When you look at traffic data for your website, you will notice a category called bounce rate. This category covers all visitors which did not spend time or did not interact with your website. In other terms, these are lost visitors, lost potential customers and lost sales. Thus, you should keep this number as small as possible. In this article, we will give you a few actionable tips to reduce bounce rate on your website.
Understanding Why Bounce Rate Happens
Let us first get more into details with the causes of bounce rate on websites. To expand the initial definition, bounce rate is calculated as a percentage of the total website traffic, and includes users who:
- Left your website within a few seconds by exiting the browser
- Navigated to another website by typing its URL in the browser bar
- Clicked on the Back arrow to return to the previous page
- Spent 30 minutes on your page without interacting with it (scrolling, clicking on menu buttons, etc.).
All these reasons indicate that users did not find what they were looking for or could not navigate your website for one reason or another. If you are not using the wrong keywords or targeting the wrong customer group (which are really serious mistakes), the way the site works and what it contains caused the visitor to leave it.
What Are the Average Values of Bounce Rate?
Now, let us make one thing clear: you can reduce bounce rate on your website, but you cannot eliminate it completely. There will always be people who reach your website by mistake, who click on one of your social media posts out of curiosity but do not find what they expected.
Taking these types of website visitors into consideration, the average bounce rate you should reach are:
- 24-40% for retail websites
- 10-30% for service websites
- 30-50% for lead generation pages
- 70-90% for landing pages.
How to Reduce Bounce Rate on Your Website
Let us now focus for the solutions we promised to give you for this issue.
1. Improve Page Loading Speed
The number one reason why users leave a website is because it does not load fast enough. We live in the era of high internet speed and busy consumers who are not willing to wait. If they don’t see the main elements of the page within the first 2 seconds after they click on a link, they navigate away from the page.
You should have your website code checked by a programmer to identify elements that slow it down. At the same time, you should always optimise the size of photos and videos you post on your website. Large files take longer to load, thus they slow down the website.
2. Offer Users an Efficient Search Option
Every website needs a search function. And it must be easily accessible to the user and comprehensive. Thus, you need to:
- Place the search bar in a prominent position on the web page
- Make it large enough to allow users to type in several words
- Use a powerful search engine for the website, which returns relevant results.
No, you don’t have to reinvent Google. Just make sure that your website visitors can find what they need within your website, without having to go back to Google. This is one of the simple solutions to reduce bounce rate on your website.
3. Make Your Website Navigation Friendly
User experience means, above all, making your website usable by anyone. Even people who are browsing a website for the first time. Even people with an older smartphone, which has a smaller screen. Your site navigational structure must be simple and intuitive.
To solve this bounce rate issue make sure that:
- Your menu bar is visible, with large buttons
- You provide a sitemap for users who want to get to a specific page quickly
- You create navigational breadcrumbs, which allow users to go back to previous pages quickly.
4. Optimise Your CTA Buttons
Bounce rate on landing pages are usually very high, as the list above shows. This is why you must do everything to retain those users who are really interested in what you promised them.
To do so, make sure that your CTA button is prominent, has bold colours and has an effective message. Think outside the box and stop creating generic CTAs reading “Sign up now” or “Subscribe now”. For inspiration, check our article on original and effective CTAs.