Creating and maintaining a website is hard work! All website creators hope that such a passionate investment yields the results they are looking for, that is; they want visitors to view and take interest in the content that they have labored over so tirelessly.
That is why a high bounce rate can spell worry and disappointment for website creators. A high bounce rate basically means that many visitors leave your website after only viewing one page. High bounce rates can be a result of a number of different things. For one, visitors may not find the content of your first page interesting enough and may leave the website out of boredom. While that might be a bit hurtful to creators, it’s actually an easy problem to resolve with a bit of creativity and effort! However, a high bounce rate might be caused by other things, from how you have formatted and designed your site to the ads that are showing up on your home page.
Some Command Base Bounce Rate Wisdom
But fear not because there are solutions to all the problems that could be contributing to an excessively high bounce rate. Below is a list of the 10 most effective ways to lower your bounce rate.
1. Update the content of your home page
The first thing to address a high bounce rate is to ensure that your content is not simply too boring. “Boring” content is content that is not engaging enough to capture and maintain the interest of visitors. Spicing up your content by making it friendlier or even by adding (more) images and colour can make an enormous difference. More importantly, ensure that your site is delivering what visitors expect. Actually providing the information that clients are seeking is extremely important; because if they come to your site in search of something and have the sense that they will be left empty handed, they simply go elsewhere!
2. Ensure easy readability
This solution is related to the first one in that the root issue is within the website content itself. However, this involves ensuring that the font size and colour you’ve chosen allow for easy readability. If your font is too small (or too large) and the colour makes it hard to read, visitors won’t hesitate to exit!
3. Aim for a great user experience
Similarly, this solution involves ensuring that visitors are not put off by the very exercise of trying to engage with your website. This solution points to paying attention to the design of your site, that is, where you place links to other pages in your site; buttons to perform certain actions, like follow your social media pages or subscribe to an email list; and all things that involve actions that your visitor may want to do in order to engage with your site.
4. Get rid of broken links and maybe external links too
Broken links are links that lead to a dysfunctional page or nowhere when users click on them. If the links to other pages on your sites do not work, then users cannot visit any other pages and will leave your website after viewing just one page, causing your bounce rate to go up.
Another thing you may want to consider is reducing (and maybe even removing) external links that you have added to direct visitors to other sites that may be of relevance to them. While this is a very well-intentioned thing to do, it can spell trouble for you bounce rate if it is sending visitors to other sites before they have had the chance to explore yours.
5. Improve navigation through your website
This solution is also related to ensuring that the user is not having difficulty with your site by having an easy to navigate website. It should be very simple to get from your home page to any other pages that a visitor may want to explore. If people want to delve deeper into your website, you want it to be as simple and easy as possible or they will very likely leave your site after visiting just one page – and your bounce rate will go up!
6. Use design techniques that are responsive on mobile and tablet
While your site may be easy to use and navigate, the design techniques you have used could mean that this ease does not apply over other devices such as ipad and mobile. The prevalence of smart phones today means that many users may be visiting your site from a mobile phone. You therefore need to ensure that your website design techniques make it easy for computer, tablet and mobile users to view, navigate and engage with your site!
7. Check the loading speed of website pages
In today’s fast-pace world, a slow-loading page is a guaranteed people repellant! If internet users come to your site and it takes more than a few seconds to appear, they will leave without having even seen any of your site’s content. Make use of the variety of free online tools available to check the loading speed of your pages. If you find that it is indeed slow, waste no time taking the necessary steps to improve it!
8. Get rid of annoying pop-ups
What do you do when you’re visiting a sites and pop-ups fill your screen asking you to subscribe to something (from which you will derive zero benefit)? You leave! Therefore, if your website includes pop-ups asking visitors to subscribe to something, ensure that it is something that not only benefits you, but benefits them as well! It would also be very useful to inform them in a clear and concise way of how this action works to their benefit so that they don’t just leave assuming that your site is full of useless pop-ups.
9. Pay attention to Ad messaging
One factor that may be contributing to your high bounce rate is the messaging of ads directing visitors to your site. You’re paying for ads that send traffic to your website, but if the ad messaging misleads users about what they will find on your site, they will simply leave upon arriving on your site and finding that it is completely irrelevant to their interests! To avoid this problem you need to ensure that the messaging in the ads actually corresponds to the content on your site.
10. Build your brand through social media!
Believe it or not, addressing your high bounce rate does not have to be limited to improving just your website. Building a brand around your website through an active social media presence will build interest in you and your site! Visitors to your site would therefore be coming already motivated to discover all that the site has to offer, because you have already developed their interest in your brand! Visitors who have already invested time and interest in you and your brand are likely to invest time and interest in exploring your site.
In short, resolving a high bounce rate comes down to figuring out and addressing what turns people away from your website! It can also involve going the extra mile and figuring ways to get people more excited about your site and content. A high bounce rate may be daunting but with these solutions a successful website is always within reach!