When it comes to analysing how well your website is performing, bounce rate is one of the most important metrics to focus on. Bounce rate will help you understand which pages need improving and if there are any underlying problems with your website.
What Is Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate is calculated by dividing the number of users who leave a website after only viewing one page by the total number of visits to the site.
i.e.
If 20 users leave without interacting, and there has been 100 total visits overall within the given time period, the bounce rate would be 20%.
Why Do Users Bounce?
There are many ways users can ‘bounce’ that contributes to your bounce rate, such as:
- Clicking on a link that takes them off site
- Clicking back to a previous page that takes them to a different website
- Navigating to a new URL in the search bar
- Exiting the browser/tab
- The session timed out (usually after 30 minutes of inactivity)
How To Reduce Your Bounce Rate
Reducing your bounce rate can be a trial and error process; usability isn’t a one size fits all approach so you will need to experiment and see what works well with your visitors. The best ways to reduce your bounce rate are:
Improve Page Content
It’s important to remember that ultimately users bounce from your website because the page they landed on didn’t contain the information they were looking for, therefore, the first step you should take is improving your content.
The more detailed the better so that the user has no questions left unanswered and all they have left to do is enquire or purchase. The page a user lands on may well be the first time they have heard of your brand, so make it count. Your content should be a good reflection of your brand and service/product as a whole, if it isn’t then this is likely what is letting you down.
Keep your content relevant and to the point, avoid going off on tangents that will distract or confuse the theme of the page.
Page Layout & Formatting
The content itself isn’t the only thing you should be improving; the formatting and layout of the text can also dramatically improve your bounce rate.
Pages that are very text-heavy can feel like they lack good readability and users may find it overwhelming to be faced with such a large portion of text. Consider breaking up your content with imagery, heading, bulleted lists and quotes. Not only will this help make the page more usable but it will also improve the overall look and feel of the page, taking it from a piece of text to a valuable article that provides more.
Remove Pop-Ups
We are in an age of ad-blocking and preventing disruptive advertisements, so it should be no surprise that users aren’t overly keen on annoying pop-up messages as soon as they land on your website.
Users like to feel like they can freely browse your website without being bombarded with unnecessary, and sometimes irrelevant, marketing messages. Whilst pop-ups do have their place on your website, they can appear pushy if used many times within one session. A subtle, easily to exit pop-up encouraging users to sign up to your newsletter is fine but a pop-up on every new page load about your daily deals or new product launch is too aggressive and will cause users to bounce.
Amend Meta Data
When was the last time you reviewed your title tags and meta descriptions? If your descriptions are misleading and no longer reflect the content of the page, you need to change these otherwise users will bounce because the page doesn’t deliver what it promised.
You only have 155 characters to write a concise, informative description that will let users know what the page contains – make it count.
Do you need help understanding your Google Analytics data? In Front Digital provide Google Analytics consulting to businesses looking to make the most of their stats and uncover areas for improvement, find out more.