8 Quick Ways to Reduce Bounce Rate of Your Website


grandpa and grandson cartoon

Do you like a bumpy, bouncy ride until and unless it is solely dedicated to satisfying that purpose? (Not following up here? Give it a try again by projecting yourself back to your childhood days! Don’t worry; it’s not an article about motivation and the need to try again and again and, how one should never give up, instead, you can just give up here as ultimately you’ll get to the conclusion that I was trying to talk about kids bounce house only!)

“Ugh. How can you waste my precious time by telling me those childish things that only kids have to know about? Don’t you already know that I’m here to learn about bounce rate only and certainly not the gibberish that you think is important to know”?

Well, if that’s the case then I bet you would be more offended than ever when I share my next piece of example with you! So, the people who’re obsessed with trying to find reason in everything that they listen or hear, I hate to break it to you this way but, there is no point in living when eventually, you’re so gonna die (period)

Bounce Rate

So, what are you going to do with all the informative interactions about the things that you had with people of this world? Or why am I even putting all this in words? Or why even this website is allowing me to write such articles?

See, if you go into ifs and buts about everything, then, it can harm a lot of people without bringing substantial returns. So, let’s stick to “life” and carry the meaningless of it to our graves, just like the following example!

Garry installs Bounce tales, and he starts playing it with dedication! But, he is unable to complete certain chapters, why? Because he is not getting enough bounce to pass that hurdle but, here the hurdle starts from several feets above ground and lasts till the oblivion, so, how can you get through that? Simply, by being humble! (Tough task I know, but it’s the only way to the other side)

So, the next time we make changes to your website to improve bounce rate, we’re just trying to cut down on the “fun”.

Now that I’ve got your attention, let’s start discussing some technical points about bounce rate, shall we?

What is Bounce Rate

As defined by the Google Analytics, the percentage of single-page visits, where individual leave your site without trying other pages of your creation. It is calculated by dividing the total number of visits to a page with the total number of entries on that page.

Rb =
tv
te

Where Rb is the bounce rate and, Tv and Te are the total number of visits viewing one page only and total entries on page respectively.

(Don’t you think all of it is gibberish as well? Anyway, who cares as long as you and I are making money out of it?)

What Causes a Bounce

According to a Kissmetrics blog on bounce rate, the following actions by a visitor are considered as a bounce:-

  • Clicking on a link to page on a different website.
  • Clicking on the back button or closing the tab to leave your site.
  • Typing a new URL.
  • Session timeout (a page is opened for y minutes without any activity) (Having an audio or video playing for more than y minutes is also considered as a session timeout and eventually, a bounce)

Other than these primary reasons, visiting your subdomain is also wrongfully considered as a bounce.

(Also read: how sub domain affects your SEO practices)

What is considered as a Good Bounce Rate

Good Bounce Rate

According to a blog on Optimize Smart, having a bounce rate below 30% is great, anything between 30% to 50% is average, 50% to 80% demands your attention, and, above 80% is (You already know what I mean).

However, there are many factors that usually get injustice while calculating bounce rate! Let’s look at some of them.

  • If your website deals with informative keywords only then your purpose is satisfied with him spending 2 or 3 minutes on your site. So, this shouldn’t be considered as a bounce.
  • Mostly, it’s been termed as when a client leaves your site after visiting the first page only, then, the content on your site is irrelevant. But, that’s not always the case as he may have got satisfied by the information provided on the first page only or planning to come back later, in that case, you’ll get 100% bounce rate which is based on a wrong idea.

How to Reduce Bounce Rate

Reduce Bounce Rate

Adjust the Bounce Rate with Average time on Site

It’s common for various news or article websites for the visitors to come and leave after a single page visit, but they have already spent more than three minutes reading that article which I believe is a conversion.

Google analytics will show 100% bounce rate of your website which is because average time on site is not taken into consideration. So, there can be conversions even during bounced visits and to know about them, it’s recommended that you adjust the bounce rate using the following code in Google analytics section.

setTimeout(“ga(‘send’,’event’,’profitable engagement’,’time on page more than 3 minutes’)”, 18000);

This done, your bounce rate will surely be rendered half of its current value within a week.

Provide Best “Sticky” Content on Your Site

Go to Content > Site Content > Pages, here you will see the pages that have most page views in the last 30 days.

landing pages

Using this chart, you can get an idea of which page is having high bounce rate and which one is generating links to other pages.

You’ll want to reduce the bounce rate on the pages that have high bounce rate by carefully analyzing the lowest bounce rate pages. You can start with providing content that even you want to read and also try to improve the readability of your content by using bullet points, sub headings and highlighting the important topics.

(Also read: Some useful tips to manage content of your site)

Avoid Pop Ups as they are Annoying

Popups have adverse effects on the authenticity of your website which probably you wouldn’t want as well. Don’t frustrate your readers with unnecessary popups if you’re planning to play in the long haul. If you’re still planning to continue with that, I’m afraid but you are just gonna throw your brand credibility from a cliff that too in front of your audience, just like this!

call-to-action

Create a “click me” call-to-action

According to an article on Neil Patel’s blog, the following points hold the answer to all your queries related to CTA.

  • Use appropriate keywords in your Meta descriptions and make sure it is according to the guidelines of search engines.
  • If you are running an ecommerce website then adding a link to your other similar product pages along with “buy now” button can reduce your bounce rate significantly as people might just want to look at the specifications at that point of time! Don’t worry; they’ll come back to buy!
  • Provide free trial of your product for a limited number of times coz hey, who doesn’t like freebies?

Be Truthful about your Brand

As the trend in social media tells, there are a number of people rooting for failure stories instead of good-for-nothing success stories. So, don’t shy away from sharing your intimate experience with your readers as it will make your readers feel more connected to your brand.

the story of your brand

While telling the story of your brand, make sure to project your customers as the hero of the tale (for the obvious reasons).

(Also read: Simple hacks to build a brand out of your business)

Target Keywords that are Associated with Utmost Traffic

Navigate to the search> organic section; there you can see which keywords have lowest bounce rate and the highest traffic. And, from there you can even check which landing pages that the keywords lead to and learn statistics about the best and the worst of your landing pages.

Google Analytics

This way you get to know all about keywords landing a visitor to the same page then, you can determine which one of them is providing more relevant information to the user.

Basically, there are two types of keywords, namely, commercial and informational keywords.

Commercial keywords are used to sell some products or services to a client, e.g. “web design training in Delhi” or “web design prices”.

Whereas, Informational keywords are used to create awareness about a topic among your targeted audience, e.g. “free web design tutorials” or “web design ideas”.

You need to decide between which keyword is best for you according to your business. There are four important factors in determining a valuable keyword, namely, brand value, traffic value, conversion value, and, persona value.

E.g. if you are in the footwear business then, “Nike running shoes” or “Nike women training shoes” would be your high-value commercial keywords.

Create Multiple Landing Pages for the high-quality keywords

Adding the number of landing pages to your site is a simple hack to reduce bounce rate, however, in the long run, it’s always beneficial to include multiple number of landing pages to your high volume keywords as they attract more number of visitors to your site.

While making anchor texts, make sure that the external links are always opening in a new tab! This is because if a visitor is planning to come back to your website then, he may come across with “back button fatigue” while finding your website! This phenomenon can be harmful as it can lead to him bouncing off your site as well.

Make Your Site Mobile Friendly and Speed up that Damn Page load time

At the end of the day, it all comes down to how fast and responsive your site speed really is! Make sure that your website is performing well on every platform and also optimize your web page speed to ensure good user experience.

(Also read: How website speed can affect your SEO tactics)

The Conclusion

Here is a quick sneak peek to what we’ve discussed so far:

  • Improve your storytelling, thus, enhancing the credibility of your brand.
  • Start targeting high-quality keywords and look for the ways to improve the performance of keywords that are not bringing enough traffic to your site.
  • Build a clear navigation of your site and design compelling CTAs for your site on the sidebar (or somewhere where they look less annoying and more clickable).
  • Make sure to post fresh content on your website blog as it will generate faith for your brand in your visitor’s mindset. If you don’t have an already operational blog, then start planning for it.
  • Write quality content that persuades your client to buy instead of forcing him to do so by the use of annoying popup ads.

This was your quick tutorial on how to reduce bounce rate of your website! Think I missed on some important points? Drop your valuable feedback in the comment section below.


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