Effective Ways to Reduce Bounce Rate of Your Website

As soon as a website gains traction, a high bounce rate becomes a pressing issue for website owners.

The purpose of having a website is to get people to interact with it. As a result, they subscribe, convert, enter the lead funnel, and eventually become customers. However, if you see a significant bounce rate, your task may never be accomplished.

Your users are hitting the back button without bothering to browse any further pages in your offering if your bounce rate is high. The bounce rate, unlike any other analytics measure you’re familiar with, is one you want to maintain as low as possible.

However, there is a lot of misunderstanding concerning bounce rate, especially when it comes to what the optimal bounce rate for a website should be.

In this article, we’ll address some of the most often asked issues about bounce rate and how to lower it. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

What is Bounce Rate?

What is Bounce Rate?
What is Bounce Rate?

The bounce rate is the percentage of users who arrive at an entry page from various sources and leave without visiting any other pages inside the site, either by hitting the back button or closing the window.

Bounce rate is a crucial website analytics indicator for determining a website’s level of interaction.

What is Considered a Bounce?

A bounce occurs when a website visitor arrives at an entry page (the page that appears after clicking the search results) and leaves without visiting any additional pages on the site.

Why Do People Bounce Off?

You might be wondering why your visitors are bouncing off the walls like a bouncy ball. Allow me to assist you in gaining clarity on this, as it is critical to establish a diagnosis before moving on with a solution.

A high bounce rate can be caused by one of two factors:

The user’s aim isn’t met on this page. The site’s page experience is poor.

The following are two conditions that could result in a higher bounce rate:

Intent and Bounce Rate

When you type “What is DA” into Google, you’ll get results that refer to Dearness Allowance. However, you’re familiar with SEO, and the search’s goal was to learn more about Domain Authority.

It simply does not satisfy your query intent if you click on the first few results. You instantly hit the back button due to your unhappiness.

Though this may appear to be an apparent example, if users are unable to locate the information they seek, they will exit the page, resulting in a bounce.

Page Experience and Bounce Rate

Now, in this case, the page closely fits the query intent, but it takes a long time to load, and once it does, there are no internal links or CTAs to direct people to other pages on the site.

A higher than average bounce rate is caused by both slow loading times and a lack of internal links.

Where to find the bounce rate in Google Analytics?

Google Analytics provides a number of tools for determining your website’s bounce rate. The bounce rate may be seen in Google Analytics’ Audience Overview, Acquisitions, and Behavior tabs.

If you want to drill down into the page-by-page bounce rate, it’s best to look it up in the behaviour report.

Follow these steps to check the bounce rate of individual pages on your website:

Step 1: Head to the Behavior tab on the left

Step 2: Click on Site Content

Step 3: Click on All Pages

Step 4: Type the path of the URL in the search box

How to Calculate the Bounce Rate?

For the vast majority of website owners, Google Analytics is the go-to tool, and how it determines the bounce rate is crucial. The overall bounce rate of a website is calculated by dividing single-page sessions by all sessions, according to Google.

Formula for Calculating the Bounce Rate for the Entire Website

The bounce rate is calculated as the number of single-page sessions divided by the total number of sessions. To put it another way, it’s the overall percentage of all website sessions where users only browsed one page.

The bounce rate of a page is derived by dividing the number of single-page sessions by the total number of sessions that begin with that page.

ALSO READ: Guaranteed SEO Results: It’s A Scam You Can Avoid

Bounce Rate Formula for a Single Page

page bounce rate = single-page sessions on the page / total sessions starting from the page

Because visitors quit before visiting any other pages, the session length for a single page view is always 0 seconds.

Is a High Bounce Rate Bad?

It is debatable. If you operate a website that provides a product or service, a high bounce rate can be concerning because it indicates that consumers are not being converted.

In the case of a lengthy blog post, the bounce rate may be high since the user finds all he or she is seeking for on the same page. Single-page sessions will be increased in certain situations, resulting in a high bounce rate.

If you fall into the second category, though, keep an eye on the amount of time spent on the page, as this could be a good indicator of whether or not your material is effective.

Also, if your blog post is the first stage of the marketing funnel and you rely heavily on Google Adsense revenue, make sure that internal links and CTAs are carefully positioned with each blog article.

NB: Not all CTAs and internal links will pique the users’ interest. It should be perfectly tailored to the purpose of each page.

The most common explanation for a greater bounce rate is usability factors, regardless of the sort of website that has a high bounce rate.

Some of the most typical bottlenecks among websites with high bounce rates are clusters in the design, terrible colour combinations, improper CTA positioning, and fancy or indecipherable fonts that cause readability challenges.

This is why, at Stan Ventures, we advise our clients to experiment with three distinct site design options before settling on one.

Non-Interaction Events for Better Bounce Rate Calculation

Google Analytics allows you to specify your site’s bounce rate based on non-interaction event hits. This feature aids in the redefining of the bounce rate of individual pages using event tracking.

This illustration should help you grasp the topic even better:

Consider including a downloadable component on a page. The overall goal of the website is to get the user to download the asset, therefore there’s no reason to term it a bounce if they do.

You can incorporate the event action before calculating the bounce rate in such circumstances. This means that any session in which the user downloads the asset will not be considered a bounce.

Simply go to Google Tag Manager and create an event with No-Interaction Hit set to False. This ensures that Google Analytics counts any activity within the asset as a hit, preventing the session from being classified as a bounce.

This is an optional Tag Manager parameter that allows you to specify how you want the bounce rate for pages on your site that also include event measurement to be calculated.

After that, go to Trigger Configuration and add your trigger factor there. In the instance of a downloadable asset, I can utilize the Click ID, Class, or even the Click URL associated with the PDF as my trigger factor, and then add the Click ID, Class, or even the Click URL after that.

If you already have Google Tag Manager installed on your site, the first trigger will begin populating the data in Google Analytics. This video will show you how to use GTM to create a No-interaction event in Google Analytics.

Adjusted Bounce Rate for Bloggers and Publishers

Bloggers and websites that post a lot of content, as previously said, are more likely to have a high bounce rate.

Most of the time, this isn’t a sign of bad content or a low-quality website. The majority of websites with long-form and news-based content have a high bounce rate of 70-90 percent.

The term “bounce rate” does not necessarily imply that a person got on your website and immediately hit the back button.

The user may have spent more than a minute on your page, and because the information was helpful and completely satisfied the user’s search goal, the user may have quit the site without checking further resources or sites you may have supplied.

You don’t want them to be labelled as a bounce since they spent enough time on the website.

So this is where the Adjusted Bounce Rate comes in handy. You may use Adjusted Bounce Rate to create an event anytime a user spends more than the minimal amount of time you specify. Essentially, you are in charge of determining the minimum time.

With the Adjusted bounce rate enabled, you can view the proportion of visitors who left before the minimum time period was reached.

So, if you set the minimum time to 20 seconds, Google Analytics will calculate the bounce rate based on that. A bounce occurs when a user stays on a page for less than 18 seconds before leaving. If the person stayed for more than 20 seconds, however, it will not be considered a bounce. You’ll need to add a line of code to your Google Analytics tracker to accomplish this.

Setting Up Adjusted Bounce Rate

Adding Adjusted Bounce Rate Manually

1st step

Determine the source page from which the Analytics tracking code in the articles is retrieved. In a PHP site, for example, it may be in the header.php file.

2nd Step

Just above the line where the /script> terminates, add the event trigger code.

setTimeout(“ga(‘send’,’event’,’adjusted bounce rate’,’20 seconds’)”,20000); setTimeout(“ga(‘send’,’event’,’adjusted bounce rate’,’20 seconds’)”,20000);

This code, as you can see, displays the time in both seconds and milliseconds. You can adjust it based on the time limit you’ve chosen.

Using WordPress Plugin

All you have to do if you’re a WordPress user is install a simple plugin. This is very handy for folks who aren’t familiar with HTML or coding.

Here’s what you should do:

Step 1: Install the Perfmatters WordPress plugin first.

Step 2: Turn on the Local Analytics feature.

Step 3: Select a position and enter the tracking ID.

Step 4: Save the Adjusted Bounce Rate after setting it in seconds.

Using Google Tag Manager

To make the Timer trigger, do the following:

Step 1: Create a new trigger and set the event type to the timer.

Step 2: Set the timer to 30,000 intervals for 30 seconds.

Step 3: Using the Booleans, enable timer trigger across the site.

Step 4:  Set the trigger to activate on all timers

Step 5:  Create a new Universal Analytics event tag

How Bounce Affects SEO?

How Bounce Affects SEO
How Bounce Affects SEO

The relationship between bounce rate, dwell duration, and rankings is still a topic of debate in the SEO industry. In reality, while there may not be a clear link between bounce rate and ranking, some of the factors that contribute to a high bounce rate may have an impact on rankings.

A high bounce rate can be caused by a page that lacks the intent, quality content, and usability characteristics, and these are the same issues that might cause poor organic traffic. This is why, after improving pages for both users and search engines, most SEO professionals notice a lower bounce rate.

Is Bounce Rate a Ranking Factor?

The bounce rate is not a ranking criteria for Google because it is considered a noise signal.

Google stated in 2008 that it does not consider click statistics, such as bounce rate, time spent, and so on, for ranking web sites.

We can only trust what they teach because the show is produced by Google. However, SEO experts have discovered a strong link between bounce back and ranks in their research.

Google released a tool in 2011 that allowed users to prevent websites that they had exited within a few seconds from reappearing in search results.

This tool is no longer available, but it shows that Google Algorithms can comprehend click data.

Furthermore, Moz conducted a few experiments that found that pages ranked in the first three spots have a lower bounce rate than those ranked lower.

All of these findings contradict what Google has been saying for over a decade, and it may appear that bounce rate and Google’s ranking factor are related.

But, once again, this is a contentious claim.

If you do decide to employ bounce rate as a ranking component, make sure your pages are optimised to give users the greatest experience possible.

What’s the “Average” Bounce Rate?

The average bounce rate varies depending on the type of website and pages being monitored.

When compared to a landing page or a product page, a blog page may have a very high bounce rate.

According to Similar Web, the current average bounce rate is 45 % to 65 %.

This percentage can range from 25% for a highly engaging page to 90% for pages that are less engaging or complete the intent without the need for additional actions (Example news).

According to the study, depending on the source of your traffic, your bounce rate can increase. When compared to traffic from sources like social and display ads, direct traffic has a far lower bounce rate.

Surprisingly, the devices that users use to access your website might have a significant impact on the bounce rate.

According to a comparable Web survey, people who view a website from mobile devices have a higher bounce rate than users who reach the page from desktops.

Bounce Rate vs Exit Rate

Despite the fact that these two phrases are related to which page a user departs, they are not the same, and users frequently confuse them.

So here’s the deal: every bounce is an exit, but not every exit is a bounce. A bounce occurs when a visitor visits a single page and then exits the same page without doing anything.

Because you can trigger a no-interaction event for the assets on a page and avoid it being counted as a bounce, I’m using the word completely. When compared to the Bounce Rate, the Exit Rate notion is significantly more straightforward.

Users may view several pages or exit the same page without taking any action after landing on it. The exit page will be whichever page the user visited most recently. This implies that the exit rate merely gives you the percentage of users who departed the site from a particular page against those who went on to other sites.

Even though a high exit rate is expected if the page you’re targeting is designed to guide customers through a process, such as a product page with a Buy Now button. Then you’ll need to look for problems that are preventing consumers from taking the desired activity.

A high exit page is usually found on a check-out confirmation page because the user has completed the intended action, which is perfectly normal. The main difference between Bounce Rate and Exit Rate is that the latter cannot be completely stopped because after a few iterations, every user will leave your site.

All you can do is make sure that each page has enough possibilities to entice the user to explore more until he reaches the page from which he will exit. The same tactics that were used to lower the bounce rate can also be used to lower the page’s exit rate.

Tips to Reduce Bounce Rate

Tips to Reduce Bounce Rate
Tips to Reduce Bounce Rate

Increase the Readability Score Of Your Content

Your content must be excellent if your website is rising to the top of Google search results. However, this does not guarantee that your visitors will read the entire article.

Are you curious as to why?

You must choose the proper font, font colour, font size, and many other factors to make high-quality text readable. Furthermore, a major portion of the content might be used in a printed book. However, they are ineffective in digital platforms, particularly websites.

You will notice a higher bounce as the text grows chunkier. This is due to the fact that people who read online prefer short sentences and paragraphs since they like to skim through the text. The attention you place on the content layout with bullet points numbered lists, and header tags will help you lower your bounce rate to a more manageable level.

Make sure your phrases are short and to the point, and that you don’t keep the users waiting for the crucial information. There are a lot of blogs with fascinating information out there. However, they attempt to save the most important information for last.

Though this method may work in other situations, it is a no-no on the internet. Furthermore, the web isn’t the place to flaunt your eloquence, at least not if you’re trying to sell something.

If the content necessitates creative expression, you can use flamboyant language. However, in day-to-day content, keep it as simple as possible.

Characteristics of a Good Web Content:

  • Scannable if subheadings are used correctly.
  • Bullets and numbered lists are used to highlight essential points.
  • To make the message obvious, includes extremely relevant graphics and graphs.
  • The meat of the text can be found in the first few paragraphs.
  • Narrates in a conversational style most of the time.
  • Internal links and CTAs that are strategically placed

Users Hate Popups

You may enjoy popups as a website owner, but as a user, you despise them. That is a sad reality that must be faced.

Popup advertisements, according to recent surveys, are the most disliked by users.

Google, for example, despises popups so much that it released an algorithm upgrade specifically to punish websites that utilise invasive interstitial components.

Popups are widely used by marketers for lead generation and conversion rate optimization. Popups that appear as soon as a user accesses a website, on the other hand, may result in a greater bounce rate.

This is because certain popups irritate readers, causing them to abandon the page.

Some websites even feature many popups, putting the users’ tolerance to the strain.

The most effective way to activate popups is to have them appear when the user leaves the page.

If you show them another relevant blog post or give them the option to download an asset with event tracking enabled, exit-intent popups can further reduce the bounce rate.

Well-planned exit-intent popups have a track record of converting visitors into leads and encouraging them to purchase products and services.

If you’re a marketer, make sure that popups are kept to a bare minimum and that they provide value to users.

Effective Call To Action

Users are visiting your website and staying on it for a long time. But here’s the thing: are they leaving no evidence of their presence on the site?

If you want to convert your users into subscribers and customers, this is the worst thing that can happen.

You must evoke users with appealing Calls to Action to get the most out of your pages. A well-thought-out CTA can significantly reduce the overall exit rate and bounce rate.

Make sure that at least one CTA is placed within the first fold and not near the footer when placing the CTA. The reason for this is because only 10% of all visitors read or scroll all the way to the bottom of the pages they view.

If you’re going to use the CTA in a blog, make sure it’s providing the reader with a valuable resource that’s relevant to the blog they’re reading. A CTA that is completely unconnected is the same as having no CTA at all.

When customers are urged to browse an extended resource page, download an asset, or purchase a service, you are encouraging them to visit more pages, lowering the site’s total bounce rate.

Make a free trial or a free downloaded case study available on product or service pages. If you’re an SEO firm, provide a CTA that offers a free SEO consultation or audit.

These are some tried-and-true formulas for lowering your website’s bounce rate and increasing conversion rates by a factor of ten.

Remove Obsolete Content

Do you see a decline in organic traffic over time, as well as an increase in bounce rate on particular pages?

This could be due to the fact that your content has become obsolete.

If it doesn’t qualify as evergreen, old and outdated content may fail to meet the user’s objective. This is especially true in some speciality businesses, such as search engine optimization (SEO).

Here’s an easy example:

Users may not find your SEO Strategies 2018 blog valuable if the content is not updated for the next two years. As soon as they enter the website, they will leave.

Furthermore, since the page is unable to meet the goal of the search query, Google and other search engines will gradually stop directing users to it.

Target the Right Keywords

Target the Right Keywords
Target the Right Keywords

Bounce rates can be drastically reduced by selecting the proper keyword for your site. The truth is that not all keywords are treated the same way since they serve different purposes.

For a better understanding, there are two categories of keywords to consider while attempting to lower the bounce rate.

  • Keywords for Information
  • Buyer Intent Keywords, also known as Transactional Keywords

If you’re the owner of a website, you want your product and service pages to rank for buyer intent keywords rather than informational keywords.

If it’s the other way around, you’ll notice a high bounce rate because the users were unable to find the information they needed.

As previously said, informational content typically has a greater bounce rate because consumers are either completely satisfied or completely dissatisfied with the content offered.

In both cases, converting a user who visits a blog necessitates the implementation of the appropriate tactics, as well as the passage of the user through several marketing funnels before they become a sale.

However, if you make sure your money pages are optimised with the proper buyer intent keywords, you won’t have to go through as much effort.

You’re introducing the proper people to your website, and when they find the pages valuable, they’ll take the action you want them to take.

This indicates that they will most likely engage with numerous pages.

Consider the following scenario:

A user who uses a buyer intent keyword to find an iPhone product page can look at the different storage options and pricing, compare it to the previous edition, and then make a purchase decision. If this is the case for the majority of your website’s visitors, you can expect a lower bounce rate.

But there’s another scenario that could result in increased bounce rates.

When a user searches for “how to perform blogger outreach,” they are sent to a service page that offers a blogger outreach package. When a search’s intent isn’t fully met, it can lead to an immediate abandonment of the page, which is referred to as a bounce.

This can be avoided by mapping intent-based keywords to the appropriate product, service, and blog pages.

The bounce rate of sites optimised with buyer intent keywords is far lower than that of blogs, because readers are coming to learn about the features and benefits.

Take Care of Page Speed Experience

Do you know that pages that take longer than 3 seconds to load are abandoned by 53% of users? Furthermore, according to Google, 30% of users expect a page to load in one second or less, while 18% expect instantaneous loading.

The bounce rate increases by at least 20-30% with each additional second, implying that Page Speed is one major component that, on the surface, appears to be the cause of the greater bounce rate.

It’s interesting to note that 47% of consumers expect web sites to load in under 2 seconds. The reality, on the other hand, is quite different. Only 12% of mobile and 13% of desktop results are thought to be capable of accomplishing this feat. This suggests that there are more disgruntled users on the internet than pleased users.

By the way, you’ll notice that all of Google’s statistics are focused on mobile, and there’s a reason for that. In the vast majority of cases, if you are able to improve the speed and usability for mobile users, it will automatically adapt to the desktop.

Given that Google is emphasising the overall page experience of users, it’s past time for you to address the speed issues.

Starting in 2021, making the website snappier and faster will be a ranking factor. Core Web Vitals will join a plethora of other user experience ranking criteria, according to Google.

Core Web Vitals, by the way, is a set of three-page experience signals that Google claims are crucial in determining if a user has a flawless browsing experience. Because page speed is so important for both SEO and lowering bounce rates, it should be at the top of your to-do list.

Improve Internal Linking Structure

Improve Internal Linking Structure
Improve Internal Linking Structure

When I look at pages that people complain about having a high bounce rate, I frequently see a deficiency in the form of internal links.

We cannot blame visitors for departing a page without taking any action if the website does not provide a way for them to browse to other pages.

This is particularly true in the case of blogs and resource pages. If you don’t include internal connections to other relevant sites, people will be satisfied with what they’ve previously seen and leave the website.

External links that don’t open in a new tab can also increase the bounce rate because your users may never return to your site if they don’t hit the back button.

Use Table of Contents

Use Table of Contents
Use Table of Contents

Your users are pressed for time, and you want them to see the information they need as soon as possible. Long-form pieces with more than 5000 words, like the one you’re reading right now, might be a major time suck for certain visitors.

Your users like condensed content, which is where the table of contents comes in handy. The table of contents is useful since it allows users to skip to the section they want without having to read the whole of the blog.

Also, if you make it sticky on the left navigation bar, you might be able to persuade visitors to explore the rest of the blog. You can also construct subtopic pages for the parent topics at a higher level. It should be linked from the content table on the left. When a user clicks on one of the subpages, you can lower the bounce rate. Adding a no-interaction event to the Table of Contents is another technique to lower the bounce rate.

Embed Videos

The ultimate goal is to get consumers to interact with your website and content. And, in the year 2020, the greatest alternative is to use videos.

Create movies based on your content, whether it’s a quick graphical representation or a whole masterclass. All you have to do now is arrange the video in the appropriate context.

If you utilise no-interaction triggers whenever a user clicks on the play button, videos embedded within the content might keep users on the page longer. This can significantly lower the bounce rate.

Furthermore, Google and other search engines like to rank pages with videos and other media resources. Including a video in your content might help to trigger video snippets, which will help to increase your Click Through Rate.

Do a Heat Map Analysis

Have you ever believed that if you had observed how visitors interact with the pages, you could do a lot better? Don’t be concerned! You’ve got it. Not just one, but a slew of them.

There are solutions that allow you to see every step that users do after they arrive on your website. HotJar and CrazyEgg are two of the top tools in the market.

Both of these tools have nearly identical features, so picking one will help you make more educated judgments about how to lower your bounce rate.

Here’s how to do it:

Simply copy and paste the tracking code created by any of the tools onto the pages you wish to track. Soon after, you may see all of the users’ activity, including scrolling, clicks, selections, and so on, from the dashboard of these tools.

A heatmap representation of the locations where people engage is also available. High activity is shown by a red hotspot, whereas low activity is indicated by a blue heatmap. You can reduce the bounce rate by including a CTA or a downloadable asset immediately in the red zone.

Or

You can improve the blue zone’s content and lower the bounce rate by making it more engaging. People are most inclined to click on sections that are visible above the fold.

However, if you notice that visitors are more engaged with information that appears below the fold, it may be time to shift it up. So, now that you know how to lower your website’s bounce rate, put these strategies into action right away and see how they work. We eagerly await your response to let us know what kind of outcomes you got with the advice we provided.


Is a high bounce rate always bad?

bounce rate
bounce rate

The average bounce rate is a topic that we get a lot of questions about. Is having a high bounce rate a bad thing? Is there such a thing as too low? The solution, like most areas of digital analysis, is complicated.

High bounce rate is not always bad. The percentage of bounce rate is different for different categories and types of websites. A website with good video content, usually makes the audience sit on the site for long and the people who want to get any quick details like phone number tends to jump fast.

What does bounce rate measure?

Let’s start by making sure we’re all on the same page when it comes to what a bounce is. A single-page session on a website is known as a bounce. That indicates a person visited one page on your site and then left without making any additional requests for the Google Analytics server to track.

Google Analytics divides all of your single-page sessions by all site sessions to calculate your website’s average bounce rate. This is the percentage of sessions when users only read one page before leaving. In a nutshell, it tells you how frequently visitors leave your site.

If you were to leave this blog article right now, you’d probably believe that a high average bounce rate is negative since it indicates that visitors aren’t engaging with your site. The case is now closed.

But it isn’t that easy.

When having a high bounce rate isn’t necessarily a bad thing?

When a high bounce rate may not be a bad thing
When a high bounce rate may not be a bad thing

A high average bounce rate can be beneficial or negative depending on a number of factors, including user goals, content type, devices used to access your site, and Google Analytics settings. You shouldn’t look at your website’s average bounce rate in isolation from these other factors.

To see why, consider the following elements that influence the average bounce rate:

Some users have single-point objectives.

Users visit your site for a number of reasons because you’re a healthcare company. When they’re looking for a new provider or researching your birth center, they may be exploring many pages.

Others, on the other hand, may only require quick access to a medical records request form, COVID-19 immunization information, or the phone number for your nurse line. Bounces are common in situations like this, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

When looking at your average bounce rate, it’s crucial to consider the type of material that’s causing bounces before deciding whether or not this measure is alarming.

Pro tip: We typically find the average time spent on the page to be more valuable than the average bounce rate. You might be concerned about a high bounce rate for a service line website, for example. However, if you notice that people are spending a lot of time on your page, it’s possible that they’re reading your material and then departing since they found the information they needed without having to go any farther.

High bounce rates are common on popular pages.

If critical pages such as your patient portal, online bill pay, or careers portal are managed by a third-party vendor and have a domain that is different from your main site, visitors may experience a bounce. So a high bounce rate on those sites could simply indicate that the user followed the page’s targeted call to action (CTA), which is a good thing.

It’s vital to keep in mind that an average bounce rate takes into account all of your site’s pages. The bounce rate of your site will be skewed by heavily frequented pages with high bounce rates.

Pro tip: Instead of pondering your overall bounce rate, examine the bounce rates of particular pages. Some pages need to have a high bounce rate, whereas others don’t. In some circumstances, a high bounce rate could suggest a bad user experience or a lack of user engagement. Your supplier directory landing page is an example. A high bounce rate could indicate that customers are not moving on to the next step of looking for a supplier.

Users using mobile devices are less likely to browse.

Web browsing patterns differ between mobile and desktop users. Desktop visitors are more prone to click around and investigate your site, whereas mobile users are more goal-oriented.

Pro tip: Remember to take into account the quantity of mobile and desktop users, as well as your average bounce rate. A greater average bounce rate is usually associated with more mobile visitors.

It’s important to pay attention to your Google Analytics filters.

Your average bounce rate may be affected by the criteria you’ve set up in your Google Analytics account. For example, if a hospital’s public Wi-Fi automatically redirects visitors to your website when they use the internet, the findings may be skewed.

An inflated bounce rate can also be caused by not filtering out internal traffic or having your website set as the default browser homepage for employees.

Pro tip: For more information on how to improve your data, see our earlier blog post about hospital Wi-Fi.

We’re not suggesting that you completely disregard your average bounce rate. However, don’t rely on it as the single determinant of your site’s success or failure. There’s a lot you can learn from your Google Analytics account, and no one metric should ever be looked at in isolation.

ALSO READ: Effective Ways to Reduce Bounce Rate of Your Website

Measuring performance of pages with high bounce rates

Measuring performance of pages with high bounce rates
Measuring performance of pages with high bounce rates

So, now that we know that a high bounce rate can be acceptable in some cases, how can you ensure that the website is functioning properly? Implementing a heat map is a fantastic approach. This will allow you to see how users are interacting with your page for a set amount of time. We can get a better picture of what’s going on on a page if we can see things like scroll depth and click location. A heat map can confirm that users are leaving a page because they are responding to a CTA (applying for a job), show us what type of content they are looking for (choosing a button to enroll in the patient portal versus logging in), and provide feedback on a poor user experience (rage clicks, not scrolling far enough to see a phone number), all of which contribute to why users bounce.


11 Tips to decrease bounce rate

How to decrease bounce rate?

We constantly talk about how to get more people to visit our website, but we typically overlook two essential factors: user engagement and user behaviour.

These elements are extremely important and should be considered at all times. When a site has 10,000 views per day but all visitors depart after seeing only one page, it is unlikely to be of high quality.

There are certain exceptions, such as when users find the solution to a question directly on the website. Consider the following example: the definition of words.

This article will teach you how to:

  • What is the Bounce Rate?
  • What is the difference between an idle and a decent bounce rate?
  • How can I lower my bounce rate?

The bounce rate of your website is an excellent indicator of your blog’s success. It’s tough, but not impossible, to keep a good bounce rate.

I’ll provide a few pointers that have shown to be effective in lowering my website’s bounce rate. They should also be beneficial to you.

What is the bounce rate?

What is bounce rate
What is bounce rate

The best technique to analyse the activities of your blog’s visitors is to look at the bounce rate. It refers to the number of times a visitor lands on your blog post and then leaves without visiting any other pages on your website. Some readers will leave your blog page after only a few seconds. It is entirely up to you how you greet readers to your blog and how you draw them to other blog pages.

First, let’s establish certain facts:

  • Your bounce rate should be as minimal as possible.
  • Your website’s bounce rate should be as low as possible.
  • The terms “exit rate” and “bounce rate” are not interchangeable.

In basic terms, this Wiki page describes how to compute a bounce rate:

Bounce rate = View/Entry

  • Total number of visitors who visited the page
  • People who just looked at one page

If you’re using Google Analytics, you can monitor the bounce rate for a specific time period by logging into your site’s dashboard. If you’ve made any recent design changes, I recommend comparing bounce rates before and after the change.

Now it’s time to put techniques in place that will help you minimise your bounce rate and encourage your viewers to spend more time on your blog/website.

So, to understand how it works, let’s do some easy math:

Let’s say this article receives 100 views and 50 visitors leave the site after viewing it. Their withdrawal could be due to a variety of factors, including moving to another site, closing the tab for whatever reason, not browsing other pages, and so on.

As a result, the bounce rate (B.R.) for this page is:

B.R. : 50/100 = 0.5, or 50% B.R.

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why bounce rates soar and why you should avoid them at all costs…

Also Read: Is a high bounce rate always bad?

Why is your bounce rate so high?

Why is your bounce rate so high?
Why is your bounce rate so high?

1. Slow Page Load Time

People will quit your site if it takes too long for a page to load completely (in 4 seconds or less). There are numerous useful websites that write about the same themes as you, and if other websites are faster, you will lose visitors to them. If you don’t want your audience to be snatched away by your competition, invest in a good, dependable, and fast-loading web host.

2. Too Many Intrusive Advertisements

Some individuals are here to make money online, but focusing too much on that can divert your audience’s attention away from your message. Too many advertisements will irritate readers.

3. Annoying Pop-ups

Another reason consumers quit a website before it even loads is because of pop-ups. We have so many pop-ups these days, for example:

  • Greetings mat
  • Consent to cookies pop-up
  • A pop-up advertisement appears.
  • Subscription to push notifications

They are, without a doubt, critical to the business, but they must be correctly configured.

Features like as

  • Exit strategy
  • Pop-up that appears when a certain amount of time has passed
  • Based on the sort of traffic, a pop-up will appear.
  • Relevancy

Could aid in the retention of visitors to your website.

4. Terrible And Unhelpful Content

Unfortunately, many online marketers fail miserably at creating useful and high-quality content. They just repeat stuff that has previously been posted on other sites, and in the process of editing these pieces, they discard the most valuable bits and provide half-baked content to their visitors.

You’re probably wondering how you might reduce the bounce rate on your website quickly.

How to lower your site’s bounce rate, I’d like you to go to your Google Analytics dashboard and take a look around.

  • You’re fine if your bounce rate is less than 65%.
  • If it’s between 65 and 80 percent, you should be concerned.
  • If it’s at least 80%, read and apply these suggestions right away.

5. Design and load time

Design and load time
Design and load time

It’s been said that the initial impression is the most enduring, and this is true for blogging as well. When a visitor comes to your blog for the first time, the first thing he observes is the loading time and the design.

If you use social media to advertise your articles, make sure your landing page doesn’t take too long to load, or you’ll lose your new readers. Another part of enticing visitors designs, and it’s preferable to stick with a clean and professional look.

6. External site opens in a new Tab

Now that you know what the word “bounce rate” implies, you can see how critical it is for your visitors to stay on your site. Almost all popular web browsers now support tabbed browsing, so take advantage of it by opening all external website links in a new tab instead of the one you’re currently using.

When linking to any site (Wikipedia, YouTube, or any other external site), choose “open in new tab” from the drop-down menu, as shown in the screenshot above.

7. Scannable and readable article

Many bloggers do not produce posts that are brief and to the point. A nice and easy user experience is created by dividing your blog posts/articles into parts (paragraphs separated by spaces).

If you don’t break up your articles into sections, readers will have a harder time navigating the article and may become overwhelmed by the amount of unbroken content in front of them.

In addition, other bloggers and visitors are drawn to your content because they are looking for information on the subject. You should provide them with an easily skimmed article because they may not have time to read line by line.

Here are some tools that will assist you in improving your article:

Make sure that your content is scannable and easy to read for your readers. Make your headings (H2, H3, H4) stand out and use them to make your content scannable. This will also assist you in driving visitors to your website via social media platforms.

8. Related posts

Related posts
Related posts

Showing related posts is quite helpful since when a reader finishes reading an article, he may want to read more about the same or a related topic. Consider yourself a blog reader.

After reading an article, what action do you take?

There are a couple of good connected articles. WordPress plugins that allow you to add related posts to your site. This works right out of the box and makes adding related posts a breeze.

Writing blog posts about topics linked to your most popular pages might help you boost your blog’s success and enhance the number of time visitors spend on your site.

9. Easy navigation

It should be simple to navigate from one page to the next on your blog. The navigation of the blog should not be confusing to visitors. They will undoubtedly quit the blog if they do not find what they are looking for fast.

Make sure the breadcrumbs are turned on, as they aid in navigation and user experience. However, as I explained in my WordPress SEO tutorial, activating bread crumbs also helps with SEO.

10. Search box and relevant links

It’s always a good idea to have a search box that’s easy to see. Visitors have a strong preference for searching for articles. If you want to lower your bounce rate, make sure you only link to content that is relevant to each other. Irrelevant posts may irritate your readers, and they may abandon your blog as a result.

11. Internal linking

Internal linking
Internal linking

This is one thing that really aids in keeping your visitors on your website. As much as feasible, interlink your blog content. If you’ve ever looked at Wikipedia’s SEO techniques, you’ll notice that they use a lot of internal links on each page. If you use the anchor text strategy to link, this will also assist you to improve your search engine rating.

This is a highly suggested tip for lowering a website’s bounce rate. This will also increase the average time spent on your site by visitors and encourage them to look at more internal pages.

Bounce rates indicate how many visitors enjoy reading your site and find it interesting. As a result, make sure you employ the tactics outlined above to reduce your website’s bounce rate.

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