Is your bounce rate too high? Do you want to reduce your bounce rate? In this article, we will share 12 proven methods to reduce your bounce rate and increase your conversions.
High bounce rate is one of the most common conversion killers. If the majority of your users are abandoning your website on the first page, then you don’t have a chance to convert them into subscribers or customers.
Let’s take a look at what is bounce rate and how you can decrease it.
What is Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate is the percentage of users who land on your website and decide to leave without going to a second page.
A higher bounce rate indicates that you were not able to convince the user to stay and act on your call-to-action (i.e buy your product).
A visitor can bounce from your site by clicking on a link to a different website, clicking the back button to leave your website, closing the open window/tab, typing a new URL, or due to a session time out (caused by web hosting errors).
Now you’re probably thinking that’s just normal user behavior right? Well yes, it is, but there is such a thing as a good bounce rate vs bad bounce rate.
Let’s take a look at average bounce rate by industry benchmarks, and determine what’s a good bounce rate.
Average Bounce Rate by Industry + What’s a Good Bounce Rate?
You may be wondering what is a good bounce rate? Well, the general rule of thumb is that:
- 80%+ is very bad
- 70 – 80% is poor
- 50 – 70% is average
- 30 – 50% is excellent
20% or below is likely a tracking error (due to duplicate analytics code, incorrect implementation of events tracking, third-party addons such as live chat plugins).
While the above metrics are good to start, bounce rate varies across industries and the type of content you have.
If you have a higher than average bounce rate, then it could be caused by one of the many reasons such as slow load time, poor navigation, bad design, poor usability, lacks clear call-to-action, etc.
Let’s take a look at how to improve your bounce rate.
How to Reduce Your Bounce Rate?
Identifying and fixing the problems with your landing pages can easily fix your high bounce rate problem. We will walk you through some of the most common pitfalls of higher bounce rates and how to fix them.
Before you start, it’s a good idea to identify your top pages with the highest bounce rate. You can do this by going to Google Analytics and clicking on Behaviour » Site Content » Landing Pages
Knowing the top pages will help you identify the problem areas and fix them.
Otherwise, you can read the following 16 tips to reduce your bounce rate.
1. Provide a Better Overall User Experience
Neilsen Norman Group, the prominent usability research consulting firm, defines user experience as:
“User experience” encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.
User experience is the overall feeling of a user while they are interacting with your website. Good user experience is when a user finds a website not only easy to use but also pleasing.
Creating a usable website that looks equally great on all platforms and devices is the first step in the direction. Carefully watch out how your users behave and what influences their decisions.
In this article, you will find many other tips which all fall under the user experience. Remember it is the overall feeling that a user experiences when using your website, so everything is part of the user experience.
2. Optimize Your Call of Action Placement
Most users decide whether or not they like a website in the first couple of seconds. Often with just a simple glance at the visible area without scrolling. This area differs from one device to another.
Now that you know what your users are looking at, you can optimize this area. It should immediately describe what you are selling and there should be a prominently visible call to action.
Make your call to action clear and honest. Misleading users will create a bad user experience which is the number one reason for high bounce rate and low conversions.
3. Improve Your Site’s Speed
As we mentioned earlier, users make up their mind about a website in the first couple of seconds. You don’t want to waste this time showing them a blank page loading scripts and downloading content.
Using tools like Pingdom and Google Page Speed, you can optimize every landing page on your site.
According to Strangeloop, a one-second delay can cost you 7% of sales, 11% fewer pageviews, and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.
To speed up your site, you should optimize your images, use a Content Delivery Network, add better caching, and consider switching to a faster hosting provider.
One of the quickest and easiest ways to keep your website speedy is by using a CDN. Find the right one for you on our list of the best CDN providers to speed up your website.
4. A/B Testing + Targeted Landing Pages
It’s possible that your headline or call-to-action is not working. That’s why it’s important to A/B test.
Use different content strategies on each page and run A/B split tests to see how each of them performs.
You can also create different landing pages, targeting different audiences, regions, keywords, etc.
If you are serving an international audience, then you can detect a user’s location and show them a localized landing page. Showing users content in their own language, currency, and cultural background greatly improves user experience.
5. Learn What Is Considered as Good or Bad Numbers
First, you need to set your expectations. How do your actual numbers perform compared to other successful websites? What levels of bounce rate can be set as a goal?
You can find bounce rate numbers on your analytics tool and assess it based on these levels:
- if it is higher than 80%: you have some serious problems with retention;
- between 70% and 80%: your site is performing poorly, and you should act as soon as possible;
- when the number varies around 50% and 70%: you are following the average performance for most websites;
- 30% to 50% should be your goal: as these numbers are considered excellent for a Digital Marketing strategy;
- if the bounce rate is below 20%: you probably have a tracking problem — it is extremely rare to achieve such numbers.
You can think that 70% of visitors bouncing looks like a bad thing, but it isn’t. Engaging 30% of your traffic is already more than many traditional marketing strategies could pull off with way bigger budgets.
6. Use Videos to Engage Your Audience
Videos are highly engaging and grab attention more than text or even images. You can use a fullscreen video as a background, or add it next to your call of action.
Videos are powerful. You can use animations, music, audio, narration, colors, and so many different forms of persuasion tools.
You can create a very effective video presentation with a small budget by hiring a freelancer.
7. Use High-Quality Images to Captivate User Attention
Images are another effective tool that you can use to decrease your bounce rate.
The reason so many websites use high-quality photographs as fullscreen backgrounds is that they have proven to be very effective. Companies like Google that were famous for their plain white background and minimalistic layouts are now using high-quality images on their landing pages.
You can purchase professional photographs from various stock photography websites. There are several online websites that offer royalty-free images as well.
You can use these high-quality images as fullscreen backgrounds, parallax backgrounds, background slides, or as inline images next to your call to actions.
8. Let Your Customers Speak for You
You will see it on many websites a tiny little testimonials slider, showing a quote from one customer at a time. While it does the job, you can make it a lot more effective.
Convert your testimonials into success stories with actual storytelling elements like audio, video, illustrations to showcase your clients. People love success stories and they would want to read more.
You can also create a testimonials page where all you have is just user testimonials (like this one).
9. Plan a Consistent Content Strategy
While many marketing experts would recommend you to experiment with different content strategies, there is also something to be said about a consistent content plan. How can these two be achieved at the same time?
Actually, they can be, and many successful websites have them in place since the 90s. You need to make a content plan that allows you to use different content strategies at the same time.
Take a look at BuzzFeed and how their content strategy includes a growing list of social content platforms, mediums, and formats. From GIFs to slideshows, SnapChat to YouTube. If they think that their users would find something engaging, they use it.
You may not be running a business like BuzzFeed, but your goal is exactly the same as Buzzfeed. You want users to stay on your website.
10. Make Your Site Readable
Majority of content on most websites is in text format. It is unfortunate that this important part of any website’s user experience is often the most neglected one. Even in this list, it appeared at number 9.
However, it is one of the most important and crucial elements that could shape your site’s visual appeal.
You need to make sure that the text on your website is easily readable on all devices. It shouldn’t be too small or else users will have to squint or zoom in to read it. Use font sizes that are large enough on smaller screens.
Typography or readability is not just limited to choosing the font size and color. You also need to make sure that the text on your website looks beautiful. There should be enough line spacing, padding, and margins to make text look clean and beautiful.
Another important point to consider is the language and style you choose to use on your website. Use easy-to-understand language in a normal conversational tone.
11. Show Your Credibility
Consumers are getting smarter every day, this means that they go through careful examination of an offer before they make up their minds. After the initial assessment of your product, consumers quickly look around to find out how reliable your site is.
It is not easy to trust a new business with your money or information. A new user doesn’t know how good your business is and what kind of reputation you have earned.
Proudly display the glowing reviews of your product or services from third-party websites like Product Hunt.
Showcase your awards, endorsements, certifications, quality scores, and industry affiliations. Make your website secure and display safety seals. This builds user trust so they’re comfortable handing out their credit card and personal information.
12. Target Abandoning Users
Despite all your efforts, sometimes a user may still want to leave your website. It’s not your fault, maybe something came up in their personal life, and they just had to leave.
Now you have two choices: you can either let them go, or you can convert them into a subscriber.
With OptinMonster’s signature Exit-Intent® technology, you can track when a user is about to leave your website and show them a targeted message at the precise moment. This is a highly effective technique with a proven success rate.
Most websites just ask users for their email address. It allows them to stay in touch with the user by sending them relevant offers and eventually convert them into paying customers.
You can also show a last-minute discount with your exit-intent popup. But remember if a user decides not to avail the offer, then they can just close the window and never come back again.
If you combine an exit offer with a subscription form, this gives your visitors the chance to stay in touch!
13. Target Engaged Users
Often your engaged users can also bounce without taking any action. This is very common for blog posts and resources section.
The user came to your article, found what they wanted, and they leave (that’s normal).
But that doesn’t help your conversions. In this case, you want to show your users with the most relevant offer.
For example, if a user lands on a blog post about cooking, then your offer should be a recipe book instead of fashion items.
Using OptinMonster’s page-level targeting, you can show visitors customized offers based on the pages they visit, traffic source, and more.
This will help you reduce your bounce rate, boost engagement, and conversions.
14. Invest In Live Experiences
If your goal is to make the audience stay in contact with your content and your brand longer, why not use relevant events to bring them closer?
Live blogging and live streaming are great strategies to keep interest and lead traffic to your pages.
You can use social media to boost your visibility while also hosting the live experience embedded in your website.
Engagement will be the key: comments, UGC, discussions, it all can be set with the right tool and the right strategy.
With those kinds of ideas to retain traffic while raising engagement, the effort to reduce the bounce rate is minimal, and its benefits are positive for your brand.
So, start identifying problems, opportunities, and build a healthy relationship with your buyer persona.
15. Design A Better User Experience
All the questions above should lead your team to find elements, tools, and processes that improve your site’s experience.
A good UX starts with a fast and well-structured website, but it goes way beyond that. It is the sum of visual elements, information, and interaction that meets certain expectations and exceeds them.
Again, use your buyer persona as a reference. What do they want when they enter your site? What are they looking for? How can you lead them and even surprise them in positive ways?
Maybe a rework of your pages is what you need to be more engaging.
16. Try To Understand Why Visitors Are Leaving So Early
Let’s go back to our example at the beginning of the article. You have people entering your store, looking around and leaving. What is your first question? You should be asking yourself what scared them away.
Was it the store’s layout? Was there a dissonance between the expectation they build and what they found inside? Were the offers off? Maybe the people you are attracting are not the ones interested in your brand?
Each answer you find will give a better insight into what you have to do to improve the bounce rate. This is why it is important to know your buyer persona and use it to build your strategy around it.
Final Thoughts
We hope this article gave you some good tips to reduce bounce rate on your site and increase your conversions.
