Website bounce back rate means the number of visitors on your page who, click on the back key immediately upon arrival. This is a universal phenomenon for almost all websites as no one can please the entire world of web users. However, this becomes an issue of concern when the rate becomes unusually high i.e. if it crosses over the 50% mark. This means that you’re losing more than half of your potential clients, and that is bad news for any business.
If this problem is limited to just one content or page in your site then you can easily and effectively deal with the problem, by simply altering or dropping the content in concern. But, if the case is applicable on all your pages, then you need to pay immediate attention and root out the problem from the source, if you want to save your site.
Following are mentioned a few ways you can reduce bounce rate:
- Browser friendliness – Before you start stripping apart all the contents on your pages looking for the culprit, check first how your website functions across different browsers. It may be the case that the only browser your pages are compatible with is the one it was developed in. The same site gets different treatment from different hosts, in some the pages may load fast and show as they were developed in others they may take ages to provide the same function. There are a number of tools that can help you conduct cross-browser compatibility checks like ‘Browsershots ‘, ‘Adobe browser lab’ etc.
- Unnecessary add-ons – If your content is peppered with uncontrollable pop-ups, chat windows etc. then it is natural for a viewer to turn away to another source where she will not be intruded thus. Pages which are content and time effective attract the most users. Put yourself into their shoes and think, would you linger on a site where your work is being constantly lengthened and hampered because of needless automatic pop-ups? It gives a bad first impression and closes the case against you. If you must include them, do it intelligently and use as sparsely as possible. Remember it is the content on your site which is the real money maker.
- Content – The content of the website is possibly the most important component. Therefore, you should make sure it can both draw and keep all visitors. There are three important don’ts that you must keep in mind when checking your content. (i) Don’t keep redundant material, (ii) Don’t overtly complicate the information sought and provided, (iii) Don’t post grammatically and syntactically erroneous material. If you commit any of these three mistakes you’ll be pulling down the standard of your website below that of the other alternatives present.
- Design – Finally, make sure the page designs allow users to look up what they require easily and fast. The faster your site provides its services, the more hits it will receive. There are always a number of competitive alternatives to any site, so you only get so much time to hold an audience. If you complicate matters by making information hard to locate or increasing the loading time by including too many videos then you’ll lose traffic.
You can also read this article on how to reduce bounce rate.
Follow these tips and use website statistics to judge what works and what doesn’t to reduce the bounce rate on your website.