When running a business, you surely understand how important your website is in order to attract, convert, and retain customers. If you’ve noticed that your bounce rate is high or higher than usual, it might be time to tweak your website a little bit. Read on for small changes that can make a big difference to your bounce rate.
What is a bounce rate?
First of all, we should establish what a bounce rate is. This term refers to the percentage of people that visit your website but leave after viewing only one page. They can return to a referring website or the search results and it counts even if a visitor spends 30 minutes idle on your page. According to a study, most websites have a bounce rate between 26 and 70 percent. In case you don’t fall in this category, there might be something wrong with your website. With that in mind, here are some actions you can take to improve your bounce rate.
Check if your Google Analytics plugin is working properly
For starters, if you’re using Google Analytics to monitor your bounce rate, you want to ensure the plugin you have installed is working properly. This is important as it can help you set various goals and show you the wrong results if not configured right. Moreover, other installed plugins might also be interfering with the activity of Google Analytics and show you the incorrect bounce rate.
Improve the readability of your content
Then, you might have to improve the readability of your website. If a visitor opens a page and sees a huge chunk of text, they can easily get scared and turn away. If your website seems difficult to read, they will not even bother trying to get the information you are trying to provide them with. Therefore, you want to break up the text into several paragraphs. Use a big headline that will attract an audience and then subheadings and bullet points that will make it much easier to digest. Moreover, you should make use of images, charts, and quotes as well as put the most important things in bold. Another thing you can do to engage readers is to ask them questions throughout your content so that they have something to respond to in the comments. Lastly, there are websites that test the readability of a website so look them up.
Add a compelling CTA
Besides encouraging readers to engage by leaving comments, you also want to gain their attention within the first three seconds by adding a compelling call-to-action button. Every page on your website should have some sort of CTA button that will make it clear to visitors what you expect of them, which can include everything from signing up for a newsletter to purchasing a product. In case your page is a bit longer, don’t hesitate to use the CTA button again further down the line. Furthermore, you want to make these buttons as straightforward as possible, to prevent confusing visitors and having them leave.
Avoid using too many pop-ups
While there is a debate whether using pop-ups helps the bounce rate or not, most people hate pop-ups. However, there is also the other side of the coin that shows that pop-ups that ask for visitors’ emails actually help a business grow its email list. So, the best approach would be to use pop-ups strategically. They are acceptable to a certain amount when they are as unobtrusive as possible. Keep them to a minimum and use them mostly when you need to announce something that otherwise might be overlooked. A newsletter signup form can be a staple on every page and not interfere with the content.
Include the right keywords
When creating your website and its content, it’s also crucial to focus on keywords that will help you attract the right audience. In order to get the engagement you require, you need to reach your target audience. That means that you have to include keywords and phrases that people looking for the products and services you offer will be looking up online. These should fit naturally within your content that will provide the readers with the answers they are looking for. If you’re not sure how to approach this and conduct keyword research, it’s a good idea to turn to an experienced SEO agency that will handle this instead of you. Moreover, implementing these words and phrases into your content can result in other people linking to your work, which will also help you build authority in the field.
Keep it fresh with new content
Although it can oftentimes seem more important to focus on other aspects of business, you cannot afford to neglect your blog. As this is what will help you build authority and improve your bounce rate, you need to put plenty of effort into ensuring that your blog is regularly updated with fresh content. You need educational but also entertaining articles that will provide your target audience with the information they are looking for as well as lead them to make a purchase or contact you in some manner. If you’re not great at writing and would rather focus on something else, either bring someone on board who will handle this or outsource the task, as having a quality blog is of the essence.
Improve the loading speed
Another reason why you might be dealing with a high bounce rate is that your website’s loading speed is very slow. You need to look into ways of speeding it up, as visitors are not willing to wait for your website to load if they’re determined to find something they need. They will simply turn to someone else whose website loaded instantly. Regardless of how good your product is, no one will wait for more than a few seconds at the most. Moreover, if your website is slow, you can also slip in Google’s rankings, meaning that you will not be among the first pages that people see. To improve the loading speed, you should get rid of plugins that are not essential, remove various banners around the page, and look for a better domain.
Open external links in a new window
Seeing as how you will surely be using some external links in your blog posts, you want all of them to open in a new tab. That way, the visitor will not have to use the back button to find you and continue reading your post. What is more, if they get intrigued by the other post, they might not come back to you at all. So, make sure to do this to decrease the exit and bounce rate.
Don’t forget about meta descriptions
Something else you should be doing is writing interesting meta descriptions for users that search for keywords. These are HTML attributes used to describe what a page is about. Search engines like Google use these descriptions to provide potential visitors with a snipped of your website. Keep in mind that the optimal length is 155 characters, as anything longer will not be displayed on the search results pages. When writing one, make sure to include a keyword and a call to action for the best results and improved bounce rate.
If you’ve noticed an extremely high bounce rate on your website, it’s high time you did something to improve it. These nine small changes can make a big difference so don’t overlook them.
