An alarming high bounce rate causes a lot of concern for online marketers. It displays the number of visitors that left your website, or ‘bounced’ back to the search results after viewing only one page. Most websites see a bounce rate between 26% to 70%, according to a study conducted by rocket fuel, as the bounce rate is completely relative to the website itself.
With the data collected from the study, Rocket fuel have come up with a ‘grading system’ for bounce rates:
- 25% – There is a problem or something is likely broken
- 26 – 40% – An excellent bounce rate
- 41 – 55% – An average bounce rate
- 56 – 70% – Above normal bounce rate, but can be justified depending on the website
- 70% and above – very bad or something is likely broken
You can view your websites bounce rate through Google Analytics, alongside other useful information and behaviours regarding your websites operation
If you are experiencing a high bounce rate the question becomes what is causing your website to have this high bounce rate, and how can you fix this problem? Throughout this article we will consider both the causes and solutions to having a high bounce rate.
A slow loading page
Google’s algorithm takes site speed in to consideration when ranking sites, so it is good SEO practice to focus on improving it as much as possible. Google will only present the most relevant and user-friendly results to the user, and a slow loading time is very detrimental to user experience.
Through using platforms such as google page speed insights; you can test your site speed and receive information on how to improve it. These can include remedies such as compressing images or minimising third party scripts.
A misleading title tag or meta description
Having an accurate title tag and meta description that remains true to the content on your page is very important, as once a user has gone onto your site and realised that the content differs from the description provided in the search results, they will simply go straight off the page.
If you need to amend this issue, you can do so through adjusting the title tag and meta description to match the content on your page or vice versa.
Content is low quality or not optimised
You must pay attention to the content you are putting on to your page. Visitors who come onto your site expect the content to read well, contain header tags and contains images to break up the content. All this accounts for optimising your content well.
Another factor could be that the content on your site simply isn’t engaging enough for the user to want to stay on your site.
If you are struggling with content for your page, consider a freelance copywriter to help you write both optimised and engaging content that will help keep visitors on your site.
Your page isn’t mobile friendly
An important factor that contributes to a high bounce rate is your website not being mobile friendly enough. In fact, nearly a quarter of the top websites found in 2018 were not mobile friendly, according to one study.
If your site hasn’t been optimised for mobile devices, they will not load fast or display well, leading to a bad user experience and a high bounce rate.
If a lot of information on your website is lost due to it not being optimised properly for a mobile display, the user will just bounce right back off the page.
This can be fixed through receiving diagnostics on how to improve your sites mobile friendliness using tools such as Google’s ‘test my site’. Through implementing the recommendations, you receive, your site should be a lot more mobile friendly, and your bounce rate will hopefully begin to decrease.
If you are looking for more information regarding digital marketing optimisation, why not explore the In Front Digital learn articles?