10 Ways to Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate

The percentage of visitors that stay on your site is key to lead conversion and search engine rankings. Here are our top tips to reduce your website bounce rate.

Highlights:

A high bounce rate will compromise your site’s search engine rankings.
Slow website load times are a major cause of bounces.
Publish high-quality, visually appealing content with relevant keywords and meta data.

When it comes to evaluating the performance of your website, bounce rate is a key indicator. But what does this term really mean for supply chain marketing? After we take a deeper dive into what a bounce rate is and why it’s important to track, we’ll offer 10 ideas to reduce your website bounce rate.

Bounce rate defined

Simply put, your website’s bounce rate is the percentage of users who enter your website and immediately leave, or “bounce,” without visiting any additional pages on your site. Bounces happen when visitors click the back button, navigate to a different URL, close their browser, or leave a page open without taking action.

Having a high bounce rate can be an indication that your site failed to convince the visitor to explore further or act on your call-to-action (CTA). Of course, no website, no matter how effective, has a 0% bounce rate. Some users are bound to leave your website without taking any action. But a healthy bounce rate is a key indicator of website success.

While bounce rate ranges vary based on industry and page type, the general ranges are:

80% or higher: bad
70%-80%: poor
50%-70%: average
30%-50%: excellent
20% or lower: likely a tracking error

However, the truth about good versus bad bounce rates is more nuanced than these ranges. Bounce rates can vary widely based on website type, channel, and the device visitors are using.

For example, blog posts typically have a high bounce rate (between 60% and 90%), simply because an effective post will give a user what he or she came for, and there’s no further need to explore your site. This doesn’t mean your blog is performing poorly, as bounce rate is just one in a list of metrics needed to assess the overall performance of a site.

Why does bounce rate matter?

Aside from the fairly obvious fact that a high bounce rate means that visitors aren’t being converted into customers on your site, there’s another serious ramification to your bounce numbers: search engine results. According to a recent study from SEMRush, “Bounce rate is the fourth most important ranking factor on search engine results pages.”

Every time a visitor bounces from your page, it signals to search engine algorithms that your site isn’t what the searcher was looking for, and your ranking will suffer. Having a handle on your bounce rate will help you form a clear picture of how your website is performing, as well as give you understanding of one of the key factors in determining your search engine ranking.

10 ways to reduce your website bounce rate

1) Keep an eye on your page load times.

A major cause of bounces is long loading times, particularly on mobile devices. If your page load time is slow, consider switching to HTTP/2.

2) Make sure navigation is easy.

For your website to entice visitors to stick around, it needs to be clearly labeled and easy for prospects to find and get to what they’re looking for.

3) Evaluate your first impression.

You only get one first impression. When it comes to your website, this means clear navigation menus, engaging headlines, easy-to-read text, subheadings and bullets, and minimal pop-ups or auto-play videos.

4) Publish high-quality content.

Perhaps this goes without saying, but there’s no substitute for high-quality content when it comes to keeping visitors engaged on your site.

5) Optimize your meta data.

A meta description is the text that appears below your website’s URL in search engine results. This text should accurately represent what the page contains, which helps ensure that visitors find what they’re looking for when they click.

6) Create a quality design.

Clean, compelling design is important for keeping users on your page. Ideally, your site’s design should not only be functional and intuitive, but aesthetically pleasing.

7) Optimize mobile experience.

Bearing in mind that mobile users typically have even less patience than desktop users, your site’s mobile version should have a quick load speed, clean design elements, and easy navigability.

8) Use relevant keywords.

The keywords you choose should not only be relevant to your audience’s search queries, but they should reflect what visitors will actually find on your site. If your site ranks high for a keyword that doesn’t relate to the majority of your content, then users searching for that keyword will quickly leave.

9) Write good calls-to-action (CTAs).

A good CTA is key not only to converting leads but also to reducing your website bounce rate. Ideally, your CTA should be clearly visible within the first few seconds of being on a page, and it should be compelling.

10) Use images and videos.

We live in a visual world, so naturally, this type of content connects best with users. Statistic after statistic supports the idea that visual content is dominating the internet. To reduce your website bounce rate, include visuals that keep your audience interested.

What tricks are you using to reduce your website bounce rate?