11 Most Effective Tips to Reduce Bounce Rate

I've established that bounce rates might not be as bad as you might think. You could easily be lured into believing that the higher your bounce rate the worst it's for your ranking. That's not true all the time. This was my focus in, "Bounce Rate: Does It Matter For Ranking and SEO".

And for the part where I said bounce rate could be disastrous, what could you do to reduce the percentage of people navigating away from your pages?

Consider Reducing Bounce Rate ONLY if You Write Long-Form

The first thing is to establish if truly the efforts to reduce the bounce rate are worth it. If you write for certain niches such as news, weather updates, stock updates, and football scores, you don't have to worry about the bounce rate. These niches usually write very concisely.

People come to your pages to get quick answers and get out. Search engines won't take this up against you. You're covered!

However, if you're writing for niches that write long-form such as marketing, business, finance, fashion and beauty, gardening, health, etc., you will need to inculcate efforts to reduce your bounce rate.

Another thing to consider is to be sure the figure truly calls for concern.

Since there is no generally agreed figure for a too-high or too-low bounce rate, it may get tricky for you to know if you need to work on reducing it or not.

Therefore, I want to assume you know what you're doing, or else you can unnecessarily be worried and inculcate efforts where it may not matter.

I agreed with Statcounter on what a bad or good bounce rate percentage was. Accordingly, a percentage below 25 is excellent (not higher), 26 to 45 is considered good (nothing to fear) and above 45 could be dangerous and needs your attention.

If your figure is truly worrisome, it's high time you followed the guide in this post in detail.

Bounce Rate is Users' Experience Dependent

Everything about the bounce rate surrounds users' experience. If visitors read some posts on your blog without interacting further with other posts, it could be due to negative feelings. If they check more, it's still their experience but this time, positive.

Hence, when guiding you on how to reduce bounce rate, I'm, in other words, teaching you to improve your users' experience.

However, we have to keep something tightly to our hearts. We have to, with our efforts, retain visitors decisively if bounce rate is our focus. Our primary goal is to ensure that, at least, 70% of our visitors interact further with our website and posts before they leave.

This is where reducing the bounce rate may be far more effective than improving users' experience.

11 Action-Oriented Steps to Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate

If you're sure you need to work on reducing your website bounce rate, then below is a list of tested twists you can apply, right away.

1. Improve Website Speed: Slow-loading websites leads to increased bounce rates. Optimize your website's speed by minimizing HTTP requests, compressing images, and using a content delivery network (CDN).
2. Improve Website Design: A cluttered, confusing, or outdated website design can deter visitors from exploring further. Use a clean and modern design, clear navigation, and high-quality visuals to improve user experience.
3. Make Content More Engaging: High-quality content that is informative, entertaining, and easy to read can keep visitors engaged and reduce bounce rates. Use headings, bullet points, and images to break up text and make it more digestible.
4. Improve Website Navigation: Visitors should be able to easily find what they're looking for on your website. Use a clear and concise menu and include search functionality to make navigation seamless.
5. Optimize For Mobile: With more people using mobile devices to browse the internet, it's important to ensure that your website is optimized for mobile. Use a responsive design that adapts to different screen sizes and mobile-friendly features such as large buttons and easy-to-use menus.
6. Use Clear Calls-To-Action (CTAs): Visitors should be guided towards a desired action, whether that's making a purchase or filling out a contact form. Use clear and prominent CTAs to make it easy for visitors to take the next step.
7. Use Targeted Landing Pages: If you're running ads or campaigns, make sure to send visitors to a landing page that's relevant to the ad or campaign. This can increase the chances of visitors exploring further.
8. Use Internal Linking: Linking to related content within your website can encourage visitors to explore more pages and reduce bounce rates. Use internal links strategically and make sure they're relevant to the content.
9. Improve Website Accessibility: Visitors with disabilities should be able to easily navigate your website. Use alt tags for images, provide transcripts for videos, and ensure that your website is compatible with screen readers.
10. Use A/B Testing: Experiment with different website designs, layouts, and content to see what works best for your target audience. A/B testing can help you identify areas for improvement and reduce bounce rates.
11. Monitor And Analyze Website Metrics: Use tools such as Google Analytics to monitor bounce rates and other metrics. Analyze the data to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to reduce bounce rates.

Conclusion

To reduce your website or blog bounce rate, all you need is just another positive action from a visitor. It doesn't matter if he clicks links, saves images, prints the work, shares it, or watches a video. All you need is a new action as soon as he gets to your page or is done reading the first post.

As you can see, if you can implement all 11 tips to reduce bounce rate, there is no way the visitor won't be captured by one. And all you need is just "one" to stop each visit from being recorded as a bounce.

Do you have better suggestions than the ones listed? Do you still experience a higher bounce rate even though you implement these tips? Share your experience, commonest below.