[note background=”#F0F0F0″]This is a guest post by Ness Garcia from MakeAWebsite. You can circle her on Google+. [/note]
Letting high bounce rates on your website to continue could be one of the worst things to allow for your websites. The bounce rate means that there is a reason that people keep coming to your site but then leaving too soon.
That means you have some serious work to do. If you want to keep your viewers on your site longer, you have to give them a reason to stay. They need to stay on your website for a little longer to lower down the bounce rates. So, let's take a look 5 ways that will definitely help you keep your visitors.
Your Website Design
If you createyour own site with an unattractive design, it can surely push anyone away. While not everything depends on having a professional design, it definitely can help keep users attracted to your website. This especially works if your website has a target demographic in mind. If that is the case, you can research what it is they like and then set the theme of your website to hold their attention.
Good designs also have ways of making the eyes of your viewers focus on certain areas of the site, allowing you to give them a push into looking more into your content.
There are plenty of different ways that a good design will decrease your bounce rate. Therefore, you first have to just realize that your current design isn't working too well if you have a high bounce rate. .
Internal Links And Navigation
If your visitors are scrambling around everywhere trying to figure out how to find the content they want, they are not going to be too happy. In such cases, they will most likely just leave to find a similar site that is more userfriendly.
On the other hand, if you have a better navigation throughout your site, your users will have a much better time getting to the content they want, increasing their time on your site. This is a great thing to happen for your bounce rate.
Another aspect of navigation within your site, that you should be aware of, are the internal links you have available.
Internal links are a vital part of lowering your bounce rates because they lead your viewers to other pages that are relevant and that they would probably be interested in. The more internal links you include, the easier it is for someone to find a related page they would like.
Aside from the user experience, internal links are also liked by search engines. Relevant, honest, and valuable links will help your overall site get ranked higher.
High Quality Content
If you provide your audience with a lot of content, but still see that the bounce rates are high, then you should look into the content you are providing.
There is a lot of competition nowadays when it comes to content. So you need to provide some good stuff to your audience to keep them interested in you and your content. Your audience's goals are to look at valuable content, if they can tell you are not providing it, they will go to the next website that will.
More Multimedia
Hosting a podcast, posting images, and recording videos can all help your bounce rate dramatically. People are much more attracted to multimedia naturally and this helps you keep them longer on your page. Therefore, if you are able to implement some type of media in your website, do it.
You just need to make sure that you don't put too much on one page because then you might increase the loading times of that particular page because longer page load times are not good in many ways.
If someone is trying to load your page and it is just taking too long, they will leave, which increases your bounce rate. You always want to keep your loading times to a minimum. Search engines also look highly on websites that have very low loading times.
More Engagement
If you interact with your audience more, you will have no problem keeping your audience engaged. Getting personal with your interactions will only give your viewers more reasons to come back to your site and interact with it. The more they interact with it, the less bounce rates you are going to see.
As a blogger, you should already be aware of the many benefits that come with interactions that cause engagement. If you find yourself slacking when it comes to responding to messages or comments, you should start making some time for it.
Are these the only ways to improve your bounce rate?
Absolutely not. There are other ways to help reduce the bounce rates on your blog as well, but these 5 have been proven to work and they will work for you too.
Questions: How is your bounce rate doing? If you applied any specific technique that worked well for you, would you like to share with us today?
Please share your experience (or your questions) through your comments. Thank you kindly!
Hello Ness,
Thank you for sharing these awesome tips with my readers here. All of these tips are very helpful for someone who is struggling to bring down their bounce rate and more than that, it is very helpful for those who might not have even paid attention to their bounce rate. This will be a good starting point for many people.
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Ness & Kumar,
I doubt that “a good design will increase your bounce rate” LOL It’s the last paragraph from the section “Your Website Design”
And here is the 6th way to decrease the bounce rate: stop driving untargeted traffic. If you do that, everything else is in vain. All the other five solutions described here won’t help. If I’m not interested in dog training, I won’t read your article irrespective of how great your design is, etc.
Hello Adrian,
If there is somebody who will not let a mistake get unnoticed, it’s most definitely you 🙂 Thank you! The error has been fixed sir!
True, the 6th method is also very important. However, the ‘newbie’ bloggers or most webmasters may not even know how to drive ‘targeted traffic’. In fact, I believe most people struggle to have some traffic let alone untargeted ones. Don’t you think?
But yes, for people who understand this (for experienced marketers), it is a golden tip. Thank you for sharing!
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Kumar,
I definitely agree that some bloggers don’t know how to drive targeted traffic. Actually many IMers don’t really understand what the targeted traffic is 🙂
So… well… here’s a simple example… If Kumar sends a tweet in order to promote this blog post, he has 2 main options:
1) Check out my latest article + link
2) 5 Proven Ways to Decrease the Bounce Rate of Your Blog + link (or a similar headline)
Case 1: He’ll get fewer clicks because the followers don’t know anything about the topic of the article and many people don’t click on any link they see 😉 However, some followers may click that link in order to see what’s the article about. If they have a blog or a website, that’s fine, they may be interested in reading this article. However, if they aren’t bloggers and they were expecting some nice cat pics, well, they will leave quickly. That’s untargeted traffic. Basically the visitor has no clue what’s on this page BEFORE actually visiting it. Driving untargeted traffic is like gambling.
Case 2: In this case, the cat lovers from the first case won’t click the link. Because of that appropriate headline they know in advance what’s this page about. Who will click? People interested in finding how to decrease the bounce rate. Or other similar categories of visitors (like me!) who will not run quickly once they see the title of the page. That’s targeted traffic.
I hope this helps your readers 🙂
Oh sure! It does a tremendous job of explaining! Thank you for taking time toshare these tips of wisdom. I’m sure people will greatly appreciate these inputs.
You have a blessed rest of the week!
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Ness and Kumar,
I read a lot about website design and pay particular attention to it because I always feel it calling to me. I like to be creative and I love to play with design but I’m not a creative person and you can really tell by looking at my site.
I didn’t use to care much about it because I always felt that content meant a lot more, and ultimately it does but your design is your first impression and that’s important. At lease I know what first impressions mean for me 🙂
Anyway design is still a work in progress for me.
Multimedia is another good one. Especially video and audio. We all read a lot online and if you can watch a video or listen to a podcast it’s a relaxing change.
Blessings,
Liz
Hello Liz,
Thank you for sharing your experience and it’s good to know that you like being creative about the design and you do consider even your own blog design work as “work in progress” 🙂
Thank you for dropping by and adding value through your comments.
Regards,
Kumar
One of the factors which kill many bloggers is how to reduce bounce rates. It is of course really interesting for those tips you’ve shard.
I think high quality content does the magic the most in helping reducing bounce rate.
Hi Ness,
Welcome to Kumar’s blog and this is definitely a topic that most people are trying to desperately fix.
I will tell you that I have all of the above in place and I do have targeted traffic to my blog but I still had a higher bounce rate. I’ve written about this topic myself as well and I don’t agree with the way Google calculates this. It’s not about just reading one post and having a low bounce rate. To Google it’s about people browsing around your site.
I get a lot of return visitors so they’ve already read a good bit of my content. The time they stay on my site it quite high so the visitors are there and they’re definitely reading my posts. I have a lot of interaction and social shared plus opt-ins daily. I have interlinked to other posts but like I said before, if they’ve already read it they won’t be clicking through again.
I ran across a post some time back that helped with placing a line in your Google Analytics code so that it will let you calculate how long a person actually stays on your site and judge it from that. We can do all the right things yet if we still aren’t doing what Google thinks should be done then our numbers may not always be the best.
Thanks for sharing this and hope you both have a wonderful end to your week.
~Adrienne
Adrienne,
I think you are right and I did that for my blog as well. I think the default way of Google calculation is more applicable to e-commerce websites than to blogs. I wouldn’t go to your other pages when I go to visit your website again and again when a new post comes. I come to the post, consume the content, share with my friends and move on. I will hardly need to go to your previous posts. And that should be treated not as a bounce but unfortunately, Google does it by default untill we alter the code through our creativity.
Thank you for sharing those tips and it certainly helped my bounce rates dramatically!.
Regards,
Kumar
Hi again Ness & Kumar and Hi Adrienne,
I’m 100% on Adrienne’s side. There are 2 types of bounces:
1) the visitor stays a few seconds on your page and leaves the site
2) the visitor reads the content of that page and THEN leaves the site.
Adrienne, myself and maybe a few other IMers don’t consider Case 2) as a bounce. For the rest of the world, both 1) and 2) are bounces. Sorry, I disagree with the whole world except Adrienne 🙂 Why? Adrienne has explained it very nice. I have the same reasons.
Adrian
P.S. Adrienne: Google isn’t the only one who considers both cases as being bounces. Everyone does it except you and me. And a few others 🙂 For example, Wikipedia has this definition for the bounce rate: “It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and ‘bounce’ (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site.”
Well Adrian,
You have me in the list of those exceptions as well. I don’t agree with the default and I know rest of the world does. And so, this post to help everybody 🙂
Thank you for providing a very thoughtful example to explain the situation.
Regards,
Kumar
Hey Adrian,
To me it’s insulting for Google to say I have a high bounce rate when I have a high percentage of them staying on my site and actually reading my content. I’m not an e-commerce site but I have people who will read post after post and comment on several. But Google thinks everyone should do that each time and obviously doesn’t consider our loyal trusting readers who faithfully visit every single new post and share it as well as comment. Shame on them and I hope they’ll chance those stats sometime in the near future. In the meantime though I’ve taught my readers how to do just that! 😉
I think the others have just followed suit with what Google came up with Adrian. I’m really surprised that Wikipedia would have that too because when I go to their site I don’t skip around but when I’m absorbing their information I’m sticking around long enough to read it. Bet they’re not too happy with their either then.
Thanks for the comment..
~Adrienne
Hello Ness,
I’m always interested in learning new tips and tricks, so I appreciate the points I have read here. Unless you have a wrong link connecting you to Twitter, I think you may have dropped the ball on your last point, which is “more engagement.” I take that to mean BOTH on your blog and in social media. Obviously, they’re going to play into each other, as Adrian Jock demonstrates by way of his comments.
On Twitter, the profile linked to you says, “My fields of expertise are SEO, Web Design, Internet Marketing & Social Media.” How is that possible with 0 Tweets and 1 Follower?
I always look for the best in others. I just find this incredible.
Kind Regards,
Bill
Hi Kumar,
People do have a short attention span as general rule, so it’s a bit like we do with babies to keep they attention longer, we need to amuse and distract them as much as we can, but in a smart way of course. I refuse to put a video on my post if there is no call for videos, but I will put a video if there is one that can support my content.
Now, as Adrienne says, Google can be pretty stupid and doesn’t seem to count people who stay a long time on a same page, but those who bounce around from page to page, which frankly doesn’t work too well with a blog. How stupid is Google here? It just blows my mind.
Anyway thank you for this excellent content. And by the way, my bounce rate is pretty high too 🙁
I liked the way you said Google is stupid 🙂 Thank you Sylviane, you just made a brilliant point and yes, I agree with you and Adrienne already 🙂
Regards,
Kumar
Hey Ness and Kumar,
The power of engagement will definitely lower your bounce rate. I really didn’t know the important of engaging, commenting and responding to my readers for the first 2 years of blogging. But now I see how much synergy is built and with that type of synergy you’re readers will come back and stay even longer on your blogs.
But I’m another person that agrees with Adrienne. It’s pretty odd how Google calculates the bounce rate. I’ve read both wikepedia’s definition and how Google defines it, it doesn’t make any sense to me if you’re getting readers, commenting, replying, but yet have a low bounce rate. I do feel that google should focus on the visitors that stay on the post they came to visit, versus going to other posts within the same site. It’s more relative to the name “bounce rate” itself 😉
Hello Sherman,
Welcome to the “Google Rebels” club! The good news is, you can alter the Analytics code snippet to instruct Google to calculate bounce rate differently. For Instructions on how to do it, you may want to check a post Adrienne published a couple of weeks ago 🙂
And you are right about the power of engagement. That is the real deal!
Thanks for taking time to share some thoughts!
Regards,
Kumar
Great post :)! Thanks
I have turned down so many web sites because the layout was just not good.
I want to enjoy navigating through the site and it should be easy as well. I really paid attention to simplicity when making my site for this same reason.
Awesome Sebastian! We all do these things. Navigation, design, speed etc. play an important role in giving a good experience to the visitor and the better my visitor feels, the longer he/she may stay.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your testimonial.
Regards,
Kumar
Hey Ness,
I think it all comes down to experimentation (assuming that we have taken care of the basics – good design, fast site and great content).
We have to experiment and see how what works for us. For example: Remove sidebars from post pages, study how it affects the bounce rate (I have done that in the past. And I got great results. I am planning to repeat the experiment, to see if my results were just an anomaly).
Design is perhaps the most important element for reducing bounce rate. A bad design can discourage a visitor from reading the content (When I visit new blogs, the first thing I do is look at the design. I am assuming the same is true for most visitors).
Multimedia can indeed help, as long as we use it effectively (also keep in mind – multimedia can slow down our website).
Anyways, thank you for sharing your thoughts, Ness! Appreciate it 🙂 Have a great weekend!
Hello Jeevan,
Again, great inputs. Thank you for sharing! It’s interesting to know how sidebar affected your bounce rate! Wow!
Please do let me know how this time your experience goes. I hope you get some interesting insight this time too 🙂
Regards,
Kumar
Hello,
The post is really useful indeed, I believe bounce rate decide the quality of our blog so we need to improve it and attract more readers. Using of popular posts and other plugins can be helpful to reduce the bounce rate.
thanks
Hello; There were a lot of good suggestions in here for improving your bounce rate, but this just made me wonder what a good bounce rate is. Is there a formula you can offer to help us determine how well we are doing given our time online and overall experience as a blogger? My bounce rate is generally a little under 50 percent. That is much better than it was just a few months ago, but it of course can still be improved upon. I look forward to your next post. thanks and take care, max
Hi Maxwell,
Getting under 50% is definitely great. I mean the ideal bounce rate should be as close as possible to zero and I know some people who have it. But that looks a bit unnatural to me. So, I would rather strive to get towards zero as fast as possible and be happy that I am making progress. I think that’s the best way to look at it.
Just my thoughts 🙂 and congratulations for your low bounce rate!
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Ness
It is great to meet you on Kumar’s blog. Oh that bounce rate! I have to work on mine because I’m noticing too much of it. Well….I’m not comfortable with the numbers I’m seeing.
I think the best way to keep readers on longer is to put a short video on it. No more that 3 minutes because it will decrease the download time and that’s enough for people to bounce right off.
I also have been told by one of my friends that my design needs to be done over. It’s taking too long to download and there is all sorts of things wrong with it. Well it’s about time anyway because it’s been up for 3 years now.
Thanks for all your tips!
-Donna
Hello Donna,
I think customizing the way we need our bounce rates to be calculated (like Adrienne does and I do too). Because, to me, if you came to my blog, read the post and left a comment but did not go to my other pages, I don’t want to count as a bounce. I want my analytics account to follow what I consider as my bounce rate. That way, I know the truth and I see it the way I want to see.
And of course I agree to the things you said and I think we need to balance the design and multimedia part of it. The best thing to do is to try and correct and learn from our own experience, bit by bit. These are some great tips but these have to be applied with a common sense and as long as we do it right, I think we are doing great!
Thank you for taking to to share your thoughts and have a wonderful weekend!
Regards,
Kumar
Hello Mr. Kumar and Ms. Ness
There is so much valuable information in this post that I need to learn. Finally,I in this post I’ve learned what bounce rate is.
Well, as someone just starting out, I hear that content is on top of the list as long as it is content that is interesting, easy to read and then the design.
When I go to someone’s site, I read the headline,then I look at the design. I personally like to see images and a picture of the author.
Thank you both
Gladys
Hello Gladys,
You have a great design on your blog and your theme is awesome! Plus, your content is always very helpful. So, that will help your bounce rate. And yes, we all learn bit by bit to apply whenever we find applicable.
Interesting thing about bounce rate is, this is the only thing in SEO world that we want to see lowering down 🙂
Thank you for dropping by and sharing your thoughts with us!
Regards,
Kumar
Hello Ness,
You pretty well covered all. This should be the blueprint of anyone looking to lower a blog’s bounce rate.
Do have a great week ahead!
– Terungwa
Hi Kumar & Ness, I hate to admit this. I have heard the word bounce rate and when I look at my analytics I do see this but I really didn’t know what it meant? This was a great article Ness and I do agree with all of your points as well. I especially likes how you suggest more multimedia! I have never put together a pod cast, but I have used a few video’s on my blog before.
I can see how this would get people to stay longer.. Thanks for the great article..Chery :))
I am glad that there are people who have been appreciate what I wrote.
I am not expecting everyone’s positive or pretty thoughts on how my writings came up, but still glad someone liked it.
Thank you for reading anyway! 🙂
Ness
Kumar,
I’m not sure how the bounce rate is calculated or what a reasonably good bounce rate is. On one site the bounce rate is about 50% but average time spent on the site is 8 minutes. Thanks for your tips. I know I need to add more internal links and improve the internal navigation.
Warmly,
Dr. Erica
These are great tips Kumar. I read a lot of blogs during the week and the two things that really bug me is when I land on a website and can’t figure out where the blog is – or who the blogger is. It’s really amazing to me that people will go to all the trouble of setting up a website and then make it so difficult for the reader to find the content or figure out who the blogger is. Happy to share your tips in the hope that it helps 🙂
Hi Marquita,
Thank you for dropping by and sharing your thoughts.
It happens to be something we all want to consistently improve upon and have a real picture. I am glad you enjoyed this post.
Regards,
Kumar
Ness/Kumar, this is a great article and an awesome discussion. Bounce rate is such a complex topic. Even though the Google Analytics bounce rate is a reasonable indicator of visitor stickiness, I do not believe it gives the full picture. Its probably best to segment traffic into various categories to get a clearer picture – eg. organic (search engine), one off traffic to an audience that already know your content, landing pages, membership pages, etc. Each of these page types have different audience behavior & I strongly believe they should be taken into consideration when looking at site bounce rates. As an example, organic traffic may stick around and navigate between posts and pages (ideal); people that already know your content may just read a promoted post and bounce – that bounce will push your bounce rate up & not necessarily a bad thing. On the flip side – your membership pages may have a low bounce rate – back and forth navigation. That will push down the overall bounce rate, perhaps giving you a false sense of really what’s happening. Regardless, simplicity in design, internal linking, quality content, relevant traffic are my votes to lowering bounce rate. Thanks for sharing with us.
Hi Gary,
You said it right. It is a complex topic indeed and the goal is to understand the real picture. It is difficult to measure accurately for every scenario though for a blog, like you said, it is not a good idea to assume that my readers will always visit multiple pages because most of my loyal readers already know the other pages. That is why we need to calculate bounce rate for blogs differently than membership websites or ecommerce related sites.
Thank you for dropping by and have a wonderful week!
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Kumar,
I am very interested in this topic as my bounce rate is still not where it should be. Now, this is a delicate problem.
For many people it all starts with finding a suitable niche and things improve naturally from this point onward. However, there are so many bloggers who start without having a niche in mind. They have just some general ideas about what they want to do with their blogs. Sometimes even these general ideas are missing. People just start a blog and watch where it takes them.
I think it is a long process. In the beginning the bounce rate will naturally be high. You cannot do much about it. In time, you will wander from here to there, trying this and that until your personal path reveals itself. Then, it is just a matter of time. You become better and better, the quality of your content increases, you find out your target audience and create specific content focused on their needs and wants. Then you start to improve the design, build relationships etc.
Multimedia is a double edge sword. It helps decrease the bounce rate, of course, but it also generates problems (you have already mentioned the loading time). Also, we have here the same situation with multimedia, like with the text posts. People like multimedia but don’t want to watch hours of podcasts or long videos. You must be a master of podcasts or videos in order to keep people watching those materials.
This happens even with the best multimedia marketers. Pat Flynn is a good example. It has a wonderful site, and he is a podcasts master. You will find there a lot of podcasts created around interesting topics and interviews with business and marketing superstars. However, those podcasts are very long. You need to be very determined, you need willpower to hear a podcast. Not to mention you must make a comment afterwards.
So, what to do if you are not Pat Flynn? Nothing spectacular. You just do your best and in time your star will raise. Normal, common bloggers start to see good results from their blogs after about one year of blogging (at least). No wonder so many people quit. It is a long term commitment.
Have a wonderful day
Indeed Sylviu. One year of consistent effort is a long term commitment and many bloggers can’t stay that long. So, they quit. Why only bloggers, pretty much in every industry this holds true.
The gist of what you said is, it takes hard work and continuous learning with a willingness to improve that produces the results we desire. Great thoughts. Thanks for sharing.
-Kumar
With your guidance i have been able to reduce my blog bounce rate upto 51% And want to reduce more. Thanks for your guidance.
really loved the way you have pointed out the logical facts about how to decrease the bounce rate of a blog….as a blog owner i find this blog very helpful..Thanks for sharing with us.
Apu
Hi Kumar,
Another way to decrease bounce rate would be to speed up your website by optimizing it in whatever way possible. If the site uses too much images, the it is a must to use CDN. A light theme with simple design with proper use of plugins like W3TC can really give a boost to your site and ultimately the bounce rate will come down.
Thanks.
Regards,
Vineet
Really liked the information here. The multi-media points were things I have not thought of or included in my website or blog. I am going to get more involved with these ideas, so thanks for your insights and suggestions.
By the way, what is a good bounce rate percentage?
Hi Sir Gauraw, it’s nice to be here again. 🙂
This is actually one of the best post have read on how to reduce bounce rate! No joke. 🙂
Thanks for sharing all of this techniques with us and trust me I have also tried some methods and it has really worked for me just like magic and have just written an ultimate guide about what I did to reduce my bounce rate over 50%
Sam
Hi Gauraw,
Great solution to reduce bounce rate increase the page by get attention of viewers. Really it helps and support to increase page rank of website