The 15 Most Effective Methods To Reduce Your Bounce Rate

Keep Your Visitors On Your Page With The Ultimate Checklist To Reduce Your Bounce Rate

Nowadays global business activities depend heavily on the internet and web interaction with future customers. This is no surprise since we all use Internet extensively in search for goods and services. Our opinion and decisions depend massively on the output we will find on the World Wide Web.

This is why internet marketing and the way how we promote our products and services throughout the web became kind of a science subject. There are no guesses for success. What works is very well know and will surely bring you more sales.

In order to avoid any mistakes, we need to be aware of many marketing factors and technical aspects. The term bounce rate is rather new but is growing in popularity and importance. The bounce rate needs to be low in order to succeed via your website. We want to help the masses and for this reason, in this article, we are going to share the 15 most effective methods to reduce your bounce rate.

What is Bounce Rate?

If you are not aware what the bounce rate is, let’s start with the fact that most of the times it is a bad thing and you should avoid having a high number. In short, the bounce rate is the percentage of website users who navigate out of the site after viewing just one page. We could also say that the bounce rate is the number of single-page sessions divided by all sessions.

Since the users did not open any other page of your website only a single request is sent to the Analytics server. This basically means that this session has a duration of 0 seconds since no other click was registered and therefore no length could be calculated.

If we simplify that, having a high bounce rate means that your home page is boring for the users and does not engage them enough. Needless to say, this is not working in your favor and you need to change something fast.

Have a look at the actions that could save your bounce rate:

1. Write Attractive Meta Tags for Search Users

Everybody who is searching for a specific product or service is reaching to Google at first. This is where you need to interact and this can only happen by boosting your SEO. No matter how advanced a website is its HTML is still the most crucial part when it comes to SEO.

Add attractive Meta tags that will describe what your page is all about. They will be of most importance when your site is crawled but will not be visible in the text. Use Google Search in your favor.

2. Fix HTTPS Mixed-Content Warnings

If your site is running over HTTPS but contains some HTTP resources, most probably you see some mixed-content warnings quite often. Many businesses decided to migrate to HTTPS and use the advantages that come from that, but quite a lot of problems occur in addition to the benefits.

Every user wants to feel secure when using your site and a browser warning will do exactly the opposite. If you want to earn your users’ trust – fix those mixed-content warnings as soon as possible.

3. Speed Up Your Website

Speed is one of the most important bounce rate forming factors. Nobody wants to waste their time. A delay of just 500 milliseconds frustrates more than 26% of all visitors which results in a huge bounce rate. Optimize your page load time and you will have happy visitors!

4. Make Your Content More Accessible with Smart Formatting

In this severe competition, t is important to present your content as user-friendly as possible. Re-format your pages and make them more accessible and welcoming.

Some advice towards facilitating your visitors are using bulleted lists, sub headings when possible, appropriate images and headers. These formatting options to make your website more accessible for the visitors and they will appreciate it!

5. Update Your Outdated Content 

If you use the same content as 4 years ago things are not looking well. For sure, something has changed over these years, and if not – this is bad for your business. Show what have you’ve been up to! Update your outdated content and for sure you will lower your bounce rate.

6. Write Shorter Paragraphs

The value of spare time has never been more important. Nowadays, nobody will read a huge block of text even if it includes amazing information. This is just how our generation thinks.

For this reason, it is widely known that it is better to use short paragraphs. Even if you end up having a big paragraph – don’t worry! Just use the logic of the text and split it into several small pieces. You will be amazed by the results.

7. Improve Your Website’s Design

A bad or old looking website could cost you many future customers. An attractive website design will be always appreciated and appealing to the users.

If you are using one of the well-known CMS options, improving your website’s design can be a piece of cake. Remember – simple is always better in the aesthetics field!

8. Make Your Site Easy To Search

People sometimes neglect the importance of internal search, but in fact, many users will directly search what they need from your home page. However easy your navigation is – they will directly fill in the search box.

For this reason, your internal search must work perfectly and at a fast manner. Put the search box at a visible spot on your home page and see the results.

9. Make Your Site’s Navigation Effortless

Easy navigation is a must if you want the visitor to stay locked on your website. A lot of people recommend heat maps as a good way to determine how useful your navigation is. Simply use Google Analytics to improve your CTR by checking the “In-Page Analytics”.

If this is not enough, you could use more advanced tools like Crazyegg or SumoME, but in any case CTR and heat map data will help you in improving your navigation structure.

10. Don’t Use Pop-ups… Unless They’re Exit-intent Pop-ups

Are pop-ups annoying or useful? This debate has been going for a couple of years now and the correct answer is still not completely clear. If asked, most of the visitors will state that pop-ups are annoying but sometimes you can see an interaction increase by using pop-ups. This is why we need to use them with huge caution.

Using an exit-intent popup is a compromise that will possibly bring you the needed benefits while still keeping your bounce rate low.

11. Focus On Attracting The Right Audience

It is always better to focus on a specific segment of users and not trying to attract the whole market. You need to be positive what your right audience is and select the proper keywords exactly for that part of our society. Your content needs to speak their language.

Select your keywords properly to avoid attracting the wrong audience that will not bring any sales. Targeting is crucial nowadays.

12. Include A Single, Clear Call To Action

Including two or more call to action, buttons may often confuse your visitors. Think from their point of view…and, on the other hand, think in terms, what exactly you want from your visitors and use only that call to action button. That way you will kind of channel their thoughts.

13. Fix Broken Links Issues

Broken links are really annoying for your visitors. Having broken links increases your bounce rate and damages your web performance. Fixing those broken links should be a priority! This can be achieved easily, using Google’s Search Console or other external services like Screaming Frog or Online Broken Link Checker.

14. Create An Awesome 404 Page

Even if you fix all occurring broken links at some point in the future one may come up. For this reason, it is better to be prepared with the 404 page that should be displayed. Show class with it! Create an interesting 404 page that could be even useful. Add a search box and humor even – everyone will appreciate it.

15. Keep Your Blog Fresh With the Right Content

Last but definitely not least you need to keep your content updated. Nobody wants to read again an article that is two years old. Users want to read new information that is up to date. It is no coincidence that Google uses content freshness when forming your ranking factor.

When the content is updated, always change the “last updated” date as well. That way your visitors will know they are dealing with adequate information.

As a summary, your bounce rate should not be underestimated as it is a crucial signal for your success rate. We took it seriously and determined which simple actions help in this aspect. This is why we made this useful list and hope to bring profit to your website and business.

If you follow and adopt the above mentioned actions your bounce rate will drop and this will eventually lead to a growth in sales. Don’t leave anything to chance – make the right moves – act now!