Tips for Decreasing Your Bounce Rate - Featured.jpg

How to Decrease the Bounce Rate on Your Website

According to Google Analytics, a bounce is simply “a single-page session on your site.” In other words, if someone visits your website, maybe from a search ad or a link from a review site, and they only visit one page and then leave, it’s a bounce.

It’s not always a bad thing when someone bounces. If you’ve got a single-page website — a blog, for example — it doesn’t matter that you have a high bounce rate, because your visitors don’t have the option to visit subsequent pages in the first place.

But, for most business websites, the homepage is the introduction to the other pages of the site, where purchases can be made or appointments can be scheduled. For websites like these, success depends on getting your visitors to visit more pages and stick around — in other words, it depends on a better bounce rate.

6 Tips for a Better Bounce Rate

#1. Make your site faster.

According to a 2013 Microsoft study, the average adult’s attention span is about eight seconds long. For the record, a goldfish, notorious for its inattention, has a nine-second attention span. There you have it, folks. The human attention span is officially shorter than a goldfish’s.

Considering the low average attention span, it’s easy to see why it’s important to your bounce rate that your website loads quickly. You only have a few seconds to convince your visitors that your site is worth their attention, and if those precious seconds are wasted loading your website, you’ve got a problem.

If your website is slow, increasing site speed is one of the best things you can do for your bounce rate (and for your organic rankings). How do you know whether your site speed is up to par? PageSpeed Insights from Google is a free tool that will help you determine whether or not your site is fast enough across all devices, as well as gives you suggestions on what you can do to improve it.

#2. Make your call to action clear.

The call to action of your webpage, whether it be to shop your products, schedule a free estimate, or sign up for your newsletter, tells your visitors why they’ve come to your website. That’s why it needs to be front and center.

The content on your website should always be straight and to the point. It’s a mistake to try to focus on too many calls to action on a single page, particularly if they’re all above the fold. Instead, you want to pick a single focus and stick with it.

In addition to focusing on a single call to action, you also want to make the call to action stand out by not overcrowding it with too many other elements. White space is your friend when it comes to highlighting your call to action, so don’t be afraid to use it!

#3. Make your content reader-friendly.

The content on your website should be written in a way that’s easy for all of your visitors to understand. That means that you should probably avoid industry jargon. Write with your audience in mind, and work to make the content on your website easy to read and informative.

Creating easy-to-read content is more than just about what you say and how you say it. It also has a lot to do with how you format your content.

Have you ever visited a blog or page, only to find a wall of text? This is the type of content that will send your visitors packing, resulting in a higher bounce rate for your website. Make sure that you’re formatting your content properly so that it’s readable on any device.

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#4. Make your metadata relevant.

The metadata of your website, otherwise known as the title tag and meta description, is what appears on the SERP (search engine results pages) when your website ranks for certain keywords. It’s essentially the data that gives users a preview of what they’ll find when they visit your website.

When creating title tags and meta descriptions for your website — and yes, you absolutely should create your own — one of the most important things to keep in mind is relevancy. Your site’s title tags and meta descriptions tell visitors what to expect when they visit your website. If that expectation isn’t set correctly, they’re not going to stick around when they get to your website.

Nothing can make them bounce more effectively than misleading metadata. Make sure that yours is relevant, optimized for search engines, and sets the right expectations of what they’ll find when they get to your website.

#5. Make your website mobile-friendly.

These days, most of the visitors you get on your website will be using mobile phones or tablets. Fewer and fewer people have desktop computers — or even laptops — which means that designing a website solely with desktop users in mind is no longer acceptable.

What do you think will happen when someone lands on your website using their tablet or smartphone, only to find that they can’t click on buttons or pages don’t load properly? They’re going to click the back button. It’s as simple as that.

Responsive design is the first step toward mobile-friendliness because it ensures the optimal user experience on every device. But, a mobile-friendly website also needs its content to be formatted correctly, as well as adequate spacing between clickable elements, like buttons and links.

#6. Make your site searchable.

When someone comes to your website, they’re likely looking for something specific. It might be a certain product or information about a specific service. And, if they can’t find the information they’re looking for quickly, they’re going to move onto another website where they can.

One of the most important aspects of effective web design is user-friendly navigation and search functionality.

If your bounce rate is too high, it may be a sign that it’s time to consider building a new website for your business. Get started today with the Websites 360® website builder. It’s affordable, easy to use, and makes it possible to design a professional, beautiful website without knowing a single line of code.