Effective Ways to Reduce Your Site’s Bounce Rate

A high bounce rate indicates that something is wrong somewhere which needs to be fixed. But the question is- how to fix it?

Here are a few significant ways to reduce your website’s bounce rate:

Make sure pages load quickly

No one likes slow loading websites, so, always ensure that your website loads quickly. If your website is slow, people are likely to bounce.

Tips:

• Use https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ to test the speed of your site.

• Always measures the performance of a web page for mobile devices as well as desktop devices.

• A score of 85 or above indicates that the web page is performing well in terms of loading speed.

• Use spriting tools and image compression tools to minimise the number and size of images across the website.

• Optimise JavaScript code.

Give visitors all the information they need

Provide comprehensive information to your users, particularly if you have got an e-commerce website.

Tips:

• Provide product’s reviews and testimonials.

• Show security certificates on the products pages.

• Provide complete and unique product’ description to help users.

• Use clear call-to-actions.

Avoid pop-ups and annoying ads

Avoid pop-ups as well as banner ads, because they annoy users and force them to leave the page. It not only increases the overall bounce rate of a website, but also degrades user’s experience.

Tips:

• Avoid using blinking text.

• Never use full screen ads.

• Don’t force your customers to take particular action.

• Never intrude in the buying process.

Never use too many external links

It is always good to give credit to the original source; however, using too many external links may allow users to go on other sites, which may increase the overall bounce rate of your website.

Tips:

• Never use too many external links on your web pages.

• Use internal links to empower other low-performing web pages.

Prevent your site from the problem of pagination

Pagination is a complex problem. So, try to solve it as soon as possible, especially, if it is an e-commerce website.

Tips:

• Create a ‘View All’ page.

• Use rel=”next”, rel=”prev”.

• Link to the ‘View All’ from category- and product-level URLs.

Provide ‘most read’ section

If you want to retain visitors for long, incorporate ‘most read’ section on your website. It will help users to read related stories/articles.

Tips:

• Provide high quality articles.

• Use clear navigation.

Colours

Use colours wisely to retain consistency. Colour contrast is the key.

Tips:

• Never use vibrant colours.

• Use simple but attractive colour combinations.

Bonus tips:

• Use A/B testing to improve the look of your website.

• Sharpen your Google Analytics skills.

• Identify your KPIs.

• Take advantage of Google Tag Manager.

• Organise your information in a better way.

• Optimise customer’s experience at every touch point.

• Simplify a complicated website’s architecture.

• Create landing pages, which satisfy visitors’ query.

• Make use of real-time data as it is critically important.

So, follow these techniques to reduce the bounce rate of your website and serve your customers in a better way.