How to Fix High Bounce Rate of Your Website and Increase Your Conversions

A high bounce rate can be frustrating if you manage your business website. It’s one of the most common and worst factors when it comes to lower conversion rates because visitors and potential customers who visit your website abandon your page(s) even before they give you an opportunity to convert them.

If you have been struggling to increase your website traffic, get more leads and acquire clients, increase signups and subscriber database, then it’s time to fix your high bounce rate issue immediately.

Finding out the reasons that are making your bounce rate go up is the first step to address this issue of your website. But before we jump into the solutions for lowering the bounce rate, let’s first understand what is bounce rate, when it is okay to ignore, and the possible reasons why your bounce rate is so high.

What is Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate, according to Google Analytics, is the percentage of single-page visits that measures the visit in terms of a session (that is within a definite period) during which the visitor leaves your website from the entrance page. In simpler terms, a bounce is when a visitor visits your website on any page (which is referred to as the entrance page or landing page) and leaves without visiting other pages or taking any action on the entrance page. So, your bounce rate is the percentage of all visitors who enter and exit on the same page of your website.

How High Bounce Rate is Determined?

A high bounce rate is considered bad for any website. According to industry benchmarks and set rules, a bounce rate that ranges from 70-80% is high and poor while above 80% is considered as very bad in terms of website performance. The average bounce rate typically ranges from 50-70% while a good bounce rate ranges from 30-50%.

However, bounce rate metrics vary across industries, and also depends on the purpose of your website, the type of content you have and the channel from which your traffic is coming. For example, a contact page can have a high bounce rate but it is still serving its purpose right because people visit a contact page mainly to check out your phone number, email address, working hours, etc. Similarly, certain other pages such as single blog posts, mobile sessions, and ad campaign traffic usually observe a higher bounce rate but as long as they are serving the purpose of your website or your goals, you need not worry about this rate as it doesn’t affect the ranking of your website.

But you should remember that your bounce rate is an indicator of the user experience of your website. As a result, even when search engines like Google don’t directly include bounce rate data when determining website ranking, it considers the data as an indicator of poor content, low user engagement, poor page loading time, and other issues that play important roles in your ranking.

Some Possible Reasons behind High Bounce Rate

There could be several issues in your website that can lead to a high bounce rate. Let’s take a look at some of the most common reasons.

• Weak Content: If your content doesn’t solve the purpose of the visitors, it is likely that they will return to the search results for a better option. The content needs to be rich, addressing all the issues that your target visitors are looking for, and help them find solutions that actually work! Besides, grammatically incorrect content which is difficult to read and understand, not informative, and visually unpleasant or cluttered also contributes to a high bounce rate.
• Bad User Experience: Visitors should not have to exercise their brains much to find out the menu or they should not be left to wonder how to move on to the next page to find an answer to their question on your website. If your navigation is confusing, then visitors will leave your page sooner. Also, give a check if you are cluttering your page too much with a lead generating forms or pop-up notifications as they can also turn off your visitors soon.
• Slow Page Load: Most visitors are likely to skip a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load, especially on mobile. Slow page loading time is one of the most common reasons for a high bounce rate.
• 404 Error: If your website has technical errors like 404 pages, it will also result in a bounce. There are several ways you can fix these pages and make visitors return to your website and explore for more.
• Misleading Content: Always make sure that the content which can be seen in the meta description in search results matches your copy on the website. The same applies to headlines, ad copies and also social media content. Visitors will visit your page seeing the description and if they find that the content doesn’t match, they will leave immediately, resulting in a bounce.
• Individual Content: Your high website bounce rate could also be the result of a few high-traffic pages with high bounce rates. Check if you have such landing pages on your website and implement changes to improve the result of your overall website.
• External Links: While including external links to other authority sites is a good thing for your content quality, you must also ensure that there is an incentive to return to your website. If the content points to another site but you give no reasons for your visitors to come back to your website, it will only result in a bounce.
• No Further Action: If your page content doesn’t point towards taking further action or you give no other option to take any step after visiting the page, it will throw off bounce rate.

Give a thorough check on the data of your Google Analytics or any other analytical tool that you use for your website to find out the potential factors affecting your bounce rate. Once you know the causes, you can work towards fixing them.

How to Lower Bounce Rate and Improve Conversions

Now that you know some of the most common reasons that lead to a high bounce rate, you can consider following the below proven ways to improve your bounce rate and increase conversions.

1. Improve User Experience (UX)
The aim of creating a good user experience is to provide a positive experience to visitors in terms of usability, functionality, and marketing tactics when they visit your website. Assess your pages that have a high bounce rate from the eyes of your target visitors and find out where you are falling short of keeping them engaged. Work on the navigation, menu options, path to find content and inspect any element creating an interruption to the visitor’s flow. Every element needed by your visitors should be readily served to them on the landing page or entrance page.

If you use a lot of ads and popups on your website, they can also annoy users and result in a higher bounce because it disrupts reading. Limit pop-ups and push notifications on your site and also make them unobtrusive so that it doesn’t annoy the visitors when they come to read your content.

However, pop-ups do help in marketing and can help grow your email list which is part of improving conversion rates. So, the best way to use pop-ups without hampering a positive user experience for your users is to design your pop-ups well. Learn more about why you should give priority to user experience when it comes to designing your website. Evaluate if you need a new web design to improve the user experience of your website.

2. Optimize Images
Massive image files can slow down page loading time and affect your mobile-friendly rankings. Resize bulky images, take the Page Speed Insights tests and improve the page load time of your website.

3. Improve your Ad Copy
As we have already mentioned, a high bounce rate from ads or social media posts is typical. But you should take note of the average session duration in these cases. If people leave your page within a couple of seconds, it is a sure fact that they are not reading the content of your ad copy. Fix the headlines, page titles, meta descriptions, and excerpts that clearly indicate what the visitor will get. Never use misleading content.

4. Improve your Content
Once you have your page titles, headlines, meta descriptions, and other ad copies sorted, it’s time you inspect the quality of your overall content. If you find out that visitors are spending less than 15 seconds on your blog post or article which has a length of more than 2000 words, it only means that no one is reading the content.

Check if your content provides high-quality information that helps address your visitors’ issues or problems. Always plan your content and storytelling techniques based on your target visitors. This will help appeal to your target readers and get them connected with your content.

Also, ensure that the content is reader-friendly, grammatically correct, scannable, and visually engaging. People usually dislike long paragraphs, so avoid large chunks of text. Remember that most people scan a page without reading each and every line of your content. So, break your content into small parts and paragraphs, emphasize important points and write it in a way like you speak.

Another significant factor that you should consider is to format the content or the text properly so that it is easy to read. Lousy formatting is also a reason why visitors exit your page faster no matter you give them great content. Make the headline big and bold, use attractive subheadings and bullet points to draw attention as well as to make the content easier to read. Use appropriate images, illustrations, charts, infographics, etc. wherever appropriate.

5. Work on your CTA (Call-to-Action)
If you want visitors to take action on the landing page, you should make your calls-to-action compelling. Remember that it is already difficult to build interest among visitors with your content. So, when you are able to attract traffic with your content, you can’t afford to lose them with a poor CTA which doesn’t create an urge to click and check what you are offering.
Optimize your CTAs to engage visitors and reduce your bounce rate. Work on the text, the colour scheme of the button, the visibility of the CTA, its positioning or placement, and the relevancy for better results.

6. Set Links to Open in New Tabs or Windows
If the users have to click on the back button to return to your website when you direct them to an external link, it will decrease your page views with the added risk of users not hitting the back button at all. This will not only increase your bounce rate but also the exit rate of your website. So, without annoying your users by making them hit the back button every time, set the links to open in a new tab or window to avoid the possibility of a high bounce.

7. Attract the Right Users
A higher bounce rate can also happen when you are getting the wrong visitors on your website. This could be the result of a wrong targeting strategy in terms of keywords, content campaigns, and marketing channels. You should always keep in mind your industry, the target group, and create your content strategy and ad campaigns to reach out to the right people using the right channels in order to reduce bounce and improve conversions.

8. Perform A/B Test
It’s important to A/B test your targeted landing pages to find out how the pages perform. Use different content strategies for each page and run the tests targeting different segments of your target visitors. You can design the content strategy based on location, region, keywords, etc. to see which headline and calls-to-action perform better and implement it on your site for better results.

These are some of the many ways that can help you reduce your high bounce rate and increase your conversion rate. But, without a great web design and an effective content strategy, you can’t avoid this issue. Your web designer can help you design your website keeping the user in mind while an experienced content strategist can map out your targeted content plan and editorial calendar to appeal to your users.

Stay consistent, follow the above-mentioned ways and work towards improving the user experience. We hope you can now better handle your website’s bounce rate!