One of the most misunderstood terms in Google Analytic is Bounce rate. We define bounce rate as the percentage of single page visits or web sessions. It has absolutely nothing to do with the duration an audience spends on a page. A high bounce rate generally means that the page on which a person lands on your website is not relevant to the visitor or that the visitor has not browsed any further from your landing page, instead has closed it to move on to some other website.
Here are best 5 tips to reduce website bounce rate:
1. Your content should be readable and easy to understand
One of the main reasons visitors bounce from your website is if the content is too tough to comprehend. Your content’s language should be easy and not flowery. Make use of prominent headings, sub-headings, bullets, charts and images and always try to be to the point.
2. Disallow the unwanted traffic
Eliminate targeting keywords and marketing channels which send low value traffic. If a visitor wants information about foods that lower cholesterol but instead gets all sorts of slimming technique blogs and articles on the landing page, he/she is bound to bounce back. Receiving traffic which has no connection to the products and services that you sell is useless. Therefore stop those campaigns.
3. Be fast and attractive
Poor web design, too many ads, bad or lengthy contents, auto playing audio or video contents are the main reasons of 100% bounce rate according to recent research. If your landing page takes forever to download expect a bounce as humans are impatient. Make your website visually appealing and fast loading. Google pushes back websites which load slow, right at the bottom during a search.
4. Create a need to browse further
All of us who visit websites have a purpose for visiting it. If the purpose is fulfilled right on the landing page, a visitor won’t ever go further. For example, if he/she wants to know about how to lose weight and gets only that information on the page, he/she will read it and close the page. This gives 100% conversion but also 100% bounce rate. Add options in the form of ‘related articles’, ‘you might also like’ or ‘similar products’ so that the visitor is attracted to the similar things and keeps browsing further.
5. Conduct page level surveys
If everything fails your last option is to conduct page level surveys and directly take visitors feedback. Try to know the reason why the hit back and visited some other website. Create a like and dislike button so if the number of dislikes increase, you know it’s time for you to change the look and content of your website.
As analytics guru Avinash Kaushik said, “Anything over 35% is a cause for concern and anything above 50% is worrying”. Therefore lower the bounce rate of your website as soon as possible for more productivity.
