Bounce rate measures how many people are actively engaging with a page on your site once they visit it, and how many are immediately clicking off instead. The more people who immediately exit your site, the higher your bounce rate.
According to Google, bounce rate is calculated based on: “single-page sessions divided by all sessions or the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server.” Anything over a 70% bounce rate is considered to be high.
Do you know which aspects of your site are driving potential customers or clients away? Here, we can take you through some of the more common reasons that people aren’t engaging with your site, and some possible solutions to lower your bounce rate and keep potential customers on your site for longer.
Misleading Metadata
Your page’s meta title tag and meta description play a very important role in getting people from a search engine to your site. If the content of your site doesn’t line up with what your metadata says, people are likely to click away immediately, as your site won’t meet their expectations. The metadata of your site will be the first thing potential customers will see via a search engine, so its important that it is an accurate representation of what they will find.
Slow Loading Speed
Slow loading speed can be the nail in the coffin when it comes to bounce rate. If a page takes longer than four seconds to load, you can wave goodbye to most visitors. Ideally, your page load speed should be under two seconds. These are a few different things that can slow down a webpage:
- Excessively large images
- Slow hosting platform
- Large amounts of images
- The use of custom fonts
- Special JavaScript effects
You can check your page load speed using a tool like Google page speed insights, or something similar.
Bad Links
Sometimes visitors may be bouncing due to issues on other websites. Your website may be linked from another site in a way that is misguiding, or refers to outdated content. Website crawling will help you detect outdated or unsuitable inbound links. If you do find bad links, ask the site author to either update or delete the link to your page, to prevent visitors from bouncing.
Poorly Planned Content
The content on a page needs to address a visitors needs and answer their questions. It is important to have the information that visitors are looking for directly visible on the site immediately, so be careful with banners pushing important content down too far. Images and ads can also be distractions.
Understand what it is that your target audience is looking for, and create content that caters to this. Simple things, like using headings and subheadings, can make your page easy to skim for visitors, making it nice and easy for them to find the answers they are after. Be sure to include a call to action too so that users can easily take the next step to get what they want.
Bad UX
User experience (or UX) is all about creating an interface that provides meaningful and relevant experiences to users. If your site is unpleasant or difficult to use, doesn’t make sense, or is overloaded with information, this could be why your audience is checking out straight away.
Lower Your Bounce Rate
There are two different practices that can help you get on top of a high bounce rate: SEO and CRO. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) will ensure that the structure, style, and content of your page is uniquely crafted for web-based customers and includes all the necessary keywords to bring the right audience to your page.
If you want your website visitors to take action online and convert into customers, Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is for you. CRO uses data and psychology to enhance the user experience & interactivity of your website to convert visitors into customers.
Here at PureSEO, we have an award-winning team of certified specialists who deliver SEO, SEM, CRO, analytics, content creation, and much more. We can help you keep your bounce rates low and your site performing. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help.