Okay, accepting high bounce rate may be a little uncomfortable just like when it is difficult for you to accept that your child isn’t the topper in his class or isn’t the best-looking kid in the school. Yes, at first it may feel like your website is going to hit off with overwhelming responses and until you actually see the Google Analytics and your bounce rate has a very different story to tell.
Image Credits: LyncServe
Before understanding the reasons why you have a higher bounce rate and implementing steps to lessen it down, first it is needed to understand what exactly is a bounce rate and how much of it is normal. Just like everything, bounce rate is also according to the context that you need. According to Google’s new machine-learning algorithm RankBrain, some people may even think that bounce rate can influence the search rankings. There are several factors that can increase your conversion rate that is by having more landing pages. According to a 2013 study by HubSpot, it was revealed that companies with 40 or more landing pages get leads 12 times more than others with fewer landing pages.
According to Google Analytics, there is a Time on page metric which is an estimate of how long on average users spend on any given page and is based mainly on approximations, rather than a definite measurement. Google Analytics requires two clicks to calculate Time on Page – an entrance click and an exit click that takes them away from the page. This exit click is often missing since if the user has spent a good amount of time on the website and has left completely satisfied but closed the tab without exit clicking, then the same session is logged as a bounce as well. Even it is called a bounce when the user opens a link in new tab and leaves the original tab and closes the browser. No wonder Google Analytics Bounce Rate and Time is based on assumptions.
Even though there are certain instances where after you redesign or rework on the content and design, you notice a lot of spiking in the bounce rate of the websites. It means that you need a deeper analysis of what exactly is wrong with the website. Even though the Google Analytics is based on assumptions, there’s actually no specific way to know the exact bounce rate of any website.
1. Speeding Up Page Load Time:
Image Credits: Mobile1st
It is obvious for every marketer, that once they hear that the bounce rate is high it is immediately perceived that the issue lies with the page content and the loading speed of the webpage. Loading of a webpage can’t take more than 3 seconds since 47% of the traffic shall run away from the website until the optimization is crucial to reduce the bounce rate. The slow-loading pages are among the leading causes of shopping cart abandonment for e-commerce retailers, but only 2% of the world’s leading 100 e-commerce websites that have mobile sites load fully in less than five seconds! No wonder everyone loves them.
2. The ‘Short and Sweet’ Formulae:
Image Credits: Kat Hoyos
Now, users generally won’t be looking forward to reading a really useful blog with valuable information but with never-ending, weighty paragraphs all stocked into one page. In order to get them engrossed in your blog, you need to use ample white space between the lines and corners as well make the content more visually appealing. There are various ways in which you can do the same:
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Appropriate use of headers
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Proper Subheadings
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Bulleted lists
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Proper images
Even if your users aren’t actually deeply reading the blog and is rather just skimming through, there are ways in which you can make your audience trust in the content that you’re offering. And yes, please don’t overdo line breaks or images since they can be equally frustrating to the users as long walls of text all decked up.
3. Lesser Sidebar Widgets and Promotions:
Image Credits: Clearhat
There are some web pages act as an ideal vehicle for offering relevant content, offers, and other materials to your audience, especially when blog pages are an example you’d probably struggle to find a decent blog without something in the sidebar. However, the digital margins of the content with ads, offers, award emblems, and other crap is also a sure shot way to make your visitors run away from your website. To highlight the relevant content from the sidebar is to offer the reader some additional value.
For example, There are related article recommendations that add on to the topic covered in a blog post is a great way to make your website ‘stickier’ and provide genuinely valuable content. If you need to choose to include awards and trust signals, you need to do it from the most reputable and renowned sources for an actual purpose. Also, avoid any type of wary pop-ups where the promotions can be distracting and give your visitors time to get engrossed in the content before pouncing on them with the newsletter sign-up offers and other promotion.
4. Cross-Reference Bounce Rate:
Image Credits: juicecomunicacao
It is relevant to look at the bounce rate within the wider context of your website in general and doing the same allows you to ascertain more accurately if the problem is with a specific page, a type of page, or your website on the whole. If the Time on Site metrics are decent, but the blog pages have a higher bounce rate and the problem may be with your content. On the other hand, if the bounce rate is higher and TIme on Site is lower, then you aren’t giving visitors any more than what they want in a generic want. Going ahead with usage trends with wider site data to make sure you’re not dealing with an anomalous outlier of a page while making decisions would affect the whole website and you may miss the focus on the details.
5. A Compelling Call-To-Action
Image Credits: Landerapp
47% of websites have a clear call-to-action button that uses 3 seconds or lesser to be visible. Once you’ve attracted a lot of visitors, don’t lose visitors because of a weak CTA.
It has been found that around 70% of small businesses lack a proper Call-To-Action button and that’s why have a higher bounce rate and lesser conversions.
A social media management software business – Sprout Social understands that giving users a free trial period and getting them educated about the same is a more definite way to convert more users into customers. Once you get a buy-in from a client with a CTA is a free trial and would help you with the bounce rate. The landing page review can provide you with insights and get a site visitor to take a positive action. Once you’re in the SaaS-based revenue model, offering free trials works that should be presented well in the CTA.
Conclusion:
In this article, there are several ways to reduce the bounce rate and boost the conversion rate. But, without high-quality content and even if you succeed at cutting the bounce rate the risk of increasing it again is higher. In order to maintain that, a content strategy and editorial calendar are needed to be mapped out.
Most importantly, stay consistent and there are strategies could produce fairly quick results and keep growing the website. As you satisfy the users, improving the search traffic, inbound links and lead generation is needed.