A bounce is whenever a user visits your website and leaves without looking at any other pages or connecting with you. The percentage of visitors who leave your website without taking any other action is your bounce rate. As we have discussed before, reducing your bounce rate will optimize your ROI; but before you can do that, it helps to understand what bounce rate is all about.
What counts as a ‘bounce’ from a website?
1. Clicking the ‘back’ button to leave the website.
2. Closing the browser or tab.
3. Typing in a new URL.
4. Clicking on a link that brings you to an external website.
bounce rate vs exit rate?
People often ask what the difference is between bounce and exit rate. While bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors that come to a website and leave without further navigation, exit rate is the percentage of visitors who left the website from a specific page. A visitor may have visited any number of pages on the website, but the page they leave from is the one that will have an affected exit rate.
Does bounce rate affect SEO?
A high bounce rate can have a negative impact on your search engine ranking. Search engines want to please the user with the best search results to meet their needs. If a website has a high bounce rate, a search engine views this as though the users are not being provided with what they are looking for since they are not navigating to other pages and spending time on the site.
Is A high bounce rate Ever acceptable?
There are certain types of pages that are likely to have a high bounce rate. Most often these are pages where a specific task is accomplished or the visitor finds everything they were looking for on that one page. Examples include:
- Contact us pages.
- Customer support pages.
- Blog articles.
- Websites with only one page.
How do I improve my bounce rate?
Bounce rate can depend on many factors, but there are core pieces to focus on when trying to improve your bounce rate.
1. Have a clean and easy to navigate website.
Don’t make your website a maze. Make sure your menus and navigation are easy to access and easy to understand and helps guide the user to their intended destination.
2. Have a visually appealing website.
Website design can have a large impact on bounce rate. The design should focus on the target audience and what would appeal to them. A clean, uncluttered, and easy-to-read website is always important.
3. Use a responsive design.
Mobile usability is crucial to a positive user experience. People are accessing the internet through mobile devices more than desktop computers. Your website should have a responsive design that adjusts to any device it is viewed on.
4. Don’t use pop-ups.
The majority of people are annoyed by pop-ups. When a person visits a website looking for something specific, they do not want another window popping up and blocking them from reading what they want to read or accomplishing the task they wanted to accomplish.
5. Make sure your website loads quickly.
People are impatient. If a page doesn’t load within 3 to 5 seconds, the majority of vistitors will go somewhere else. There are tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights where you can test your website’s speed.
6. Link to related content on your website.
Use internal links to lead visitors to other pages of your website. If a visitor is reading content on your website, make every effort to keep them on your website longer by leading them to related content they may be interested in.
7. Always Open external links in new windows/Tabs.
If you want people to stay on your site, don’t lead them away from your site. All external links to other websites should open in new windows/tabs.
Have you taken steps to lower your bounce rate? Are there secrets you’d like to share? We’d love to hear from you.
