7 Steps to reduce your website bounce rate
7 Steps to Reduce the Bounce Rate of your Website
Don't let your online sales run right out your front door -control your website's BOUNCE RATE and increase your revenue.
A website's bounce rate (sometimes confused with exit rate) is a term used in web site traffic analysis and essentially represents the measure of visitors that arrive at a page on a site and leave, or 'bounce' away, without going any further...the lower the bounce rate the better.
I'm going to use this blog post to review how to combat bounce rate but first a little background on website bounce rates:
So what is the average website bounce-rate?
The easy answer is an average bounce rate of 50% is considered good, but when you look under the hood you'll see different bounce rates spell success for different types of websites since there are several factors that determine the actual bounce rate of any page. Here are some of the numbers that were listed by Steve Jackson based on his experience with various sites:
- Retail sites driving well targeted traffic 20-40% bounce.
- Simple landing pages (with one call to action such as add to cart) I've seen bounce at a much higher rate, anywhere from 70-90%.
- Content websites with high search visibility can bounce at 40-60%.
- Portals have much lower bounce rates in our experience 10-30%.
- Service sites (self service or FAQ sites) again usually lower 10-30%.
- Lead generation (services for sale) 30-50%.
What can you do to improve your website bounce rate?
We have worked with clients for years on reducing their bounce rates and increasing their conversions, and since I've discussed this topic in efelle's online marketing seminars and in meetings over the years I've decided to share what I and have found to be the best methods of keeping your bounce rate in check:
1. Offer Smooth Website Navigation:
Smooth and simple website navigation is necessary to enhance the user experience. Linking one web page to another helps in reducing the bounce rate of the website -the intent is to help your website viewers extract your information with ease instead of having to hunt for it, which leads to frustration and of course site bounces.
2. Avoid Disruptive Website Design Elements
Suppose your website contains relevant information, appropriate images and essential calls-to-action and suddenly a pop-up ad appears; your efforts to enhance your users? experience may get distracted in an instant and distract the users? attention from your website, which of course results in a high bounce rate. Avoid distractions and you'll keep your visitors on your site and heading through your sales funnel.
3. Use Eye Catching Taglines
Taglines and headlines are the first elements that the users come across while reading a web page, an article etc. A headline is essentially the summary of what follows and should propel the readers to read further. Keyword-rich headlines also help improve the search engine ranking of that page. The general rule of thumb is that a headline that is able to catch the eye of the readers automatically lowers the bounce rate of a website.
4. Website Browser Compatibility
Web browser compatibility is one of the most important factors in reducing the bounce rate of a website. For example, a website that was designed to work only on Mozilla Firefox may not work very well with Internet Explorer which may increase the chances of losing out on some genuine leads from your site... Make sure that your website is compatible with all major web browsers.
5. Encourage your Users to TAKE ACTION
Users participation is an essential factor in not only establishing a strong brand identity, but also improving your sales. Calls to action can be anything from a CONTACT US button to a VIEW PRODUCTS link, it's whatever you'd hope your visitors would do while on your site...The action can be assisted with the aid of video clips, live chat, discussions, social media, etc. -all of these activities help in reducing bounce rate of your website by encouraging ACTION and interactivity
6. Ensure your Website's Page Titles Properly Describe your Pages
Having properly formatted PAGE TITLES is a must, ESPECIALLY when counting on search engine traffic to land visitors to your site; if your page titles don't match your content you'll be at a disadvantage right out of the gate and increase the odds of visitors jumping ship.
7. Don?t Overload your Website with Images
Do not crowd your website with too many images or, even worse, unrelated images -this slows the load-time of your page and offers up distractions to your browsers which leads to an increased bounce rate.
Improve your website bounce rate with a free consultation:
While we've outlined basic website bounce rate information in this article, our online marketing consultants are trained to analyze your website and suggest what needs to be done to reduce the bounce rate of the your websites on an as-needed basis?.Please contact us at 206.384.4909 for a free website review as well as more useful tips on lowering the bounce rate of your website.