Have you ever walked into a store and almost immediately turned around and left?
You may not like the look of the store, the consultant, or the products on sale. Whatever the reason, the fact is that you left the store quickly.
The same can happen to your site visitors. A high bounce rate means they don’t like something.
Want to reduce your bounce rate?
This article will show you 10 proven ways to reduce your bounce rate and increase conversions.
A high bounce rate is one of the most common conversion killers. If most users leave your site on the first page they open almost immediately, you have no chance of converting them into subscribers or customers.
Optimizing your bounce rate has several benefits for your business. Visitors will not only spend more time on the site, but they will also buy or convert better to your offers. Before we talk about the actual optimization methods, let’s clarify what bounce rate is and what a high bounce rate means.
What does bounce rate mean?
Bounce rate (bounce rate) refers to the percentage of all users who land on your site and those who leave without visiting a second page.
A high bounce rate indicates that you could have convinced the user to stay and interact with the call to action (buy now, download the manual, etc.).
A visitor can leave your site by clicking a link to another website or the back button, closing the window/tab, opening a new URL, or due to session expiration (caused by web hosting errors).
Let’s look at the average bounce rate based on industry benchmarks and determine a reasonable bounce rate.
What is a good bounce rate? Average bounce rate by industry
You might be wondering what a good bounce rate means. Well, the general rule is this:
- 80%+ is a very bad percentage
- 70-80% is a bad percentage
- 50 – 70% is an average percentage
- 30 – 50% is an excellent percentage
- Less than 20% is most likely an error.
Bounce rates vary by industry and type of site content. Check out the chart below to see the average bounce rate by industry:
Average bounce rate by industry
If you have a higher than average bounce rate, it could be due to specific reasons such as slow page loading, poor navigation, poor design and usability, and lack of call to action.
Next, we’ll talk about ways you can improve your bounce rate.
10 Methods to Reduce Bounce Rate
Before you begin, it’s a good idea to identify the pages with the highest bounce rates. You can do this by logging into Google Analytics and clicking on Behavior » Site Content » Landing Pages.
Screenshot of bounce rate analysis
Knowing the pages with the highest bounce rates will help you identify problem areas and fix them.
Here are 10 ways you can reduce bounce rates to increase conversions.
- Providing a good user experience
Neilsen Norman Group, one of the leading consulting companies in the field, defines user experience as follows:
“Customer experience encompasses all aspects of the end user’s interaction with the company, its services, and products.”
Neilsen Norman
User experience is the overall feeling of a visitor while interacting with your site. A good experience is when a user finds a site that is easy to use and enjoyable.
Peter Morville, a well-known and renowned information architecture consultant, says that to provide a quality user experience, a site should be :
- Useful: the content should be original and relevant to the needs,
- Usable: the site should be easy to use,
- Desirably contains an image, identity, branding, and other design elements to be used to evoke emotion and appreciation,
- Easy to navigate: content should be navigable, easy to find on-site and off-site,
- Accessible: content must be accessible to people with disabilities,
- Credible: Users need to trust and believe what you are telling them.
Creating a website that provides a valuable user experience and looks the same across all platforms and devices is the first step in this direction. Watch carefully how your users behave and what influences their decisions.
- Optimize the location of the call to action.
Most users decide whether to like a website within the first two seconds. Often just a glance at the viewable area without scrolling. This area differs from device to device. With this in mind, you can optimize this area by describing what you are selling as clearly as possible and using a convincing and honest call to action (CTA).
For example, the text on the AffiliateNinja.Co home page clearly describes what it is about. The title explains the site, why you should use it, and how it can be useful.
Your site should look like this. Greet visitors and show them what your company, blog, or product is all about.
- Improve your site speed.
As mentioned above, users decide whether to browse a site within the first 2-3 seconds. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, you will lose a lot of visitors from the start.
Using tools like Pingdom and Google Page Speed, you can optimize every landing page on your site.
According to Neil Patel (and many other online marketing experts), a one-second delay can cost you 7% of sales, 11% fewer page views, and a 16% drop in customer satisfaction.
To speed up your site, optimize your images, use a content delivery network, add better caching, and consider switching to a faster web hosting provider.
A dedicated server is one of the fastest and easiest ways to keep your site running fast. Please read this article, where we discuss optimizing site loading speed in detail.
- Aim for the right audience.
You can do all the optimization in the world. If the right target audience visits your site, your bounce rate will stay the same.
For example, if you own a law firm specializing in commercial law, you may want your site to attract only corporate decision makers. Likewise, if you have a website that sells high-performance auto parts, you’ll want your visitors to be car enthusiasts who might be interested in your products.
If you’re attracting the right audience to your site, it’s only natural that visitors will want to avoid exploring the site. Here are a few ways you can make sure you’re targeting the right people:
- Build the ideal customer profile. It is essential to understand who your ideal customer is. How old is he, his income, and what is his field of activity? What problems does it face? What needs or passions does he have? The more information you know about your potential customer, the more accurate you will be in targeting the right audience for your site.
- Choose effective marketing channels. Do research to see which marketing channels your target audience will most likely be on. You need to use the right platforms to promote yourself to attract site visitors interested in your products or services.
- Create better targeted messages. Focus your efforts on creating highly targeted messages that will capture the attention of your target audience.
Attracting the right audience to your site will not only dramatically improve your bounce rate but also help you increase your sales.
- Use videos to engage your site audience.
Videos are very engaging and attract more attention than text or even images. You can use a video background or add a video to the call to action.
Use animations, music, videos, or any other video format. Videos can grab attention and make the user interact with your site. For example, hiring a freelancer can create a very effective low-budget video presentation.
- Use high-quality images to grab the user’s attention.
Images are another effective tool for reducing bounce rates. Many websites use high-quality photos as backgrounds because they have proven effective. Companies like Google, known for their plain white backgrounds and minimalist designs, now use high-quality images on landing pages.
You can buy professional photos from various websites. However, many sites offer copyright-free images – Pixabay, Unsplash, and Pexels.
- Let your customers speak for you.
You will see a small slider with customer testimonials on many websites. But you can use these recommendations more effectively. Turn customer testimonials into success stories using storytelling elements such as audio, video, illustrations, etc. People love success stories and are more inclined to read them.
You can also create a page with all customer testimonials over time.
- Make the text as readable and attractive as possible.
It doesn’t matter if your site is a blog, an online store, or a company presentation site. The text should be easy to read. Readable text can dramatically improve the appearance of a website and make it easier for visitors to understand the message. This is especially true if the website is loaded with textual content.
Choose your fonts carefully. While great fonts can make a website look more attractive, they usually don’t make the content readable. Your site should have an eye-catching font. Here are some ways you can improve the readability of your site:
Increase the font size and use short sentences. Today’s readers can’t wait to read long paragraphs of text. Use short sentences and larger fonts so visitors can scan the page content faster. It is also important that the text is easy to read on all devices (laptops, tablets, mobile phones).
Content structure matters. Please ensure the text is divided into sections and paragraphs with plenty of space between them. Increase line spacing by adding white space and breaking the content into sections.
Speak the language of your readers. Uses easy-to-understand language with a normal conversational tone. Another vital point to consider is the style used in the text.
Medium.com is an excellent example of a website that focuses on making your content as readable as possible.
- Build your confidence
Consumers are becoming more informed daily, which means your offer will go through a careful review before making a purchase decision. After the initial product evaluation, users quickly look around to find out how trustworthy your site is.
Trusting a business to purchase and provide personal information takes time and effort. A new user needs to learn how good your business is and what your reputation is. One way to build consumer trust is to display all the elements that build your reputation: good reviews on third-party sites, awards, reviews, certifications, quality ratings, and industry connections.
Also, another crucial element is site security through effective methods, such as HTTPS protocol, SSL certificate, secure web hosting plan, anti-virus software, etc.
- A/B Testing + Targeted Landing Pages
The headline, message, or call to action may not work. This is why it is essential to do A/B Testing. Use different content strategies on each page and run A/B tests to see how each performs.
You can also create landing pages targeting different audience categories, regions, keywords, etc. You can detect the user’s location and show them a different landing page if you target an international audience. Displaying content in your language and currency and using cultural backgrounds greatly improves the user experience.
By using these methods, you can reduce the dropout rate. You can also do a few simple things:
- Use internal links. You can add a link to another page with relevant content for your visitor. For example, in this article, I have included links to other articles on additional topics that may interest you.
- Remove annoying ads. If you’re using too many pop-up ads, banners, or sidebars, you’ll need to remove some. They annoy the user and make him leave the site.
- Optimize mobile content. If your site is optimized for mobile devices, you can avoid mobile users leaving the site immediately. The tips in this article are for the desktop version of the site and the mobile version.
By following all these tips, you’ll have a more attractive site for visitors, so they’ll want to stay. When this happens, you will notice that your bounce rate will also improve significantly.
