14 Ways to Reduce Your Website Bounce Rates
What are Bounce Rates? Bounce rates tell you what percentage of people left a given page on your website without viewing any other pages. It’s not to be confused with exit rates, which simply tell you the percentage of visitors that left the site from a page (i.e. they may have viewed other pages first). Also, it’s important to be aware that users could spend 10 minutes on your page before they leave the site. In this scenario, it could well be that the page has fulfilled its purpose (or that the user has just forgotten to close it).
How to Reduce Bounce Rates or How to Keep Visitors on Your Site for Longer The following factors should help to reduce bounce rates, but also should serve to keep users on site for a longer period. Or at least remove factors which will make them leave the site. Here we are, in no particular order...
1. Make Sure Your Pages Load Quickly No-one likes slow loading pages, so make sure yours run as fast as they can, on mobile and desktop. The old rule of thumb from Jakob Nielsen was that users would wait two seconds for a page to load before abandoning the idea. Whatever the exact time, if a site feels slow to load, people will be thinking about bouncing. This is important from a user experience perspective, but also forms part of Google’s mobile ranking factors. It looks like we have some work to do on that score...
2. Give Visitors all the Information they May Need This is a point which perhaps applies to ecommerce more than other sites. Let’s take an example from the travel sector. If you’re researching hotels to stay in, then the obvious destination for many web users is TripAdvisor. There they can find (in theory) impartial views on the hotel which cut through the sales pitch on the hotel or travel agent’s website. However, once on TripAdvisor, they may be swayed by other hotels. If you have reviews on site though, or have integrated TripAdvisor reviews on the page, then one reason to head elsewhere is removed.
3. Avoid Clickbait Clickbait is commonplace now. In fact, it's hard to find a news publisher's site without this kind of garbage following articles. If you're foolish enough to click one of these links you'll find yourself on some of the worst sites on the web, full of pop-ups, pagination and lots of attempts to trick you into clicking on ads. There's also the question of why publishers would want to send their audiences there, but thats an issue for another article. Essentially, none of these posts are likely to deliver on the promise of the headline. The content needs to be relevant to the headline, or else people will bounce quickly. I'm not against lists or using headlines to attract clicks, which is why this article has the headline it does. It's just that headlines have to deliver on their promises. 4. Avoid huge Pop-Ups and Annoying Ads Serving users with a huge pop-up as soon as they enter the site is a great way to make them hit the back button. Likewise, intrusive rollover ads and autoplay audio are what make web users turn to adblockers. It will make many others bounce as soon as they reach your site. 5. Use internal linking I've written about the use of internal linking as an SEO tactic, but it performs an important role in keeping people on site for longer. Providing users with links to other interesting articles which are relevant to the one which users are reading increases the likelihood that they'll hang around for longer, and reduces those bounce rates. 6. Be Careful with External Links I'm all for giving credit when its due when it comes to links, but if you add external links early in a post and don't open them in a new window, you're essentially asking users to your site and inflate your bounce rates. 7. Do Not Use Pagination This could actually be posited as a way to reduce bounce rates, but I think the drawback of annoying users outweighs this particular aim.
8. Site Design Users will form an opinion of your site the minute they land on it, and much of this is down to the design. Your search result or tweet may have convinced them to click, but bad design (or at least design that doesn't appeal to the visitor) can convince them to leave. 9. Article Formatting This is very important. Just as people make quick judgements based on site design, they'll also look at the article or page they clicked on and wonder how much work it will be to read and consume. A wall of text with few paragraphs and no visual stimulus will deter many people just because it seems like hard work to digest. On the other hand, if you have clear sub-headings, bullet points, images and charts, and bold text on key stats and points then it makes even longer articles seem more appealing. Of course, the content should deliver, but first impressions matter in this respect. 10. Mobile-Friendly Pages An obvious point. If you want mobile users to stay a while on your site, then make sure it's mobile-optimized. 11. Site Search and Navigation Site search provides an easy navigation option for visitors. On ecommerce sites, site search users often convert at higher than the average rate, as using it can indicate a greater intent to purchase. On other sites, search provides users with an alternative way to navigate through sites, one that some web users prefer. Give people easy and clear ways to navigate around your site. Make navigation intuitive and consistent.
12. Related Content Recommendations This is about giving people ideas for other content or pages based on the article they're reading. We use them here on SEW, based on the main topic. You'll see it down the page, between the author bio and the comments. 13. Most Read/Commented Boxes This is another form of content recommendation, based on the articles being read or shared. Here's an example from the BBC: We have something similar here, a trending posts box. You may or may not have noticed it... The point of these is that they give users further ideas for reading, whether looking at the posts with the largest number of comments, or those with most views. 14. Make Calls to Action Clear on Landing Pages You have to make it clear where customers need to go next to buy a product, retrieve a quote, or whatever action you want them to take. Here are some general pointers: Wording : The wording you use should make it obvious what will happen if a user presses a button, such as ‘Add to cart’ or ‘Checkout.’ Colours : Test to see which colours work best. Contrast is key. Many sites tend to go for yellow or green, but what works for one site doesn’t necessarily work for another. Size : Make them big enough to be seen easily, but not too big. Placement : Buttons should be placed where users’ eyes are likely to be as they scan around the page. Adapt for different devices : Calls to action should work across various mobile devices as well as desktop. Test : There are no right or wrong answers here. Wording, colour, shape, placement etc can all be tested to find what produces the best results.
In summary The tips here are a mixture of methods for persuading users to stay on your site longer, and to explore further. The latter is key to reduce bounce rates, as they need to interact with your site, but the page they land on creates that all-important first impression. If the first page doesn't do its job in terms of delivering relevance to the user and avoiding obvious annoyances, then there's little chance users will want to stick around. Also, to repeat the earlier point. Bounce rates are useful, but only used alongside other metrics like time on page and viewers of multiple pages.
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