What is a ‘Bounce Rate anyway?
A bounce rate is the percentage of site visitors who land on your website and leave after only viewing one page. Looking at your Google Analytics dashboard, it’s usually expressed as a percentage value and sits in a very prominent place at the top of the page.
It is typically used as a measurement of a website’s overall engagement. A high bounce rate is considered bad as is it shows that your visitors aren’t sticking around to see what you have to offer.
If your bounce rate is consistently high, further analysis is required to work out why you’re missing the mark.
So what is a good bounce rate you might ask? That’s very subjective, Blogs sites for instance typically have a very high bounce rate (80-90%) as compared to a online shopping site (50-70%). The best thing to do is to measure your own site over a long period of time, make changes, enhance and improve.
Make sure your page loads fast
People these days! They just don’t have time to wait for a slow page that takes 10 seconds to reveal itself? If you aim for 3-5 seconds (or less) then you stand a chance of reducing your bounce rate considerably. Especially on homepages where there tends to be large images and fancy animations going on.
- Reduce large images (limit how many there are within a carousel for example)
- Reduce the number of files (combine CSS style sheets)
- Reduce scripts or place them at the bottom of the page
Make sure your Meta Descriptions match your page content
This is basic SEO knowledge but often overlooked, if the meta description (via the SERP) encouraged someone to click to your page but they don’t find what they expect, they’ll leave for sure. See our SERPs post for other relevant information.
Also ensure that any AdWord campaigns transition a user onto a relevant landing page that seamlessly makes sense to them. You’ve just received a prospect (and paid for it) so make it count. There’s a lot of information on good landing page design out there, so do your research, try things and measure your results.
Create a CTA (call to action)
If you can get the user to move on to another page within your website, that will definitely help with better retention and a lower bounce rate. Achieve this by:
- Providing important links to more information - Team profiles, pricing, case studies, videos and galleries
- Provide a distinctive button that stands out - “Watch our Demo Video” or “Register Now”
- Make your CTA worth clicking on - Get our free pricing guide.. “Download it here”
Creating a call to action can help with clarity and purpose, reinforcing to the user why they are here and what to do next.
Example of a CTA
TRY OUR ONLINE DEMO
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See it in action now!
We don't recommend putting buttons everywhere, use them sparingly!
Create content that people will like
I wish it was that easy.. perhaps ‘Like’ is a bit strong, more appropriately, content that is highly relevant and helpful. Ensure that your site is easy to navigate, the layout makes sense, and that the content is simple enough to digest without the user getting distracted.
Getting people staying longer doesn't always correlate to lowering a bounce rate but it does indicate that your content is more engaging and useful to the user. Making the content more conversion orientated may be all that you need to do.
Target the correct audience
You know your business better than anyone, so you should know what kind of customers that you want to attract. Build up your organic SEO elements to target this sector and make sure that any advertising focusses in getting this group to your site. If you continue to tick the right boxes you should find that bounce rate % will eventually drop and your conversion rates should also increase (more importantly the 'quality' of the conversions).