The internet is full of websites and companies trying to fight and compete for visibility online. With so many different websites to choose from, and with competitors racing to get the search traffic before you, it can be difficult to get more visitors to your website. However, getting the traffic isn’t the only challenge. You also need to ensure that once you attract visitors to your website, they hang around long enough to see what you have to offer. Therefore, you must aim for engagement as well as visitors.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, your bounce rate refers to how many users visit your website and leave without visiting any other pages. Your bounce rate refers to all users who enter and exit without navigating to another page. If you are having this problem with your website, then this is likely a sign that there is a problem with your strategy. But do not worry, we have put together our top tips on how to reduce your website’s bounce rate.
Understand Good and Bad Numbers
Firstly, you must know what you are looking for when assessing your current bounce rate and how it can be improved. While we would all love hundreds of thousands of visitors to our website every month, who stay for over an hour browsing through what you have on offer, you need to be realistic. Have a look at your numbers and compare them to other successful websites in your industry. This will help you set a realistic goal.
To give you an idea, if you have a bounce rate of over 80 percent then it is fair to say that you have a real issue with your retention, and something is going seriously wrong. A bounce rate of around 50 to 70 percent is around average. We would recommend that you aim for around a 30 to 50 percent bounce rate, as this is indicative of a successful digital marketing strategy.
Offer a Better User Experience
If you have a high bounce rate, then it is time that you took a long hard look at your website and consider what you are offering to visitors. It might be difficult at first, but you need to put yourself in the user’s position. Imagine you are navigating your website for the first time and consider what tools, features, and processes are in place. One of the common reasons why users bounce off websites is because they do not provide them with a positive user experience. A good user experience means a website that is easy to navigate, is fast, and well structured. It will also mean having visual elements and plenty of information that is easy to access so that the user knows exactly what you are offering as soon as they hit the page.
Create Landing Pages
For users to stay on your website, you need to offer them places to visit. If you are a new website or a small company that has not dedicated a lot of time or money to your website, then you may only have a limited number of landing pages. Therefore, to make your website more appealing, and to encourage visitors to stay for longer, you should consider how you can grow and build the pages you have available. While we don’t recommend that you create unnecessary landing pages with little to no information on them, you should think about how you can map out your website to create links between the pages on your site. Landing pages make for great entry points to your website and provide the opportunity for CTAs. You can also include landing pages as part of your optimized content to boost engagement.
Use More Visuals
Websites have come a long way since they were first created, and now you can pretty much do anything if you have a good web developer on board. While this has been great for companies who want to develop their internet presence and digital marketing strategies, it has made users a lot less accepting of dull landing pages.
Therefore, your website must look the part, and visuals are in place to captivate your audience. By using images and designs on your main page, as well as some catchy CTAs you can show the user the path they should take to find out more. If your website does not offer them interesting visuals, then they will automatically just bounce off to another website.
Optimize Page Load Time
While it is easy to blame poor or boring content on a website’s high bounce rate, in many instances, problems can arise before a user has even made it to the page at all. The internet has made us all accustomed to quick and fast responses, which means that if your website takes a long time to load, then a user will be unlikely to hang around. Web pages taking ages to load is one of the biggest internet pet peeves, and around 47 percent of users expect pages to load within two seconds or less. So, if you want to reduce your website’s bounce rate you should make on-page optimization a priority.
Improve Content Readability
While your website’s user experience and page load time could be having a huge impact on your bounce rate, you can never underestimate the power of good content. If the content that you are offering users is not informative, easy to read, or interesting, then you can expect users to click away in seconds. Therefore, you need to ensure that not only is your content relevant, but that it is also readable. A great way to ensure readability is to include headings and subheadings in your content. This helps lead the user through your content, to keep them interested and provides you with the opportunity to signpost the information they are looking for.
While you are not going to be able to reduce your website’s bounce rate overnight, by making a few small but significant changes to your website you can improve its functionality and make it a space where users want to stay and explore for longer.