13 Tips to Reduce a Website's Bounce Rate and Increase Conversions

A bounced visitor is a colloquial term for users who quickly leave your website and never return. Unfortunately, it often surfaces as a disgusting problem for digital marketers. When users don't find what they are looking for on your website in the first few seconds of landing, they bounce ā and so does all the marketing value you could have gained from them. Luckily, a step-by-step process can drastically reduce your website's bounce rate.

What is Bounce Rate?

The bounce rate is the percentage of your site visitors who spent a few seconds on it and then left. Usually, they view only a single page. Bounce Rate is an important metric to consider when evaluating the success of your website.

The higher your bounce rate, the more people are quickly turned off by your website content. Using this metric, you will easily determine which pages on your site aren't attracting visitors.

Remember: A bounce is a single-page session to a website.

How to Check Bounce Rates?

Here are the different ways to check bounce rates based on various factors through Google Analytics:-

• Behavior > All Pages > Bounce Rate (see which pages have higher or lower bounce rate)
• Acquisition > Channels > Bounce Rate (see what type of traffic has the lowest bounce rate)
• Acquisition > Source/Medium > Bounce Rate (see which referral mediums have the lowest bounce rate)
• Acquisition > AdWords > Campaigns > Bounce Rate (see how your AdWords campaign fares when it comes to bounce rate)

Why Should You Care About Bounce Rate?

The bounce rate is important because a high bounce rate percentage is directly linked with a low conversion rate. In addition, a high bounce rate may negatively impact your clients' website rankings on search engines as it indicates a low-quality user experience.

The good news is that once you determine your client's bounce rate percentage, you can implement plenty of tactics to entice visitors to stay longer and, ideally, make a purchase.

What's a Good Bounce Rate?

According to HubSpot, a good bounce rate was estimated to be anywhere between 26% to 40%, though it depends more on the industry.

We can assign no standard numerical value to a "good" bounce rate as it's a variable factor. Your client's site objectives and the business they are in can impact the bounce rate. However, a bounce rate that exceeds your client's industry average can be a red flag.

Image Source: Siege Media

Sometimes, your website provides instant answers to user queries such as Questions Answer sites like Quora, and websites that provide information on currency rates, stock market updates, weather updates, etc. Here a high bounce rate is obvious and not bad, as people quickly find what they want.

However, it's only true for some queries a user enters into a search engine. People often leave the website because it provides them with information about bananas when looking for apples. Irrelevant content can aggravate the bounce rate. It may also happen when the website is a bit difficult to navigate.

So, there is no such thing as a "good" bounce rate. The metric is highly variable and depends on multiple factors. However, you need to monitor it constantly and set a benchmark so that you can track your progress.

Tips to Improve Your Website's Bounce Rate

A page's bounce rate is the percentage of visitors leaving the page without interacting. It indicates that your content is not engaging visitors or meeting their search intent.

High bounce rates may indicate problems with the site's content, such as unclear navigation, broken links, or a lack of compelling content. They may also suggest that users need help finding what they are looking for quickly enough.

How to Improve Bounce Rate?

If you've done everything in your capacity but still can't deal with this annoying issue, check out these 13 tips.

1. Optimize Your Homepage & Use Google Analytics

The homepage is usually the first place a visitor goes to on your website, so it should be fully optimized to capture their attention and direct them to the desired action.

Avoid unnecessary clutter and keep your homepage concise and to the point. Ensure to include the most important content up front. Try to keep the homepage's length below three scrollable pages.

Make it visually appealing and easy to read by breaking up long blocks of text with subheadings, bullet points, and short paragraphs.

Google Analytics is one of the best tools to start with. You can also use the DashClicks Analytics App, which integrates with numerous platforms and analytics tools to provide a vivid and clear picture of your website's performance.

2. Add a Call-to-Action (CTA)

Don't forget to add a call to action on every website page. CTA is a chance to engage a customer who is about to leave your website.

What's a Call-to-Action (CTA)?

CTA is an action the webpage's visitor can take, such as clicking a button to receive more information or make a purchase. Research has shown that adding a call-to-action to the bottom of each page increases conversion rates by more than 30%. According to a MixPanel study, including one clear CTA in emails boosts clicks by 371% and sales by 1617%.

If they're interested in your product, inform them where to buy it. If they want more information, tell them how to contact you. Whatever you want visitors to do, make it obvious with your CTA. Follow these tips to keep those bounced visitors from leaving your site. By addressing these issues, you're sure to win over more users and keep them returning for more.

3. Improve Your Website Design and User Interface (U/I)

Use an effective website design that is both user-friendly and visually appealing. Make navigation easier, so the visitor can find what they are looking for in a minimum number of clicks. Overall, the content and design should be so engaging that the visitors stay on your website for some time. Deliver relevant information on the landing pages to boost conversions.

Your website is a key factor in your success. It shouldn't be outdated. Your website needs to be professional, engaging, and easy to use in today's digital world. It should represent your brand and drive traffic to your site.

Agency Tip: You can use our Sites App to design professional-grade websites that are designed to load faster, rank higher on search engines, and engage visitors with the right content and design. These websites are developed using niche-based templates and are content ready. All you need to do is inject your clients' contact & business information and logo into the software, which will provide you with the complete website in a few seconds. To create bulk websites, you can use our InstaSites App.

4. Develop a Responsive Website

A website that is not responsive can turn potential customers away. Implementing a responsive website design will increase your online traffic and sales. A responsive website will look the same on all devices, making it easier for people to do business with you no matter what they use.

Companies are now noticing the importance of a mobile-friendly site. Customers who visit your site on their phone or tablet will see an optimized design for their device. Statistically, more than 50% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices, and nearly 60% of all purchases are made from them.

5. Use the Right Keywords

Keywords are the bedrock of any successful content marketing strategy. First, you need to perform a brief research and then identify what keywords you want to rank for. It must include both short-tail and long-tail keywords. You should then tailor your content on a page-by-page basis to fit those keywords in a natural way that provides value to the reader and is relevant, given the context. You should also find the keywords people use during voice searches.

6. Create a Seamless User Experience

Users will look to interact with your site in a way they're comfortable, but if the flow to accomplish tasks is awkward or interrupted because of broken links, etc., they'll bounce without thinking twice.

What can you do to resolve this?

Check your site's usability: Conduct user testing to ensure your site is easy to navigate and use.

Pro Tip: Make sure your website loads quickly, as a slow-loading website will increase the bounce rate and decrease time on site. According to Maura Monaghan of Website Builder Expert, even a one-second delay can drop conversions by 4.42%.

7. Develop Quality Content

Without engaging content, you won't make it through your funnel's first step. In the absence of quality content, bounced visitors will likely click away before even seeing what you have to offer. On the flip side, a high bounce rate could also result from a high click-through rate ā but the users don't stay long enough to find out. This problem is called a "false exit." To resolve it, make your value proposition clear and concise. Also, follow up with the right messaging to bring back users to your website.

Remember: Bounced visitors aren't necessarily lost customers ā they aren't ready to buy yet.

Pro Tip: Use videos and images to boost engagement. Visual content can be highly engaging if used creatively to offer value to your clients and educate them.

8. Determine the Root Cause of Your Bounce Rate

You've improved the website usability and design and added engaging and mobile-friendly content, but your bounce rate remains high. In such a scenario, you need to determine the root cause of the problem before moving forward to fix it.

Check your site's analytics. You can also use the DashClicks Analytics app. Also, ask a friend to glance at your site and tell you what they think is causing them to leave quickly. Another option is to use emotional triggers. These can help you determine what, if anything, is spurring people to go.

Remember: You may need a lot of time and effort to eliminate every cause for a high bounce rate. So, you should focus on the most pressing issues and implementing solutions.

9. Don't Overload Your Site With Ads

While ads are a great way to make money from your site, they can also frustrate visitors. If they are placed to take over your screen and make it impossible to view the content you came for, you've got a serious problem. Avoid pop-ups and auto-playing video ads that can annoy those seeking information. If you have ads on your site that trigger a high bounce rate, try using fewer of them, and make them less annoying and distracting.

Image Source: Opera Blogs

10. Use Animations and Transitions

Modern websites use animations and transitions to navigate between pages, a significant advantage in today's internet landscape in terms of user experience. Try to use animations and transitions that make sense and move your users from one place to the next without confusion.

11. Don't Make Users Hunt for Key Information

The key information about your products and services should be easily accessible on your website. Also, ensure that your company name, address, and contact information are easy to find. Users want to know who they're dealing with and don't want to spend time hunting around for it.

12. Don't Surprise or Shock Users With Unexpected Behaviors

Remember that unpredictable behaviors you display on your site can cause users to leave. If you have the following things, you may lose visitors.

• Unexpected animations or transitions
• Content that is out of order
• Difficult to read content

13. Test, Then Test Again

So, you've implemented all the tips above, but your bounce rate is still high. What now?

Remember, standard solutions don't always work. That's why it's important to test, test and test again. Once you find the best solution for your situation, make it a priority to keep your site clean and updated. You'll lose visitors if your site is cluttered, outdated, or otherwise difficult to use. Stay on top of the alerts in your analytics to detect issues before they become serious problems.

Final Words

Generally, a high bounce rate is not a good thing. We have given a lot of tips above to address this issue. Still, if you are stuck and a high bounce rate continues to frustrate you, use DashClicks Analytics App to figure out the possible reasons. Perform a competitor analysis to see what's going wrong and what your competitors are doing to minimize the bounce rate.

To develop trouble-free websites, use our Sites App or InstaSites App (for building bulk websites.) You can create and manage your websites using our white-label drag-and-drop builder for agencies without IT or coding knowledge. Edit these websites with our CMS like a breeze and handle many such issues without having to contact the developers.