How to Reduce Website Bounce Rate

When we look at metrics in Google Analytics – conversion rate, number of website visitors, time spent on page, etc. – we are happy with high numbers because they are an indicator of a good marketing campaign. The exception is the bounce rate. The lower it is, the better.

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Bounce rate is an important factor that affects the effectiveness of a site as a business tool and its ranking by search engine algorithms.

What does refusal mean?

A bounce is a single-page session on a website. When a person visits a page and leaves, not interested in other pages – closes the tab or enters a query into the search engine again.

The reason for the drop-off may be the lack of the desired product, information, a bug on the site, or perhaps the user did not find the atmosphere they were hoping for.

Formula for calculating the bounce rate

To find out the number of bounces, Google Analytics divides the number of pageviews by the total number of site visits.

What is an acceptable bounce rate?

As a rough guide, the following figures can be mentioned:

• 30-40% is an excellent indicator;
• 50% -70% is acceptable, but it is worth striving for a decrease;
• 80% - 90% - the site does not work as a business tool and needs improvement, the site's landing pages do not meet user requests.

If your site's bounce rate is less than 25%, your site's analytics may not be working properly.

How to reduce bounce rate?

There are many reasons that affect the bounce rate, and, accordingly, about the same number of solutions to the problem. We suggest paying attention to the five most common ways that will help reduce the bounce rate.

1.Try to avoid pop-up banners

Often, organizations try to get users' emails right after they visit their site. Or they attack them with banner ads that you can't find the close button on the first try. This is annoying, and users simply leave the site.

Pop-ups have become an epidemic, leading Google to de-rank websites that hide content with pop-ups in early 2017. The exceptions were warning messages, such as those about the use of cookies or to verify the age of visitors, and banners that do not take up much screen space and are easy to close.

2.Make the site easy to read

Sites with hard-to-read text or confusing navigation don't hold back users. This also applies to poor-quality images and low-resolution videos - people won't waste time on a page that's difficult or unpleasant to access. 

Use content formatting rules to help make your site easy and readable:

Use clear subheadings to visually and content-wise break up large articles.

use bulleted lists to highlight key points;

Use diagrams, relevant images, and screenshots where necessary – visual content makes information easier to understand.

Add internal links to other pages on your site to direct users to other contextual materials that may interest them.

Highlight key words in bold, italics, or underline to draw readers' attention to important points;

ask questions to make the reader think, and then give them answers;

draw conclusions, summarize, and generalize important points of the topic being taught.

3.Keep the information up to date

It is important for the reader that the information offered is up-to-date. Of course, there are also practically eternal topics that will always have value, but for the most part, the information should be fresh and relevant.

To keep your content relevant, you can focus on:

• trends and changes in your industry that may be of interest to readers;
•  reviews of products and services;
•  announcements of upcoming events, anticipated products and services.

For small businesses, a good rule of thumb is to update your website at least once a week. It's important to find your balance and update your posts regularly.

4.Post useful information

When developing a content plan for your website, you need to think not only about how Google will rate it, but also about what a potential customer would like to find on the site. Bounce rates are people – people who come to your site looking for information, products or services. And the more useful and interesting your site content is, the less likely they are to leave after viewing just one page.

It is important to constantly ask yourself: “Will the material be useful to the reader?”

5.Take care of quality hosting.

An important factor that affects the duration of a user's stay on a site is qualityhostingbecause it affects the speed of loading pages of the site and its work in general. Not every user has the patience to sit and wait, watching the page load. After waiting about 10 seconds – the average waiting time for a page to load – the visitor will simply close the tab.

To sum up, we can say: to maintain low bounce rates on a website, you should make sure that the information is interesting, useful, and easy to read, that the videos and images are of high quality, and that the pages load quickly.

If you are just planning to create your own website, you can easily do it withWordPress.