8 Tips to Reduce Bounce Rate on Your Website

Bounce rate is one of those metrics indicating whether users get engaged on your website and find the content that they search for. But what bounce rate is good enough for your website and your niche? 

In 2021 as a good bounce rate is considered 41% to 55% which does not always mean that higher numbers show poor performance of your website. Here is what you need to know and consider:

What is bounce rate?

First, let’s clear out what bounce rate is and how it is being measured. According to Google, bounce rate is “the percentage of single-page visits (i.e., visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page).” If you want to understand bounce rate, however, you need to know that not all bounces are the same.

• Hard bounces – these happen when users leave your site immediately after landing on a page, without wasting any time scrolling or reading. Hard bounces are a clear signal that people do not have any interest in your site and that they have probably landed on the wrong page. 
• Medium bounces – they indicate a little interest by users who might skim the page before they leave. This might mean that they are not ready to go through all the content now, but they may return on the page later. 
• Soft bounces – with them you will notice higher engagement by users who might stay a few more seconds on a page, scroll down, and interact with more of the content. Even if they leave it will be much easier to retarget and re-engage them.  

Is high bounce rate good or bad?

In general, you will consider high bounce rate as bad because users spend little time on your website and interact less with your brand. However, sometimes high bounce rate may indicate that people find the right answer to their question on your page, and they will leave after going through it. While this is valid for websites in categories such as news, recipes, forums, etc., for online businesses, IT services and e-commerce high bounce rate is a negative result. Here is why we are giving you some proven tips to optimize it.

How to reduce bounce rate on your website?

1. Focus on UX

You only have a few seconds to impress users that land on your page, to engage them, and to help them find the solution they are looking for. Make sure that you offer responsive layout which appears on all browsers and devices and offers easy navigation. Also, do not forget to make your content easy to read and to move all distracting elements such as banner ads and popups aside. 

2. Minimize page loading time

Speeding up your website is crucial for reducing your bounce rate. According to Akamai, 53% of mobile users will abandon a webpage if it takes more than 3 second to load. How much does it take for yours? Check your page speed with PageSpeed Insights tool by Google. In order to improve the speed of your website you can reduce the size of your images, include self-loading content, remove unnecessary plugins or use a content delivery network (CDN). 

3. Offer high-quality fresh content

All the rest of the steps to reduce bounce rate will have no meaning unless you produce high-quality content regularly. Make sure that the texts, images, and videos published on your website are engaging, clear, and relevant to your business and also that you often publish new content to demonstrate your authority and gain trust by users. 

See also: Website Renewal: How to Plan It Properly

4. Set a clear and strong call-to-action (CTA)

Even if you successfully engage users with your content, you might easily lose them with by a weak call-to-action. What you need to have is a CTA that will make them click and continue their user journey. A good idea for a CTA that works for SaaS businesses is offering a free trial for your software or subscription service, for example. 

5. Target popular keywords with value for your business

By just creating any type of content for your blog or website you will hardly reduce your bounce rate. You need to target those keywords that will bring you high-quality traffic and people who are interested and engaged in your niche. You will most likely be interested in transactional or commercial keywords suggesting that users are searching on the web with buying intent. In the e-commerce niche these will be searches related to the price or distribution of products while in the software field they might be related to a tool that is performing certain tasks or is solving specific problems. Not sure about the right keywords for your business? Do a research on Google’s Keyword Planner about the volume and price of the keywords that you consider important for your business. 

6. Attract the right visitors to your website

Sometimes the problem is not with your content or website performance, but with your targeting, instead. The understanding for “quality content” differs a lot among users in different categories and this is the reason we are not giving universal rules about content types or length. However, it is your job to identify and target the type of prospects that might be interested in your brand and that could be turned into leads. Otherwise, high bounce rate indicates nothing of value for your business. 

7. Make external links open in a new tab 

A very simple rule that is often neglected is to set external links to open in new windows of users’ browsers. This is how you make sure that when relating to external sources people would not just click on the link and abandon your web page right away. In such cases they may never come back to your website again. 

8. Monitor, experiment, optimize

Every change that you make on your website will have an impact on your bounce rate. Here is why you need to monitor, test, and further improve your content, UX, functionalities and design. 

In Conclusion

Understanding bounce rate is fundamental for improving your website’s appearance and performance. You already know that a high or low bounce rate is not always good or bad for your business unless you have a clear plan and content strategy. You can always turn to a professional marketing-as-a-service studio that will take the lead of your marketing and branding strategy and help you achieve results from your marketing efforts with real meaning and value for your business.