Bounce Rate: What it is and how to tackle it

You’ve just spent hours – days! – creating what you think is the perfect new landing page for your latest product launch. You’ve got all the right elements in all the right places: the perfect headline, an attention-grabbing image, a short, sweet form to capture leads. But something’s not working. Your conversion rate is abysmal. And you’re pretty sure you know why: that high bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page or don’t take the expected action steps to becoming a customer or repeat visitor.

A high bounce rate is generally a sign that something is wrong with your site – either it’s not relevant to what they were looking for, it’s not user-friendly, or it’s just not what they were expecting. Whatever the reason, a high bounce rate means those visitors are not sticking around, and they’re not becoming leads or customers.

What bounce rate is and how it affects your business

Bounce rate is a metric that measures the percentage of visitors to a website who leave the site after only viewing the first page. A high bounce rate is usually indicative of a problem with the website, such as poor content, a slow loading time, or a design that is not user-friendly.

A low bounce rate, on the other hand, indicates that visitors are finding what they need on the site and are sticking around to explore. Bounce rate is important because it gives website owners a way to gauge how well their site is performing. If the bounce rate is high, it means that people are leaving the site without taking any desired action. This causes your business to lose money through the customers not making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, viewing your content, or however else you intend to make money from your site.

What is considered a good bounce rate?

This is a tough one to answer, because each product, service, and industry is different. While it is definitely important to research what the standard is for a business, product, or service that is similar to yours, it pays to have the mindset of simply working to improve it to a level that YOU are comfortable with and puts you in a position to hit your revenue goals.

That doesn’t mean that you should curse out your computer or developer because you’re not getting 100% of your visitors to commit. It’s important to be realistic about it, and the best way to accomplish that is by looking at data over time to compare days, weeks, months, and other time periods against each other so you can develop an action plan from there. Maybe you want to make your best month from last year your average for next year? Or maybe you want to have a steady decrease each month until you hit 60%, then 50%, 40%, etc? Whatever it is, define it before doing anything else.

Things you can do to reduce your bounce rate

There are a number of things you can do to reduce the bounce rate on your website. Here are a few of the most effective:

Make sure your website loads quickly.

The faster a page loads, the more likely a user is to stay on that page. A slow page, on the other hand, is more likely to cause a user to leave before the page has even loaded. This is why it is so important for a site to have a fast loading time. If a site takes too long to load, it will likely lose visitors and have a high bounce rate.

Simply put, visitors are less likely to stick around if your site takes too long to load.

Have a clear and concise message.

Having a clear message on your website can help to lower bounce rate by ensuring that visitors know what your site is about and what they can expect to find there. A visitor wants to know immediately whether or not your site will provide any value to them, and it could take them as little as a few seconds to determine this.

For that reason, it's important to make sure that your message is targeted to your audience, relevant to their needs, and that you use a clear message on every attention grabber and call to action component of your site.

In short, if your website's bounce rate is high, take a look at your site's design and content. Is your message clear? If not, make some changes to help ensure that visitors stay on your site and take the desired action.

Optimize your website for mobile devices.

More and more people are using their smartphones and tablets to browse the web, so it’s important that your site is mobile-friendly. In fact, around 60-70% of all website visits in 2021 came from mobile devices.

If on mobile devices your site is tough to follow, has text that is too tiny or takes up the whole screen, or just simply looks awkward, it might be contributing to your bounce rate.

Let’s look at a few ways to help optimize your site for mobile and reduce your bounce rate:

Optimize your images for mobile by compressing and using the correct file formats

In order to optimize for mobile, make sure your images are the correct file format and aren’t high definition (unless they absolutely need to be). Currently, the fastest formats for images are WebP and SVG. These file formats are much smaller in size and are becoming the gold-standard for website development. The next best bet is PNG, which can be compressed well without much, if any, loss in image quality.

Have a responsive website with a mobile-first design strategy

A responsive website will ensure that your site looks great on all devices, from small phones to large tablets. Users could be viewing your site on any type of device, so it’s important that your site has been tested in, out, up, down, and all around for responsiveness.

What really helps though, is if your site is built with a mobile-first design strategy. By taking this approach, you are able to load only the information that is needed for mobile devices first. This ensures that your extra animations, high-resolution images, and extra functionality, which may only make sense on desktops, are not loaded on a mobile device. Essentially, we want to load the minimum amount first, and then add what is necessary; not the other way around.

Keep your content succinct

Whether you like it or not, most mobile users are going to be scanning your content for the information that they need and will ignore content under headlines that are not relevant to them or content that contains too many words in each chunk of text. This can be seen in the fact that while 60%-70% of visitors are on mobile, more than half of page-viewing time comes from desktop users.

Safe to say, mobile users do not typically spend too much time reading content. This is why it’s important to convey as much information as possible in your headlines, and keep your paragraphs short and scannable for your users.

Use large, easy-to-tap buttons

Large buttons are generally easier to use than small ones, because they are easier to target and press. This is especially important on mobile devices, where users often have to use their fingers to interact with the screen.

Small buttons are frustrating for users; if it takes multiple tries to click on a call to action button, you can almost be certain that the user will back out of your site and migrate to your competitor’s.

Buttons that are too large, however, can be just as much of a problem as buttons that are too small. Oversized buttons can be difficult to fit on a small screen, and they can make it hard to see the other content on the screen. They can also be cumbersome to use, especially if they are not well-positioned, and can take emphasis away from other parts of the interface that you may also want the user to focus on.

The bottom line is that buttons should be sized according to the needs of the user. In general, large buttons are better than small ones, but there are exceptions to this rule. The best way to determine the optimal size for your buttons is to test them with actual users.

Make sure your website is easy to navigate.

A website's navigation is one of the most important aspects of user experience. By making your site easy to navigate, you can help users find what they're looking for quickly and easily. There are a few simple things you can do to improve your site's navigation.

First, make sure your site has a clear hierarchy. Every page should have a clear purpose, and it should be easy to understand how that page fits into the overall structure of the site.

Second, use clear and descriptive labels for your links. Users should be able to tell where a link will take them without having to click on it.

Finally, consider using navigation aids such as breadcrumbs or a search bar if your site contains a lot of links, posts, products, or anything else the user might be interested in.

These features can help users orient themselves on your site and find what they're looking for even if they get lost. By taking these steps, you can make your site more user-friendly and improve the overall experience for your visitors.

Use engaging visuals.

Most people tend to forget that visuals play an important role in providing a better user experience. Just because something looks nice, doesn't mean it'll be user-friendly. A lot of the time, people will think that a design with too many visual elements will be confusing and overwhelming. However, if used correctly, visuals can actually help guide users through a website or app, making the overall experience more enjoyable.

One way to use visuals effectively is by using whitespace. This is the empty space around elements on a page. It might seem like a waste of space, but it actually helps to create a more organized and user-friendly layout. Too much clutter on a page can be overwhelming, but by including whitespace, you can make the page more easily digestible.

Another important thing to consider is the color scheme. Colors can be used to create contrast and draw attention to certain elements. They can also be used to convey a certain mood or feeling. For example, using warm colors like red and orange can create a more energetic and exciting experience, while using cool colors like blue and green can create a more calming and relaxed experience.

When it comes to visuals, it's important to strike a balance. Too little and the experience can be lackluster, but too much can be overwhelming and at best will slow down your site significantly.

The key takeaway is this: make sure that each visual you use has a purpose, and it serves that purpose as well as it can. If it’s meant to be informative, make sure it actually helps the user understand your content better. If it’s meant to convey a certain mood or feeling, ask for feedback from others to see if it actually accomplishes this. If it’s a product image, make sure it highlights some of the key selling points.

Conclusion

Essentially, having a high bounce rate is indicative of a need for improvement on some aspects of your site. It’s important to take a look at your content, how your site is structured, whether or not your site looks good on mobile, and ensure that your site is optimized for speed. By focusing on these elements, you can reduce the amount visitors that end up leaving without engaging with your site and enjoy the benefits of increased leads and sales.