How to Lower Your Bounce Rate

It might be a bit disheartening to learn that your website has a particularly high bounce rate. But it’s important to keep in mind that this could be for a number of different reasons. It shouldn’t be looked at as a failure. It should be viewed more as an opportunity for change and improvement. So how can you go about lowering the bounce rate?

Improve page loading times

People often assume that the reason for a high bounce rate is the content, but this actually isn’t the problem in most cases. If the bounce rate is so high then that often means that the website visitor hasn’t even had the chance to read the content. This is made even more difficult if the page takes a while to load, if at all.

According to Neil Patel, 47% of users will expect a website page to load in at least two seconds. So if this doesn’t happen, then you can expect a high bounce rate as a result. This is also true for mobile users. Radware states that a speed delay can result in 26% of website visitors becoming frustrated, leading to an 8% drop in engagement. Make sure you do everything you can to improve the rate at which a page loads. Things you can do includes:

• Choose a performance-optimised hosting solution
• Compress and optimise the images you have 
• Reduce your redirects
• Cache your website pages
• Enable browser caching
• Minify JavaScript, HTML and CSS
• Leverage a CDN (content delivery network)
• Eliminate unnecessary plugins

Optimise your content for relevance

One of the other reasons for a high bounce rate is relevance, or lack of it. Some websites can effectively target keywords in order to receive more website visitors. When done properly, someone searching for that specific thing will come across it and be satisfied that they found what they’ve been looking for.

However, if you have irrelevant keywords and phrases dotted around your entire site, then someone will quickly come across your site, thinking they’ve found what they’re looking for, only to find that, actually, you don’t have anything to offer them and so they’ll click off and find something else.

If you decide to implement keywords, make sure you do your research. Ask yourself and answer the following questions:

• Is it relevant to what you’re offering?
• What’s the search volume like?
• Is the competition high?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you’ll know which keywords to use and when. You’ll also know whether or not they’ll be effective before you’ve even started using it/them. Make sure the content on that specific website page is completely relevant to the content you’re presenting. This will help to keep visitors on your site for far longer.

Add one, simple & clear ‘call to action’

Your website visitors don’t want to be pressured into buying your products or using your services as soon as they arrive. Your ‘call to action’ (CTA) should be clear, short and simple and be located towards the end of your content or website page.

There should be one CTA on the page as opposed to several. This just lets the visitor know that you’re on hand if they need you. If they feel bombarded, they’ll be far less likely to stay on your website, let alone get in touch with you.

Rework any product pages you have

Writing product pages can be tricky for those who aren’t exactly sure how to go about writing professionally. Too much information can overwhelm a visitor whereas too little would be unsatisfactory. There needs to be a balance in order to keep visitors on your product pages. As already said, too much text could force a visitor off your site, but this would also be the case if you don’t have enough of it.

Quantity isn’t always the issue in terms of text. Your copy could be old, outdated, grammatically incorrect, littered with spelling mistakes or not contain enough keywords and phrases. Either way, it’s going to need updating. Once it’s been edited to keep up with the times and keywords inserted, then you’ll likely see an increase in traffic and a reduction in bounce rate as a result.

Make navigation of your website simple

If a website is difficult to navigate, then a website visitor just won’t use it. They’ll click off and find a different website to find what they’re looking for. Poor navigation and slow loading speeds can make for a real bounce rate disaster, so make sure that your website is smooth-running and fast-loading to retain visitors.

Kumo Digital has a highly-skilled team of marketing professionals at the helm of everything we do. Whether you need a new website, wish to improve your existing one or would like professional, expertly-written content, we’ll be able to help. For more information about how we can catapult your business into the spotlight, get in touch with a member of our team today – we’re always happy to hear from you.