6 Easy Ways To Reduce Your Bounce Rate by 50%
These days, businesses rely on their websites to woo and sustain their inbound leads. Once they come on your landing page, the aim is to make them stay longer and convert them into a loyal customer. The average time spent on a web page is an indication about the performance of your website and its engagement. Apart from that, it can also offer insights related to the best and worst performing pages so you can make some improvements going forward.
As per a recent report from Hubspot, more than 50 percent web visitors stay less than 20 seconds on a website. This is only if you offer them a good reason to stay on your website. Your website’s bounce rate also helps you to realise the number of visitors going to your website and leave instantly without taking any action. It is an increasing cause of concern for website owners because a high bounce rate means that you are doing something really wrong in terms of UI/UX, the type of content, design or slowness of the website.
It might also mean that you might be going after the wrong target audience as they might be leaving soon because it is not something that they were looking for in the first place. A high bounce rate also means that your website’s quality may not be engaging enough for the visitors. Let us discuss some ideas to make your visitors stay longer on your website and turn them into buying customers.
Be True To Your Topic
When you think about blog posts, always make sure to go straight to what your headline is saying and try to stick to that. You might have a very short attention span of a visitor and hence it is crucial to include the essential information in the first couple of paragraphs to significantly reduce the website bounce rate. Moreover, indulging in click-bait is never a good idea and can be ignored too. It is always advisable to keep your headline in line with the blog content so as not to mislead your website visitors. You must bear in mind that visitors will leave the website if the first few lines of content doesn’t do justice to your headline. To ensure that it is avoided, keep a short introduction and move on to the main points you were supposed to cover.
Call-To-Action
Minimise the use of CTAs that look like a sales pitch as it can easily turn your visitors off. Try not to force your audience to click something but instead try to encourage them to do so without forcing them to do so. Pop-ups turn web visitors off and hence you must try to avoid CTA pop-ups on your landing page. People would like to know more about your website before they can decide to subscribe to your content. So, it is best to offer them the needed information before forcing them to sign up.
A good way to include a CTA is to do it at the end of a blog post so the visitors can make an informed decision to subscribe to your future content. Moreover, it is best to add subtle CTAs on your most important webpages. The central idea is that a CTA should not look forced on a website visitor and should come as a natural thing to do.
Improve Overall Design
People always love to see attractive images so try to work on your design and visuals. A poorly designed website will always have a high bounce rate so it is best to keep a balance between your content and images. This is due to the fact that images are more interactive and fun but text provides a good understanding.
Moreover, try to work on compressing your images. Heavy images and visuals will increase the page load time and hence increase the bounce rate as well. These days, people don’t have patience to wait as there are thousands of various websites offering a similar solution. You must always try to hit the 2 second sweet spot for page load as anything above this will significantly increase the bounce rate.
Ease of Navigation
Websites that are too confusing or difficult to navigate can increase the bounce rate over 90% which is a sign of concern for businesses around the world. To assist your visitors, it is recommended to include a search bar on the top right corner of your website. It should be easily visible and accessible by everyone visiting your website even for the first time.
More often than not users might have a question before even visiting your website and hence if they don’t find their required information within 15 to 20 seconds then they will be tempted to leave. This search bar will remove the need to navigate deep into the website to find what they are looking for. Try to strategically place your backlinks so it takes them to intended pages and in turn keeps them longer on your website.
Keep Updating Your Content
Old and outdated content has never helped any business but relevant content has always found a place in your readers’ hearts and if it happens frequently, you have a loyal visitor for life. To ensure this, it is best to keep revisiting your old content and make some changes from time to time so that you are only offering relevant content. You can try to change your headlines and present them in a different way, check your CTAs, get rid of broken links and remove any grammar and spelling errors. Once you have done that, it is best to promote your content again to see if there is any change in terms of how people react with your content.
Work On Thank-You Page
It is a good idea to link a “Thank-You” page when your visitors click on the call-to-action button. People like to feel appreciated and even a small thank you note can make a difference. This page should appear when a user engages with your website and clicks on the subscribe button. A thank you page should include relevant information and links that allow useful content. By making personalised content, you will increase the chances that people will click on these links and convert.
Final Word
Website users will always come and go and you will not be able to stop each and everyone. But, it is in your hands to keep them on your website as long as possible to improve your conversion rate and reduce the bounce rate. It is also important to gain the trust of your customers which will eventually help you to increase your business prospect. Try to use the above tips and let us know if it improves your website performance, engagement and conversion rates.
Dhruvil is a Writer & Marketeer for Nimblechapps, joining December 2014, based out of Sydney, Australia. He has worked briefly as a Branding and Digital Marketing Manager before moving to Australia. At Nimblechapps, he worked on Social Media Marketing, Branding, Email Marketing and Blogging. Dhruvil studies Business at University of Western Sydney, and also handles Operations for the company in Australia.