How to Decrease Your Site's Bounce Rate

[MrTrollkien]

Most website owners don't want people leaving the website the moment that they arrive. Bounce rate refers to the amount of people who land on your website and view something but are not encouraged by anything that they see there to keep looking through the website, and instead, they leave.

For most website owners, this defeats the purpose of encouraging people to the site in the first place, as you want to keep your readers! Decreasing your bounce rate is doable with various tips and tricks, as explained below.

Here we go,

Find your bounce rate. If you've only just found out what a bounce rate is, then you probably haven't got a clue about finding it. Open a Google Analytics account to find out the facts and figures behind your website's bounce rate.


Consider whether or not you are drawing in the right crowd. You might be getting readers visiting for all the wrong reasons and who are quickly disappointed when they see what your site does contain. This can happen where you haven't described things well, where you have mislead people (not necessarily intentionally) into thinking that your site offers something other than what it does. Things to keep in mind include:
Having apt and relevant titles to your site materials, articles, information, etc.
Using keywords that are relevant to your site rather than very general and "could-be-any-site" type.

[MrTrollkien]

Check your opening page. Get a friend to have a look at it and give you constructive feedback. Does your opening page:
Feel inviting?
Appear engaging?
Offer all the necessary tools at once, such as joining information, search information, good introductory information?


Look at your content. Is it able to keep a reader? Be very honest about this aspect. If your site is full of rehashed, repetitive information that teaches a reader nothing new, or fails to provide interesting insights that engage the reader fully, you won't keep your readers interested.
If you are selling things, are your descriptions of the product or services complete, adequate, and engaging?
If you are offering reading matter, are you adding new and interesting angles that the reader hasn't yet being exposed to?
If you are offering things to do, such as games, etc., are these good quality, interesting, and better than those offered by competing websites?

[MrTrollkien]

And finally the last, but not less important step,

Test the user-friendliness of your site. Can your readers get around your site with ease or is it like finding a needle-in-a-haystack to get any useful content out? Some things to consider include:
Weave in lots of links to make sure that readers move smoothly through your site.
Provide easy menus or lists for readers to find information quickly.
Avoid creating a sense of "those-in-the-know-know-where-to-go". Ask yourself would you bother finding things out if you felt that about a website's attitude to navigating around it?
Fix up shoddy internal search engines.
Don't hide what matters. Equally, don't make it hard to find - what you feel is intuitively obvious should be tested on a wider research group than your intuition.

[j3rkules]

Thanks for the post sire.

Nice read.

[MrTrollkien]

Thanks for the post sire.

Nice read.

Thanks for the feedback.

I am open for the questions.

[MrTrollkien]

To the top.

[Cameltoepro]

What bounce rate would you say the top sites are doing?

[WDF]

Nice post! This place needs more Tuts, Tips, and Tricks.

[1-800-313-WETT]

The best way to decrease your bounce rate is a quality product and a building a list so you can invite them back for more. The best way to build a list is give them something for free to sign up to get on it: For us "Free 120 credits"

They sign up for free get their credits and we keep enticing them to come back for more.

Susan

[MrTrollkien]

Nice post! This place needs more Tuts, Tips, and Tricks.

Thanks for the feedback.

[MrTrollkien]

The best way to decrease your bounce rate is a quality product and a building a list so you can invite them back for more. The best way to build a list is give them something for free to sign up to get on it: For us "Free 120 credits"

They sign up for free get their credits and we keep enticing them to come back for more.

Susan

Traffic is King, Content is Queen. Without the Queen the King dies, tough.

[MrTrollkien]

To the top.

[Cameltoepro]

For the last 30 days I have a avg bounce rate of 69.33 for one of my paysites. How does that stack up for the industry avg?

[MrTrollkien]

For the last 30 days I have a avg bounce rate of 69.33 for one of my paysites. How does that stack up for the industry avg?

Bounce rates from 25% to 30% are most likely as low as you?ll see them with everything working correctly. Anything under 40% that?s not the result of a broken GA installation is excellent, and indicative of a well built, professionally designed website that is meeting its users? needs.

On the other hand, a bounce rate that low may also reflect a lack of dynamic (blogs, news, etc.) content on the website, which may or may not be beneficial.

I personally look at pages that have a high bounce rate (maybe 65%+), check if maybe the titles and descriptions don't properly match the content and make changes if needed. That's pretty much the purpose of bounce rate but it's nice to have a tool to check it.

[Cameltoepro]

Thanks for the info

[MrTrollkien]

Thanks for the info

[Twelveninety]

This is a good little read. Even learnt a couple of things myself.

[MrTrollkien]

This is a good little read. Even learnt a couple of things myself.

[tonyantone]

Select highly popular niches and include "engaging" high quality content,
your bounce should decrease then. thanks for post.

[MrTrollkien]

Select highly popular niches and include "engaging" high quality content,
your bounce should decrease then. thanks for post.

If you would be me, you would be hammered.

[DevonDemon]

Build sites from the Users pov. That is always good site, with low bounce rate.

[sirkonstantine]

Hey man, how do you define bounce rate? different programs calculate it differently. For example, Google's definition (i think) is that the user lands on a page and leave without exploring other pages. Get Clicky's is if a user lands on a page and leaves within 30 seconds. Yandex metrica is similar to Clicky's.

Depending on the tool, I can have as low as 10% bounce rate to as high as 80%!

[madame]

On the other hand, a bounce rate that low may also reflect a lack of dynamic (blogs, news, etc.) content on the website, which may or may not be beneficial.

I never thought about it that way... The current bounce rate of the site I am working on is 16,13% up from 15,13% before the changes were applied. I think that it also depends on the structure of the site, number of ads, etc.