5 Tips To Avoid The Dreaded High Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is one of the most important statistics for any websites performance and by using our 5 tips you can avoid the dreaded High Bounce Rate that affects so many of your competitors.

For those who aren’t as familiar with the term, bounce rate refers to the rate at which visitors leave, or bounce, from your site after visiting a single page. This is recorded by analytics as when a user hits the back button, closing a tab or window, typing in a new web address and a few other actions.

A high or even increasing bounce rate measured over a period of time means that people are not engaged which directly affects your conversion ratio for whatever specified action you are hoping visitors to take.

That is most certainly not what you want to happen.

What is a Good Bounce Rate?

This is a somewhat loaded question as there is a lot of variance across the web depending on industry. Most experts agree that rates fall between 25% and 70%. A good bounce rate is 25% to 40% while 41% to 55% is about average and 56% to 70% is slightly subpar, but might be acceptable depending on the type of website.

If your bounce rate is over 70% then you are probably in trouble unless you are a news, events or blog site. These types of sites regularly have viewers pop in for a single story they followed a link to and they leave when done. In that case the high bounce rate is not an issue because your aim isn’t to retain visitors, just provide them with information.

Typically speaking if you are under 40% then you have a well-built site that is meeting your users’ needs and you should be applauded.

Bounce rates under 20% or over 90% are both problems but for different reasons. If the rate is under 20%, that usually indicates a problem with the analytics, because if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is. If the rate is 90% or over, that means something is scaring people away which can be bad design, compatibility or even a bad tracking code.

Tips to Boost that Bounce Rate

Here are our favorite ways to get your bounce rate into the good range:

• Limit Homepage Information – Why put all the food on the table at once? If a visitor can get everything they need they have no reason to visit the inner pages of a site. Ideally you will put some important information, otherwise visitors will bounce if they don’t find something relevant, but readily locate links to the inner workings as well.
• Use an Intuitive Design – A well designed site often features an intuitive design which easily leads visitors to the products or services they are looking for. Things like intuitive menus or parallax scrolling are both common methods for easy navigation that appeals to many users. You can also include highly important information, such as main navigation points, in the header area where people see it first because it is clearly visible. When people have a hard time finding what they want quickly, frustration sets in and the bouncing begins!
• Use a Clean Design – When we say ‘Clean Design” we mean one in which it is easy to read or digest. To do this there has to be sufficient white space, a good use of color contrast and not an over abundance of text or graphics. If a page is too “busy” or “crowded” or even uses colors that are too similar visitors have a hard time finding what they are looking for and figuring out where to go, so they simply leave.
• Tell a Story – Great websites use their brand to create a visual story for visitors. By combining graphic design with images and infographics you can create stunning visuals that are also highly informative and easily digestible while being very interesting. People are sucked into the story itself which leads to more exploration simply because of the joy of discovery.
• Customize Error Messages – One of the quickest ways to make someone bounce is by having an Error Page pop up because of a broken or invalid link. An interesting and fun fix to this is creating a branded Error Page that visitors are redirected to that makes light of the error and provides navigation options to get them back on track.

The bottom line is that a high bounce rate is typically not good for your conversion rate. One way to help lower your BR and increase your CR is by following our 5 tips to avoid the dreaded high bounce rate.