What is Bounce Rate
Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors leaving the website without clicking any link or going to any other page. Even if the reader reads all the content and leaves that page then that visit is also considered as a bounce.
Bounce rate is one of the key parameter or KPI which gives the idea of how the readers are reacting to the content.
Bounce Rate can be different for different types of contents, below areas represent broadly 3 different types of content pages.
- E-commerce Product Page
- Normal website or Blog
- E-mail Campaigns
All 3 types are different and have different types of content elements, so we can’t compare the bounce rate equally for all these.
For each category, we need to investigate the areas of improvement to improve the Bounce rate separately.
What is a good bounce rate
Less the bounce rate more the chances that the reader is consuming the content or taking interest in your website.
As a blogger, you need to continuously track the bounce rate of every blog and tweak it to improve the bounce rate.
If your blog or website is maintaining the bounce rate between 30% to 50% that should be considered as good.
Bounce Rate varies for different industries and type of page as mentioned above.
What is the benchmark for Bounce rate
Over the years based on historical data and the outcome (conversion rate), bounce rate can be grouped into different tiers, below represent 4 different groups
- 71 to 85% – Poor
- 55 to 70% – Average
- 40 to 54% – Good
- 20 to 30% – Excellent
What is the Formula for Bounce rate
Bounce Rate (R) = Total No of 1 Page visits (T1) / Total No of Entries to Page (Te)
Bounce rate calculator
Although the formula is easy to use and calculate you don’t need to calculate manually your Bounce Rate as we have sophisticated Analytics tools available for free.
One such tool is Google Analytics and its free to use. Pls check the screen below to know how to see bounce rate in Google Analytics
How to improve the bounce rate
When we say to improve the bounce rate it’s actually reducing the bounce rate percentage.
Below we will specifically call out few important areas and actions required to reduce the bounce rate in Word Press or any other website.
Improving User Experience is key to reduce bounce rate
uxbasix.net
User eXperience or UX
If the reader or the customer is not happy with the content of the page or look and feel (aesthetics) of the page or technical aspects like the speed, responsiveness etc then he or she will abandon your site for your competitor.
The better we understand the interest and intent of the customer and create relevant and unique content for target readers and optimise other aspects as mentioned below then we can control the bounce rate.
Content (Text)
Writing engaging and informative content for your target customer is the key to maintain the interest of the customer and increase the time the reader spends on your page.
The more they spend time in your site the more they will try to traverse through the pages, blogs and other external links provided as contextual information.
The flow of content should be such that it should not impact the original intent of the reader.
Links (Internal and external)
Links are very important and helpful for readers to know more on the specific term or micro context of the primary subject.
Without deviating from the primary subject you should provide links to elaborate any contextual terms either to internal or external pages.
These links are important in improving the bounce rate. Many readers would like to know more about the related areas and click on the links.
Providing relevant and related links in the webpage or blog, help reduce the bounce rate.
Content (Non-Textual)
Apart from textual content you also need to provide non-text content elements like images, videos, infographics, downloadable materials on how-tos, cheat sheets etc.
These contents should complement the text and the subject and provide incremental information to users and not completely irrelevant to the topic.
Text to Non Text Ratio is also key to attract readers attention. Do not stuff more image or text into one page.
Menu
A well designed, easy to navigate Menu and Search options helps readers to navigate the site more easily and stay more on the site.
Menus help readers to quickly know what other areas they can get information.
Creating simple and easy to navigate menu will help to retain the reader for more time and helps them to read other pages.
Depending on the type of website you can go for the hamburger menu or megamenus or other types of the menu for your readers.
Formatting
Having the right content is the first step but presenting the content in a well-formatted way with greater readability and appeal to readers needs further effort and it helps greatly to retain the readers.
Things like bullet points, numbering, font size, type, colour, bold italic underline, usage of tables, graphs and many other formattings available in HTML and Word Press help the reader understand the context easily and keep them interested in your website.
Responsive
You need to ensure your website or blog is rendered well and readable irrespective of the size of the screen and device. For that, you need to make your website responsive.
This is also a key factor in SEO. Create a well designed and responsive website which will work seamlessly in all type of devices.
Reduce distraction
Readers don’t like distractions while they are reading a topic of interest. You need to reduce all such kind of distractions to keep your readers on your site.
Adverts, Pop-Ups, newsletter sign-ups and many more like these distract the readers from the main content, and they bounce back to other competitor sites.
Decide how much of these you can include depending upon how popular you are and the no of visitors you are getting and how much you can sacrifice.
Page Speed
Readers leave your site due to Site Speed. Above graph gives how important site speed related to bounce rate.
Internet readers with very low attention span and patience can quickly go from your site to your competitor if it’s not loaded within 2 to 3 seconds.
Read How I Optimised my Blog for Google PageSpeed Insights on how to optimise your website to improve page speed.
Two Way Communication
The main difference between a brick and mortar store and the website is, you can’t interact with your reader or customer and find out the pulse or reaction.
This is a great advantage for stores but if you don’t have a physical presence you need to take utmost care for this aspect.
You should provide proper communication channels for your customers on your website to connect to you.
Things like ChatBot, Contact Forms, Feedback or Request Forms helps in getting customer queries to continue to engage and thus improving the bounce rate.
Precise Call to Action (CTA)
This is the most important thing you want your readers or customers to act on.
In the case of e-mail marketing or any other types of the content page if you have a CTA button then take maximum care to make this prominent and visible. Do not clutter the page with many CTA buttons.
E-commerce Product Page Content Optimisation
Product details page of any e-commerce site can be image-heavy and especially for new and small e-commerce stores, it’s more evident.
To retain customers on the page for these types of sites we need to provide more content, descriptions in a well-formatted way so that readers spend more time on page and site.
Apart from that, you must provide links to related products and other related links so that the reader can browse through those.
This helps to improve the bounce rate for e-commerce sites or pages
E-mail Marketing landing page optimisation
Another type of content page is an e-mail marketing campaign landing pages.
Once you succeed in bringing customers to your landing page it’s very critical to retain the customers and provide various options and CTA buttons so that the reader can stay and browse through the details.
Many cases customers abandon the landing pages due to poor design or less interesting and irrelevant content.
So, it’s very important to create an informative and engaging landing page for e-mail marking campaigns to reduce bounce rate.
Testing
For better user experience, your blog or website should not have any defects or we call it as bugs at all from the end-user point of view.
For example, any broken link, formatting issues in different devices, page speed and many more aspects are important to test properly before giving the content to readers.
Testing is key to making sure your content is working fine for readers.
There are various types of testing used in website development. Depending upon the requirements you can use any or mixture of the below-testing types
- A/B Testing
- Load Testing
- Functional Testing
- Performance Testing
- Non-Functional Testing
Tools
Tools make life easier for Bloggers of webmasters. There are various tools available for free and freemium to achieve many tasks to improve bounce rate.
Read Free Tools for bloggers and webmasters for effective SEO to achieve some of the tasks for improving the Bounce Rate mentioned above.
Finally…
Improvement of Bounce Rate is very much in our hand and if we adhere to some or all the points mentioned above and improve regularly then we can reduce Bounce Rate significantly.