Top 5 Techniques To Reduce Your Website’s Bounce Rate#DearTanya

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Tanya

Hello Tanya,

I know we are probably not the only website with high bounce rate. How do we deal with it?#DearTanya

Jack Singh

Hi Jack,

Thank you very much for taking part in the #DearTanya blog feature where our readers decide what we talk about.

Bounce rate is an interesting topic and I have chosen your question because there are so many myths regarding theissue.

What is bounce rate?

Just to clarify for people who don’t know what bounce rate is – the bounce rate of your website shows whatpercentage of your visitors navigate away from your website after seeing only one page. You can see your bouncerate in your Google Analytics report.

Why do website visitors bounce back?

Jack, you are very right, a high bounce rate is a real problem for website owners and marketers. Often times it isvery challenging to understand the reasons why people leave the website. Recent research (by a private companyin the USA) shows that there is no correlation between website design and bounce rate but there might be a slightpositive correlation between information architecture (the way visitors navigate the website) and bounce rate.However, many websites struggle with a high bounce rate even when all aspects of website design anddevelopment have been developed in the most effective way. This is rather scary especially for eCommercewebsites where sales are the only way for the website to make money.

There might be a slight positive correlation between information architecture and bounce rate… Click To Tweet

What is the optimal bounce rate?

Before you ask, let me just start by saying there is no optimal bounce rate. It all depends on your industry, the wayyou measure bounce rate and what you want to measure. For example, a very high bounce rate on a landing pagemeans something needs to change on that page to make it more engaging, appealing and maybe add a touch ofurgency or a better call to action. You may even have to look at what type of people you are attracting on that page –

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maybe the bounce rate is high because the target audience is not defined correctly. On the other side, a highbounce rate on a blog page means someone read one article, found the information they needed and didn’t readany more blog articles as they found the answer they were looking for, they solved their problem. In this case thebounce rate is just a number, nothing you need to worry about.

There are some techniques which can help you with your bounce rate. Here are our top tips on reducing yourbounce rate. Since it is hard to be specific as bounce rate depends on the industry you operate in, we decided tooffer you a general, yet very effective, guide which would work for any website.

Top 5 Techniques To Reduce Your Website’s Bounce Rate

1. Improve your website’s speed

A website which takes longer than four seconds to load will most definitely loses out in conversion. It’s the digital erawhere everything needs to be available right now. Visitors do not want to wait for a huge file or an autoplay video toload. If your visitors don’t see the information they are looking for at first glance, they will leave the website. Somedigital marketing gurus even suggest that clicking away from a slow website is almost like an “automated customerescape” – an uncontrollable automatic subconscious response to something which irritated them while trying toaccess a website.

In addition to user experience, site speed is important because Google considers site speed as a ranking factor. Ifyou want to deliver information, you should always deliver it in a flash. Here is a link to Google’s Speed Tool tomeasure the loading speed of your website – Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

1. Make your website easy-to-use

Your website design should definitely be compatible with smart phones and tablets IF your audience comes frommobile devices. The information should be clearly organised and all the fonts and functions have to be usable onmobile devices.

If you have an online shop and you have a high bounce rate then you will be very happy to hear that when it comesto online buyer behaviour and bounce rate, there seems to be a great belief that usability features which aredesigned to engage customers in a better way can reduce bounce rate with around 55%. Why do you think so manyonline clothes retailers have all sorts of features like “get the celebrity style”, “design your outfit in our virtual designroom”, “exotic boutique”, “discover your style” and so many other features carefully crafted to engage customersmore effectively.

1. Optimise all website forms

Forms are by far the most effective technique to get conversions. To reduce bounce rate, you need to make sureforms are optimised for maximum ease of use. What make a form user friendly and persuasive? Top tips – make tickboxes and labels clear, simplify instructions, remove any errors, keep forms as short as possible and include arelevant call to action. Instead of “Submit” try calls to action like “Get instant access” or “Claim your copy now” or“Start your journey today”.

Please don’t become one of the very greedy and desperate marketers who want website visitors to fill over 20 formfields, including personal data like date of birth. People know that the database will be sold so they lie about theirpersonal information anyway. I lie, I bet you have lied and I can pretty much assure you that most of the people lieabout pretty much everything on such forms. The solution – only gather the data you need and when you have basiccontact details find engaging ways to get all the data you want by interacting with the customer at a later stage.

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1. Publish quality engaging content

The content published on your website has to represent what your website stands for. If you are a business, thecontent published on your website needs to be relevant to your industry. If your content is comprehensive andcompelling then visitors will be more likely to trust your expertise and stay longer.

1. Make sure keywords are relevant

Do you know your target audience? What are they interested in? Do your keywords address your target market?

To perform a keyword check, see what people write in search engines to get to your website. Such information canbe found via Google Webmaster Tools. It’s Google’s free tool to help you get a better understanding of your website.

If you find out that the keyword phrases people use to get to your website are not in synch with your website content,make sure your content is relevant and you optimise your title tags and mate descriptions. Need help with that?Contact us and we will find a cost-effective way to help you [/self_promotion].

Here you have it – 5 tips to help you decrease your bounce rate. Did we miss anything? Tell us (and everyone else)in the comments section below. #DearTanya

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