When it comes to bouncing, there are a few situations where more bounce is a good thing. However, bouncing should be left for trampolines and basketballs, not your website. It is normal for websites to have traffic that comes to the page, then leaves without staying long (aka, bounce). The more traffic that comes to your website, then quickly leaves without engaging it increases your bounce rate. There are times when a higher bounce rate may not be a big deal, but in most situations, you probably want your traffic to stick around and see what you’re offering.
The following list is a simple way to reduce bounce rates by showing both search engines and your visitors that the content on your site is worth checking out.
How To Reduce Bounce Rates
Attracting The Right Audience
It may sound like getting all traffic possible to your website is a good approach, but that’s not the case. You are much better off targeting the right audience for your service or product and getting fewer clicks from interested people. This will reduce your bounce rates because of traffic with no interest in what you offer.
Page Load Times
Not only do search engines look at load times, but people also do too. The faster your page loads, the better. In fact, studies have shown traffic often leaves if the page does not load within 2 seconds. That’s a very quick period to capture attention and encourage traffic to engage with your website.
Landing Pages
Avoid saying you have the answers to a question just to get a click. If you say you have the answer, give it. When a user comes to your website, it is because they are looking for a solution for a problem or information on a service or product. If you do not clearly provide what they are looking for, they will simply leave.
Intuitive Website Organization
People have grown impatient; if they do not see the information they are looking for, they leave. That goes for the website design as well, which means the layout is more important now than ever before. You want the most important content front and center, above the page fold where people will see it. The next most important under that, and so on.
Web Design Aesthetics
You want the website design to be just as modern as the layout and content. Use clean white space combined with contrasting colors, keeping things organized. Provide high-quality images and buttons to help encourage and direct traffic to engage. People are visual, and every element will have an impact; choosing the right color scheme is also important. By doing A/B testing, you can see what colors and elements your audience prefers more. You don’t want to increase the bounce rate because you used blue over the green!
Scannable Content
You want users to be able to easily scan content on your website to find the information they want. There are a couple ways you can do this to ensure readability. First, keep paragraphs small to a few sentences. This helps break up longer pieces of information.
The second is to create headers and subheaders that quickly tell the user what the section is about. For instance, the header above, “Scannable Content,” alerted you that this section would be explaining how to keep things easy to read!
Mobile Friendly
Studies show that more people are searching on their phones today, and fewer searches are done on the computer. Because of that, search engines are focusing more on mobile-friendly websites. Plus, by ensuring your site loads fast and looks good on mobile devices, you will reduce bounce rates.
Multiple Sections
This sort of goes with the scannable content and mobile-friendly because creating sections allows users to easily find information as well. Remember, people tend to avoid long paragraphs, and some even avoid small paragraphs if they are not provided a simple explanation of what the section is, such as headers. Use headers to break up sections, block quotes if appropriate, and numbered or bullet lists for highlighting lists of information.
Avoid Forced Slideshow Navigation
A trend that has taken over the internet, but that most people have become annoyed of is creating slideshow style articles with the only way to keep reading is to constantly keep clicking ‘continue’ to the next slide. Not only does this require users additional time, but they also have no guarantee the information they want is there.
Remember, while it seems like a good way to increase page views, many people do not like them and will simply leave once they realize it’s a slideshow-based article.
Clearly, State Call-To-Action (CTAs)
Even if you provide the information a user needs on your site, without a clear direction to that information, you may lose traffic. That is why successful websites clearly tell traffic where to go next using a call to action (CTA). These simple elements are effective at telling users where to get more information they are looking for.
Internal Linking
By providing users with internal links, you can help them explore your site easier and get interesting topics in front of them. Also, internal links help with SEO with target keywords and improve your overall ranking in search engine results.
Popular or Related Posts
When users are finished reading your blog, having the option of related posts or other popular posts to choose from helps create engagement. If people see another related topic that interests them, they often stay on your website longer, and this is a great way to drive traffic further into your website and less likely to hit the back button.
Add a Search Bar
If you offer a large amount of information or have a bunch of blog posts, users will find what they are looking for much easier with a search bar. There are many free plugins for this, and if clearly visible, users may use it to search for the content they need if not clearly found when first landing on your page.
Limit Ads
Ads help bring in revenue, but too many ads will look like spam to users and search engines. You can’t get revenue from the traffic that doesn’t exist, right? Keep your advertisements limited, and be careful where you position them. It is recommended to have 3 or less per page. If you offer valuable content that people need, the views will add up.
Open External Links In a New Window
If you provide links pointing away from your website (external links), you want them to open in a separate window. Otherwise, you will be directing users of your website, and they may not come back. By opening a new window or tab, your website remains open, and they may continue browsing.
Page-Level Survey
When you implement a page survey on the sidebar or even a single question with a popup, it can be a simple and effective way to get answers. For example, “Did this information help you?” This informs you about the information provided, gets the user to engage, and lowers your bounce rates.
Non-Aggressive Exit Pop-Ups
When users go to close the window, you can have a well-designed popup ad that can be closed easily can encourage further engagement. This should be used carefully so that it does not appear like spam or get obnoxious to users.
With these simple ways to reduce bounce rate, hopefully, you can get your numbers down. Even using a few of these can have a major impact long-term. Once you’ve successfully used a few of these methods, add more and see what happens. You may find that your bounce rate gets lower than you ever expected.
Do you still need help reducing your bounce rates? Give us a call, our team of professionals can help!
