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The typical stance about a website’s bounce rate is that a high bounce rate is ‘’bad’’ while a low bounce rate is ‘’good’’.
After all, what level can be deemed as excessively high?
You’re likely seeking ideal numbers to alleviate concerns about your website’s bounce rate. The fact is, numbers can be misleading sometimes as variable factors contribute to it.
We’ll look into these factors that are driving up the bounce rate.
Overall, this blog post will give you all the necessary knowledge about a website’s bounce rate, what’s the ideal bounce rate according to your industry, what factors can elevate the bounce rate, and how to improve it if your website’s bounce rate is going beyond normal limits.
Let’s dive into it.
What is Bounce Rate?
Whenever a visitor visits your website and leaves the website without interacting further, Google considers it as a ‘’bounce’’ on your website. And ‘’bounce rate’’ is the percentage of total visitors bouncing off your website.
You must be thinking what does ‘’further interaction’’ mean?
Simply put, if a visitor comes to your site and stays on one page without checking out the other pages, it’s a bounce. However, if he explores at least two pages on your site you’re good.
Google Analytics helps you measure your website’s bounce rate. It gives a comprehensive report about the site-wide bounce rate — the average bounce rate of the entire website pages divided by the total number of visitors on all the pages during a specific time frame.
It’s also possible to track the bounce rate for an individual page or a specific section of your website. This way you can better analyze the performance of your web pages.
What Constitutes an Optimal Bounce Rate?
Factors such as website niche, industry, business category, geographical location, and the devices used by the audience impact the website’s bounce rate.
For instance, retail stores, content websites, landing pages, service websites, lead generation, portals, and every other website would have different bounce rates. The average bounce rate for e-commerce websites is approximately 47% however, it varies from device to device. According to Contentsquare, the average bounce rate is 51% for smartphones 45% on tablets, and 43% on desktops.
Google Analytics provides a translucent visualization of the average bounce rate of your site. Certainly, the site-wide bounce rate is knotty to analyze and you can’t set a very broad benchmark to work on.
We recommend you narrow down your approach to individual pages or sections and then optimize their bounce rate.
The truth is that a ‘’good bounce rate’’ differs for every site. Even it might be different for different pages in it.
Determinants Leading to Elevated Bounce Rates
Before looking into the guidelines to improve your bounce rate, it is of prime importance to know what determinants are causing elevated bounce rates.
The page fell short of expectations
Let’s say you are looking for a fishing rod and search for ‘’fishing rod with free shipping’’ on Google.
You open the first website, saying ‘’fishing rod with free shipping’’ on the search result page. Instead of landing on a page with a variety of fishing rods, you’re on the homepage or any other page of that specific website.
What will you do?
You will immediately bounce off and find another website parallel to your search intent.
Unsatisfactory UX
Your website design has a great impact on user experience. It should look good, and at the same time, it should be easy to use and everyone can navigate through its sections and pages. Delivering a good user experience on your site will lower your bounce rate.
User Gets the Required Information
It’s not always a bad user experience, poor website design, or irrelevant page information that pushes the visitor away and gives a bounce to your website. This means every bounce is not ‘’bad’’.
Sometimes, the user gets all the necessary information on a single page and he does not visit another page.
For example, if you’re looking for a ‘’plain cake recipe’’ and you land on the one having everything — ingredients, instructions, pictures. At the moment you put your cake in the oven, you will close that specific website.
Technically, it’s a bounce but the reason is positive. The user got what he needed.
Guidelines To Reduce Bounce Rate
Here are 7 proven ways to reduce your website’s bounce rate. Implementing these strategies will yield positive results and escalate your website’s performance.
Prioritize Page Loading Speed
If the visitors have to wait long to access what they need (and ‘’long’’ means more than 3 seconds) on a website, it will count as a poor user experience. Similarly, the load time is of crucial importance when the users are on their smartphones.
The website’s content does not matter if it’s not accessible immediately.
Improve your page load time as it will minimize the user’s frustration level and he’ll not bounce.
Give Design the Attention It Deserves
A pleasant-looking and attractive design boosts the website’s user experience. Focus on an intuitive website design that builds trust and leads to a better user experience
Visitors might leave the website with an unattractive design, inappropriate color scheme, and cluttered sections.
Provide the best design to your user, not just aesthetically appealing but delivering excellent functionality as well.
Ensure Mobile-friendly Website
If your website is not mobile-friendly, you are losing a substantial audience. According to Statista, 60% of the total web traffic is mobile traffic.
Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly, this way users will enjoy their stay on your website and it will also lower the bounce rate.
Google’s Mobile-friendly Test Tool is ideal for checking the responsiveness of your website and if the results are not up to the mark as anticipated, you can optimize it.
Enhance the Readability of Your Content
Have you ever encountered a blog with immense text, lengthy paragraphs, and no images or infographics? You must know how discouraging it is to read and how miserable the readers feel to read this type of content.
It urges the visitors to leave that site and find something better.
If you have such content on your website, it is worrisome.
Your website content should be readable and easily accessible to visitors. The formatting of the web pages should be as welcoming and approachable as possible to reduce the bounce rate.
Here are a few points to make the content pleasant-looking and approachable.
- Add concise headings and sub-headings
- Use bullet points
- Make short paragraphs
- Use images
Also, read ‘’The Era of Interactive Content: A Guide to Engaging Audiences’’ for a more dynamic and interactive website content approach.
Attract the Right Audience Effectively
Picture yourself in a grocery shop looking for a specific dairy product and you can’t find it there. The next moment, you will exit the store and find your way to another place to get your product.
The same is your website, if your website doesn’t have the content your audience is trying to find, it will give you a bounce.
Your content must hold the power to attract the right audience effectively and make them stay.
Avoid bounce by creating compelling landing pages with strong keywords and useful content, writing meaningful meta descriptions, and running targeted online campaigns.
Incorporate Internal Linking
Internal links are extremely important to minimize the bounce rate of the website. A streamlined internal linking in your website engages the visitors more and they stick around for a longer period.
Incorporate meaningful internal links in your content for additional information to the users. However, stuffing too many links is not recommended as it might confuse the reader.
Be careful while selecting the anchor text for the link and make it precise and relevant.
Minimize Unnecessary Distractions
Too many unnecessary distractions can elevate the website’s bounce rate. For example, the ads on your website might be a distracting factor to the users.
Also, the position of ads matters a lot. Generally, ads should be alongside the content or at the top or bottom of the web page. Long ads in between the content aren’t suitable from the perspective of user experience.
Similarly, pop-ups might also be a cause for distraction. Avoid them initially when the reader has just started reading the content. You can make them appear at the end of the page when the reader is about to complete their blog.
Final Thoughts
To sum up, understanding and addressing your website’s bounce rate is essential for optimizing user engagement and user experience. While a high bounce rate is often perceived negatively, it’s crucial to consider the context, website category, industry norms, and user intent.
Implementing these key guidelines, including optimizing page load time, ensuring mobile-friendliness, and incorporating internal linking, contributes to an enhanced user experience and reduced bounce rate.
Tailor your approach more strategically and attain the most optimal bounce rate for your website.