When reviewing your Google Analytics data, most of the information provided is fairly clear. Duration on the site, the number of pages viewed, and the number of unique monthly visitors are easily understood, but website bounce rate can be unclear. Many people are unsure about how to attract the right audience, and when they do, they aren’t sure why they may be leaving. We can help you better understand bounce rate and why it occurs, as well as provide some suggestions for website updates to improve your bounce rate statistics.
What is Website Bounce Rate?
Website bounce rate is defined as the percentage of single interaction visits on a webpage, meaning the visitor came to one page on the website and then left. A secondary pageview means that a visitor has further engaged with your website. Not every visitor is going to view a secondary page on your site, as they may have only come for a single piece of information (such as an event time and location), so a bounce rate of about 26-40% is considered a good range. However, the average bounce rate for most websites is around 41-55%. If your website is even higher than this, you may want to consider putting a strategy in place to better engage your visitors online.
Why does Bounce Rate Occur?
Website bounce rate can occur for a number of reasons. Many people come to a webpage looking for a single piece of information. If your website bounce rate is unusually high, there are a number of reasons why this may have occurred. The functionality, design, performance or content on your website are all areas that can contribute to bounce rate.
Why It is Important to Reduce Bounce Rate?
Reducing bounce rate is important if you are looking to increase engagement with your website visitors. Higher levels of engagement can help contribute to increased conversions, which is when a visitor takes some sort of action on your site (such as leaving contact information or purchasing a product). If you are looking to turn more of your website visitors into potential sales prospects, you may want to look into making some site updates to make sure visitors are not leaving the site immediately.
5 Ways to Reduce Website Bounce Rate
Attract the Right Types of Visitors Through Marketing, Social Media, Advertising, and SEO
One of the main ways to reduce bounce rate is to attract the right types of individuals to your website in the first place. Make sure that your marketing, advertising, social communication, and website content incorporates the right type of messaging that will attract your core audience. You also want to ensure that your website content is easily understood and tagged for appropriate keywords for search engine use.
Create Content that Engages Your Online Audience
You have just a few seconds to engage a new visitor online, so offering them engaging online content is one of the best ways to get someone to further explore your website. Examples of engaging content could include industry news, a website blog, or video integration and other types of media. Updating your content on a regular basis will also help improve your search engine rankings.
Simplify Your Navigation Menu
If your website’s navigation menu is too complex, you risk visitors getting lost and leaving the site out of frustration that they cannot find the information they are looking for. Your navigational menu should contain concise headings such as products/services, an about us section, news/media, and a contact section, all with drop downs that provide further information about related content.
Update Load Speed
Website performance is one of the most often overlooked aspects that has an impact on bounce rate. The ideal load time for website pages is around two seconds, since visitors want the ability to quickly access the information they need. Updating your website performance will also have a positive impact on website conversion rate, as studies have shown well-performing pages have increased conversions by over 16.5%.
Incorporate Responsive Design
A majority of site traffic now comes from a mobile device, so having a website design that is responsive across all devices is now seen as a necessary standard for a successful business website. If a visitor comes across a site that is unresponsive, they will often leave for a different search result.
If you are looking to engage your online audience and reduce bounce rate, you want to make sure your website is updated for an optimal user experience and contains content that encourages users to further explore what your business is about. Making sure your website is performing well, is optimized for search engine use, and is responsive across all devices will help you reduce bounce rate and engage the right type of traffic.
Improve Audience Engagement
Optimizing your website is important for improved search engine readability and online conversions. Alliance helps businesses with website support services ranging from improved hosting and performance to CMS integration and custom design. For a free assessment of your website design, connect with us here.