Seven ways you can reduce the bounce rate on your website

There are some of you out there that are asking the question, ‘what does bounce rate mean?’ Before we go any further, let us answer that question;

The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that view your website and leave before viewing a second page. 

You can be forgiven for thinking that if people are visiting your website it doesn’t matter what the bounce rate is. However, the longer your website holds the attention of your visitors the more likely you will turn them in to customers or subscribers. 

If your website is suffering from a poor bounce rate there are ways to improve it and keep visitors navigating the site. 

1.    Exit-intent popups 

Every visitor to the site is a potential customer, but between 60%-70% of traffic that leave your website will not return. That is a huge amount of potential custom to be losing out on.  One way to stop visitors jumping away from your website is the use of exit-intent popups. The popups prompt visitors to sign-up to your email list. They track when someone is about to exit the site, sending them a message which grabs their attention encouraging them to stay active. They are a shrewd way to help boost sales. 

2.    Catch your visitor’s attention 

Catching a visitor’s eye is crucial in all manners of business, be that online, in a shop or in the media. Users don’t particularly enjoy reading too much content and can be put off by homepages or other pages on the site if there are just blocks of text. 

Having good quality images and videos is a nice way to break up copy which will engage a visitor and grab their attention. It is a proven way for websites to be more attractive to their target audience and have them returning on a regular basis.   

3.    Increase site speed 

If your website hasn’t loaded in 3 seconds most visitors will have given up and gone to a competitor’s site. Nearly 50% of visitors expect a site to load within 2 seconds. Now we live in an instant world where consumers have access to everything they need via their phones, tablets and laptops, your website needs to follow suit by delivering that instant impact they are looking for. 

Reducing redirects can impact your site speed for the better; the more redirects your website has, the longer the visitor is waiting to get to where they want to be on your site. Redirects especially affect mobile users because they are relying on mobile networks. 

The slower a page loads, the higher the bounce rate, meaning a potentially massive impact on your rankings and revenue.  

4.    Blogging 

Blogging is one of the best ways to generate leads from your website. Your content needs to be consistent and engaging to hold users on the site which in turn will have them viewing several pages. 

The amount of blog posts you have is very important, but the quality of the content is just as important. If you can produce 15+ blog posts a month that visitors regularly return to your site to read and look forward in doing so, your website will generate nearly 5 times the amount of leads than a company who do not publish blogs. 

5.    Calls to action 

A call to action is huge for your website. A high bounce rate indicates users just didn’t see the benefits of buying from your company. For people browsing the site there is always a fear factor as to what they will be signing up for or buying. 

If your site has a monthly subscription, perhaps offer a first FREE month trial that can be cancelled any time before that period ends. The more consumers feel looked after, the more they are likely to buy in to your site. A compelling call to action helps. 

6.    Attract the right visitors 

It’s important to make sure you are targeting the right audience and your content isn’t missing the mark. 

A key factor to a higher bounce rate will be the wrong visitors landing on your site. To attract who you’re truly targeting to your website it’s important to customise your content, tailoring it to your market’s needs and expectations. 

Using the right keywords is just as important, because you will be missing out on a high volume of traffic landing on one of your pages. Take into account tweaking keywords that are not proving successful so that Google will find and use them to rank your site higher and therefore attract more visitors.  

7.    Better with Meta 

A good punchy meta description will attract people to your website. This is where it is important that you have got the right keywords for the searcher. 

Keywords typed by the user are bolded in the search results by Google to draw in the visitor and inform them that those sites are likely to have what they are looking for. 

The meta description is very powerful as Google will use it to display a snippet of your page. If the Meta description contains the wrong keywords, visitors will ignore your site altogether, or if they do visit, they will feel misled and exit without hesitation, further causing issues for the bounce rate. 

Why not take a look at your website and see if you can incorporate any of the helpful tips and tricks listed above? Doing so may well help the bounce rate of your site! Of course, if you’re unsure about the best way to do any of this, you can always contact the experts here at Smart Domain Group. Working across Kent and the UK, we specialise in beautifully designed and well-written websites for small and medium sized businesses.