9 Reasons You Have a High Bounce Rate and How to Fix It

In the simplest terms, a bounce rate is the percentage of online browsers who visit one of your web pages and then leave it without exploring your site further or taking any action.

When you have a high bounce rate...

High bounce rate indicates that for some reason your site is failing to engage visitors and convert them from browsers into buyers but the following tips can help you identify the causes and take action to fix them:

Know Your Audience

Understanding your target market allows you to design the content, layout and functionality of your website to meet their requirements and expectations. Attracting the right visitors and providing a satisfying online experience for them is the first step in reducing your bounce rates. Once you know who your consumer is, you can tailor the following to attract and retain their interest in your products or services:

Keywords

Populating your page title, description, URL, PPC ads and page content with well chosen, well placed keywords helps your website to rank highly on a search results page and more importantly, attract the right visitors to your site.

Meta-descriptions:

As with keywords, strong meta-descriptions make it possible to boost your page rankings and reduce bounce rates by attracting the visitors who are genuinely interested in your products or services to your site. Review your meta-descriptions to make sure they reflect the interests of your target market; they should be concise, unique, include a call to action and match the page content.

Check Your Load Times:

Consumers want to access information on a laptop or mobile device quickly and something as simple as slow page loading times can create an unsatisfying user experience. As a consequence of this you may see high bounce rates in your analytics reports. What you won’t see is that the customers who leave your slow pages are still online but are giving their business to one of your competitors just because their website offers better functionality. Too many images or embedded media can contribute to slow load times, as can inefficient code. You can get some quick insights on your load times with Google.

Streamline Your Layout:

If can be tempting to cram a web page with all the information you want to impart to your customers but the modern consumer is web-savvy and knows how to browse for it. Keeping your pages simple, attractive and easy to navigate will enable your customers to explore your site and find the information, product or service they’re looking for.

Make it Readable:

There are such high volumes of content online that competition for the attention of consumers is fierce and if you want to encourage visitors to explore your site beyond the first page, your content must be readable. This means more than being informative. Make it interesting by varying the content to include videos, infographics and quality images and ensure your written content is formatted for overall readability on any screen size or device by using short paragraphs, clear headlines, sub-headings and links, that make it easy for your customers to skim a page and find exactly what they’re looking for.

Include a Call to Action

If you want your customers to take a particular action such as adding a product to a shopping cart, subscribing to a blog, completing a survey, sharing information about you via social media or simply clicking onto the next page then you need to include clear, visible calls to action that make it easy for them to do so.

Keep It Fresh

High bounce rates on a particular page indicate that the content is not meeting visitor expectations or needs. Keep your content fresh by ensuring that all the information is current, accurate and relevant and meets all of the criteria already outlined. Not only will this reduce bounce rates, it will encourage repeat visits and brand loyalty too.

Get in Touch!

Getting a website right and stabilising your bounce rates can be tricky. There are a number of technical and creative components that need to come together to really engage online consumers and achieve the specific results you want. Here at Yoma we specialise in building, developing and marketing websites that do just that, so to make the most of every visit to your site, get in touch, tell us about your aims and we’ll help you establish a website that achieves them. Simply call, email or tweet the friendly and knowledgeable team here at Yoma to find out more.