One of the many factors which come under careful analysis when looking into website performance is the bounce rate percentage a website receives. Bounce rate is a highly important figure you need to have an understanding of and should be striving to reduce as time goes on if you’re going to operate a truly successful website.
When looking to reduce bounce rate percentages on your website, there are a number of reasons as to why your bounce rates may be high, low, or why some pages receive a much higher percentage than others. At first, you may be thinking that a page is receiving a higher bounce rate than others simply because of the quality of that content on that page, and this may be a contributing factor, but there are numerous other variables which need to be taken into consideration to make a proper assessment.
To help you determine how you’re actually performing in terms of your bounce rate percentage, and then to help reduce bounce rate for both high converting pages and important pages to your web strategy, we’ve created the following guide to assist you to make a thorough analysis of your web based traffic and visitor activity.
What is a bounce rate percentage and is it the same as my exit rate percentage?
This is one of the most commonly confused areas when looking at bounce rates, and one of the most important to understand when making an accurate analysis. First of all, bounce rates and exit rates are two very different metrics. A very basic overview of the two metrics can be put simply:
- Bounce rate: A bounce occurs when a website visitor only views a single page on a website and then leaves that website without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs. Bounce rate persentage is calculated by recording all the instances where a particular page starts the website session, and either positively or negately records a bouce. Session metrics are recorded by the analytics software implemented across the website, and do vary from provider to provider with no industry standard currently in place.
- Exit rate: The exit rate metric is calculated by totalling the number of sessions which include a page divided by the number of sessions which ended in that page resulting in the website visitor then leaving the website.
Although not an industry authority on the topic of Bounce Rates vs Exit Rates, Google does provide an excellent explanation of how they calculate both metrics with some really easy to understand examples in their supporting documentation.
Why is it so important to reduce bounce rate percentages?
Reducing your bounce rates both across the board on your site, and for high converting pages is vital to your websites success. If you’re able to maintain your audience longer on your website, across more of your pages, they are much more likely to share your content or transition to becoming repeat visitors over time.
Sites which have lower bounce rates and a higher time spent on site are considered to be of higher quality to search engines such as Google, and often rank much better than sites which experience high user drop off rates. By providing your users with engaging, high quality content, you’re ensuring that the liklihood of them taking the next step in your web marketing strategy is much more likely than if you were to serve up irrelevant, distracting, low quality content.
Why is my bounce rate so high and what can I do to fix it?
This is the first question webmasters ask when looking to reduce bounce rate percentages on their website. Unfortunately, in many cases the answer is not as simple as casting a shadow on the quality of the content (although this can be one contributing factor). Many webmasters will oten assume this to be the case, but upon further investigation there can be some very reasonable explanations as to why certain pages get consistently higher bounce rates than others, why that may actually be OK, and how you can fix it if it’s not in line with your marketing strategy.
Below you will find 18 top tips you can use to improve your troublesome bounce rate percentages:
1. High search volume
This can contribute to a high bounce rate, because visitors to your website have already narrowed down exactly what they want from their session back in the search engine, and are looking at it on your website. If you’re seeing a high bounce rate on pages which have a high percentage of search traffic, check that they’re actually staying on the page for a reasonable amount of time. If they’re leaving quickly, this is an indication that the content quality may be low, rather than the high bounce rate.
2. Content quality
High quality content is the #1 reason visitors to your website will want to stay and not bounce off your pages. Because Internet users are much more savvy with what they expect online these days, and have no hesitation leaving a webpage and quickly searching for another of similar topic, you need to ensure you write great content wherever possible. Recently we wrote our Definitive Guide to Content Marketing which outlines how you can write engaging, high quality content that will not only keep visitors on your website, but promote a higher percentage of social shares and more searche engine traffic to your web pages.
3. You’re acquiring the wrong kind of traffic
For a variety of reasons you could be acquiring the wrong type of traffic to your website. The best way to determine this is to look at where your traffic is coming from, and if it does not correlate with the message of your website or web pages, then determine how to remedy the problem. If you can find a web page which is receiving a particularly high bounce rate, you can politely approach the website owner if you are concerned about this incoming traffic and ask them to remove the link. If it is search traffic which is sending the wrong type of visitors, you may want to consider better optimizing your web page for your target keywords.
4. You’re using annoying popups
Popups on your website can be a very effective marketing tool, but generally these popups have intelligent filters built into them which do not just popup every time a page loads begging users to enter their details or make a purchase. Tools such as PopUp Domination allow you to implement proper popup marketing with A/B testing capabilities and full reporting of your performance. Professional tools such as this can provide excellent feedback and help you to determine whether popups are in fact assisting your web strategy or hindering it by increasing your bounce and exit rates.
5. Low quality design
Consumers in general associate high quality design with quality products, and if they don’t feel that they’re in an environment which offers that to them, they will leave. This of course extends to web design. If you’re serious about reducing your bounce rates, your web designs should provide seemless navigation which is easy to read, has solid color contrast, and is appealing to the eye. This should compliment the rest of your site and be a strong suit for you. If you’re not a designer, or lack these skills, look into hiring a freelancer to spruce up your website. Your design does not have to the best on the Internet, just clear, clean and simple to navigate and your users will love you for it.
6. Website speed
It’s not only the search engines that like to see a speedy website, but users to. If you’re website pages are taking longer than 5 seconds to load, generally your users will be considering leaving your website. To fix this,there are numerous web analytics tools which will tell you how fast your pages are loading (and from different locations around the world) such as Pingdom’s Full Page Test tool. You can also use numerous other tools to analyse your code and tell you which files are taking the most amount of resources to load. If you use a modern web browser such as Google Chrome, the code inspection tool’s Network tab will point you in the right direction. Yahoo!’s YSlow tool has also been a tool used by many developers over the years to improve onsite load times.
7. Open links into external windows
This really is web design 101, but so often many developers and content publishers forget to open website links to external sources in a new tab or window. To do so, all you have to do is add the target=”_blank” attribute to your links and you’re good to go. The W3 Schools has an excellent tutorial on how to target new windows, and other window targeting methods you may want to use with your links.
8. Optimize for mobile screen sizes
If you’re noticing that your website receives a solid percentage of visitors from mobile users, then you want to consider how your site appears on theses devices. Whether it’s a smartphone or tablet device, mobile access statistics to the web are on the rise, and consumers want to be able to browse your website without having to zoom in every time they want to read something.
There are various approaches to offering mobile optimized content including separate domains, detection of device types, responsive web designs, and even offering a platform based app. However whichever approach you go for, be mindful that the best approach is the one which does not require you to duplicate your written content, is cost effective, and delivers a positive return on investment. If you can deliver a fast loading, clear, concise, mobile optimized solution outside of that of your desktop site, you will find you will almost certainly generate an increased ROI.
9. Advertising overkill
Websites which overshadow their content with excessive, distracting banner advertising often have very high bounce rates. Although it is important for webmasters who provide a revenue channel via advertising to supply their advertisers with prime advertising space, this should not be at the detriment of the on-page content. Sites which have too much advertising on page, often load very slow, and appear very confronting which lead to these hgh bounce rates, and in many cases a drop in Internet traffic. Ensuring you have a well-balanced placement of advertisements is key to ensuring you reduce bounce rates over time.
10. Implement a custom 404 error page
Website visitors hate it when they come to a broken link and get served the standard browser error message. Firstly there’s no way back to the website they were trying to get to, and no feedback on what went wrong? Implementing a custom 404 error page is a great way to help your website vistors navigate their way through your website, and is a great backup if an incoming link is broken which points to your site. Custom 404 pages also serve as a chance to provide website visitors with a humerous or visually appealing page which in many cases can go viral on the Internet or serve as a great talking point for customers.
11. Offer related content
Giving website visitors a reason to continue navigating your website is key to reducing bounce rate percentages. Whether it is a “Related articles” section following a blog article, or a “Popular Posts” section or a “Products of Interest” type concept, content which is closely tied to material visitors of your website are already engaged with is an excellent way to reduce bounce rates.
Often you will see bloggers use this tactic in their blog posts by including internal links to related content in the body of the posts. Not only do website visitors love to read extra detail on subject matter, but search engines love internal links on your website and this can drastically increase both the time spent on your site, and the liklihood of social sharing of your content.
12. Don’t go off topic
It’s expected these days that content is focussed on the web. What this means is that if you’re running a blog talking about freelancing and small business, then you stay on issues related to that topic and don’t suddenly start talking about something else entirely. No matter what the topic, your user base will grow with you because they like what you’re saying about a particular topic. If you’re only getting limited traffic on this topic but others are thriving in your space, change the way you communicate your topic, not the topic, otherswise you’ll be heading for some very high bounce rates.
13. My bounce rate is too low?
Generally if you check your overall site bounce rate and it is lower than 10%, something is probably up. I had a friend come to me and say he had a bounce rate of 5%. I was initially amazed, but when we looked into it further, we realized that he had accidentally implemented two instances of his tracking code on page which was causing the miscalculation.
The goal of the bounce rate percentage is to understand it, then lower it to ensure longer visits across multiple pages on site. There is however no golden number to aim for, so I can’t supply you with a figure as it depends greatly on your content and value proposition. Simply aim to reduce your bounce to lower than what it currently is using the techniques in this article and you will be far better off.
14. Split up longer posts into multiple pages
Posts which are considered by yourself and your audience to be unusually lengthy or slow to load are great candidates to be split up into multiple pages. This is an excellent technque to use to reduce bounce rate if implemented effectively because website visitors are a curious bunch, and just love to know what’s on that mysterious next page.
Recently we produced a post which outlined 25 Creative Login pages. We felt because this page was very image heavy we would break it up into smaller pieces. By doing so, we managed to engage our audience over the the entire 25 pages of the post with very little drop off. Through use of a clear and simple to use pagination implementation, we’ve offered our users something different which they can share all or multiple parts of to their friends and social network, as oppose to getting annoyed with a slow loading, image or content heavy page.
15. Use internal search to your advantage
Just like in Google, people love to search websites for content. If you’re website is receiving a lot of internal search traffic, fantastic. But if not, this is a great opportunity for you to present your audience with another tool they can use to keep them on your website.
When implementing an internal search, make sure that it is both fast, provides relevant content and is well positioned on page. If your users can’t find it, they can’t use it. Many websites offer search at both the top and bottom of the pages which has proven to be a successful tactic over the years, and can definitely help to reduce bounce rates.
16. Use intuitive navigation, and test it!
As much as I love funky website design, more than few times lately I’ve found myself on websites which offer really cool functionality that leave me stranded. As a website visitor, I stilll want to be able to navigate a site seemlesssly regardless of the content. Often website designers can get lost in great design visuals and forget that the reason for having a website is to drive conversions. When authoring a website, always test your navigation and ensure you can get to all major areas of your site with ease. Website visitors should never be left wondering where to next. Otherwise, your bounce rate percentage is likely to rise.
17. Segment content pages
HTML markup is built around specific tags which are designed to place importance around certain information for the user. Tags such as the H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 and paragraph tags are all key elements you should be using to segment your information. By breaking down your information into smaller more manageable chunks, your users can browse your pages with ease and hone in on the content they’re looking for much more easily.
18. Check browser compatability
Unfortunately online, differences in how web browsers can interpret your content can lead to very different results. Not only may your content be slightly out of alignment, but entire pages can be left horribly disfigured which will lead to users leaving your site immediately. When producing content online, always ensure to check your content in multiple browsers. I recommend checking your content in Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, FireFox and Safari if possible. It is also wise to check your code for incompatabilities with the W3C standard using their website validation service.
Conclusion
If you’re serious about improving the performance of your website, then you need to look into how you can reduce bounce rates on your site. Bounce rates are not simply a biproduct of poor content, but can be a biproduct of many variables each working together. By narrowing down where the likely causes of your high bounce rates may be coming from, you can significantly boost conversions online, and increase the time your visitors spend on your website.
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