing your website speed.

If you have built your website in the CMS such as WordPress, Joomla, or Node.js, you should update the CMS and plugin on a regular basis. This could increase your website security as well.

(2) Autoplay Videos and Advertisements:

If autoplay videos or advertisements pop up once a user reaches your website, that user will most likely click off your page instantly. These kinds of ads may bring you some instant success, but they are detrimental in the long run.

If you want to put ads on your website, ensure the ads are not interrupting your user and are relevant to your website. If you set an auto-playing video without acknowledging the client, this is not beneficial for usability and can increase the bounce rate.

(3) Poor Grammer:

No one likes to read website pages that have spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. When multiple errors are found by a user, the websites credibility can suffer dramatically. Hire an editor or utilize tools on the web to catch grammar mistakes. It is also crucial that the content on your website is error-free to keep a low bounce rate.

(4) Providing Unrelated Links:

A user clicks on your link via a search engine and visits your home page only to find out that the information they were looking for was nowhere to be found. If the titles and URLs do not guide a customer to the appropriate content, your website would be considered unreliable.

To prevent this issue, do not include misleading links or unrelated information on your website. You should prepare different content strategies for each websites page. You need to create a different landing page, targeting different customers, regions, keywords, etc. Also, you should put relevant site citations on your website to further decrease the bounce rate of your website.

(5) Non-Skimmable Content:

You have written your websites content perfectly and without any grammatical mistakes. Your content is relevant to your audience. Why are you still facing high bounce rates? This issue could mean you have written your website content so that it is not skimmable or easy to read. This could mean that there are long block paragraphs, too much information included on one page, and headers aren’t included for splitting up content.

The user doesn’t have time to go through all of this information. You should add bullets, headlines, and subdivisions. Highlight the main points. Differentiate the topic so that the user can easily read the website content and understand the points. Your content must be included in an easy-to-read website layout.

(6) Hard-to-Read Fonts:


You might think that a certain custom font makes your website stand out in a unique way, but if your home page is not readable, you will likely increase the bounce rate. You should use an easily readable font in colors that are not difficult to read. If your content is not readable at first glance, you may need to change the font or the color.

Readability is of prime importance if you want to keep the bounce rate low. You should also ensure that your website is aesthetically appealing and conveys a sense of secure credibility. If you have properly followed all the suggestions on your website but your web page load time is still high, you should report the issue to the hosting provider.

How is a Bounce Rate Reduced?


First, you’ll have to figure out which pages on your site have the highest bounce rates. You’ll need to focus on those pages. In order to check the bounce rate of your website, you should connect your website to the Google Search console. Then, sign in to Google Analytics and review the bounce rate of each page on your website. Also, there are many tools/plugins available in the market. Once you’ve identified the web page with the highest bounce rates, you can optimize them.

(1) Improve Your Site’s Speed:

A user makes up his mind about a website in the first couple of seconds. You don’t want to waste this time showing blank loading pages and downloading content. You can use tools such as Pingdom and Google Page Speed to optimize every landing page of your site. As mentioned earlier, to increase the websites speed, you should optimize your images, use a better caching, CDN service, and faster web hosting provider.

Website speed also impacts the bounce rate. If you have a CMS website, you need to use properly updated plugins and themes. Also, there may also be several other reasons why your site load time is lagging. The second major factor is the number of redirects you have set for your website. This means there are a lot of steps you can take to improve your website page speed.

Website speed is a major factor in reducing the bounce rate.In order to increase the website speed, you should improve the following factors as well.

  • Reduce image sizes
  • Eliminate unnecessary scripts
  • Deactivate plugins you don’t use
  • Enable compression
  • Reduce redirects
  • Defer JavaScript loading

(2) Use High-Quality Images to Captivate User Attention:

Images are another major tool that you can use to decrease the bounce rate of your website. There are many websites that use professional-quality photographs as a full screen background, which has proven to be effective. For example, Google was famous for its plain white background and simple layouts, but are now using high-quality images on its landing pages.

To attract visitors, you can use professional photographs on your website. There are many websites that offer various stock photography royalty-free images.

To gain a user’s attention, use high-quality images as full-screen backgrounds, parallax backgrounds, background slides, or as in-line images next to your call-to-action.

(3) Make Your Website Readable:

Website content on most websites is in text format. The format is one of the most important and essential elements that shape your site’s visual appeal. Make sure that the text on your website is to read on all devices. The overall format shouldn’t be too small or else users will have to zoom-in or zoom-out to read it. You should also use font sizes that are large enough on smaller screens.

Formatting and readability are not just limited to choosing the font size and color. You should also make sure the text on your website is visibly appealing. Use enough line spacing and margins to make the text look clean and structured.

Lastly, make sure the language and style you use are in a conversational tone and it is easy-to-understand.

(4) Make Website Search Easy:


Many websites ignore adding site search features. If a user is searching for something specific that they could not find instantly, that user is more likely to leave your page and find a more helpful website. The search tool assists in keeping users on your page instead of a competitor.

Also, you should design a navigation feature on your website. It should be easy to access the website for a user. When a visitor enters a website, he needs a clear understanding of where the content he is looking for is located. If you have not set an easy and clearly laid out navigation, this will likely increase the bounce rate of your website.

(5) Use Videos to Engage your Audience:

Video is highly attractive and draws more attention than text or even images. You should use a full-screen video as a background, or add it next to your call-to-action. Videos are powerful in reducing the bounce rate of your website. Use animations, presentations, music, audio, narration, colors and other tools of persuasion.

(6) Target Abandoning Users:

After all your efforts, sometimes a user may still leave your website. This is not always an issue due to the quality of your website, but simply outside factors regarding the user.

You have two choices: You can either convert them into a subscriber or you can let them go. There are many tools available in the market to track when a user is leaving your website. There is a messaging tool that can be used at the precise moment the user enters your website to encourage engagement. This is a highly effective technique for increasing the success rate.

(7) Optimize Your Internal Linking Strategy:


You should develop your own strategy for internal link building. This is effective in improving your website SEO and reducing the bounce rate of your website. You should pay particular attention to relevant anchor text. Also, you can use this strategy for header and footer internal links. This is where the customers expect to find your most important pages. Customers can find these links quickly and easily and then navigate to the pages that most interest them. This type of link makes your website even more useful.

(8) Open External Links in a New Tab:

There are many websites that use external URLs in their website content. In order to reduce a bounce rate on your website, you should add an HTML tag to your external links so they open in a new tab. Simply add target=”_blank” to the link.

For Example, When a customer clicks on an external link, another browser tab will automatically open and it leaves your website open in a separate browser tab. A user can return to the original page after checking out the external URL.

(9) Optimize for Mobile:


Mobile visitors have less patience than desktop users. You should have a responsive website design in order to provide visitors on mobile devices with positive user experience. Every year, the number of users increases to access a website from mobile devices. If you fail to optimize your site for mobile users, this is practically begging for users to click out of your website and take their business elsewhere.

(10) Let your Customers Speak for You:


You will see on many websites short video testimonials showing reviews from previous customers. You can convert your testimonials into success stories with actual elements like audio, video, etc. A user pays attention to reviews and success stories. You can also create a testimonials page where users can go to witness reviews for themselves.

Conclusion: Reduce Bounce Rates with Quality Content

There are a wide variety of ways you can reduce the bounce rates of your website and keep consumers’ attention. Ensure your website is up-to-speed, use visually appealing formatting, and edit grammar mistakes. Include only relevant information, add a search bar, and engage with your users.

By utilizing all the proper formatting and marketing-related tools, you not only help yourself and your company – you also help relevant consumers find the information they need by finding you. A decreased bounce rate is simply a plus.

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