Experiencing a high bounce rate is common for many marketers and freelancers. While this is not optimal, it happens, and it can be corrected. Before we dig deeper into this subject, let's see what a bounce rate is, and why a high rate is not satisfactory for any digital marketer.
What Is a Bounce Rate? Is It Good or Bad?
A bounce rate is a part of your website analysis data that shows how many users land on your webpage and leave straight away. A high bounce rate means that users access your page but leave too soon. A high bounce rate is quite bad if it doesn't convert users, as it shows that your website is not properly designed to make them spend more time on it. You should check your conversion rates when studying your data – if they're too low, that's not a good sign.
A high bounce rate doesn't always have to be bad, since sometimes users only access your page to get a phone number or email address. You should correlate your statistics and find out which ones don't match. If the high bounce rate doesn't correlate with a higher demand for your product or services, you might have a problem.
Why Is Your Bounce Rate So High?
There are many reasons why your bounce rate could hit 70 and above – so if your conversion rates are low, it can mean that:
Your content is not good. Marketers may encounter problems with their bounce rate if their website content can be improved. If your content is not marketable enough, does not respect certain algorithms, or doesn't include specific keywords, your website will not rank high on search engines. That's why you need to hire SEO experts and content creators to make sure this job is done right. You could also come up with a better content strategy and ensure that your content is engaging.
You're offering a poor user experience to your visitors. If your visitors are not pleased with your content, images, loading speed, or any other detail on your webpage, they'll bounce quickly, and you won't convert them. Check with a UX specialist to ensure that you know what you've got to do.
Your bounce rate might also be very high because your website is experiencing technical errors. If that is the case, make sure your page functions properly. Also, check if your content entices conversions, or if there are any other errors that must be addressed immediately. Make sure your design is on point.
Your website might also have speed issues, so this is another important thing to check and fix, if necessary.
How Can I Reduce a High Bounce Rate?
Dealing with your high bounce rate is not as complicated as it seems but it can be tricky. Here is a short guideline on how to do it.
1. Find the Problem
One of your pages must suffer the most, so find it to see which page is pushing your bounce rate up. Make sure you know how much time people are spending here and check to see if your page is achieving its goal. Check the content on this page and the design, along with navigation.
2. Install a Tool to Help with Your Bounce Rate
You can always install a website recording tool to help you see where improvements must be made. This is a common practice for websites experiencing high bounce rates. Seeing how users are acting will help you find the cause of the problem.
3. Understand User Behavior
You should use a visualization tool for this part of the process – most marketers like to use heatmaps. This tool will help you see where most visitors are placing their cursors while browsing your page. You can then install a CTA there to help them stay longer and boost your conversion rate.
4. Analyze Your Data More Thoroughly
Once you've analyzed your data, you will make effective adjustments to your webpage. But this is not enough – you should also use your heatmaps recordings and your website recordings to decide what the best course of action is. You should start A/B testing.
5. Try A/B Testing
This means you will access one specific page and then make an identical one (a copy). You will only make a small, effective change to your new webpage. You will show the same webpage with the same headline to your users (so, you'll have two pages showing basically), and then, based on your results, you'll check which page got a higher conversion rate.
6. Implement Optimization
You will then test to see if your data is relevant and then gradually optimize your content or any other updates that must be optimized. Your bounce rate will slowly decrease. You will repeat this process as many times as needed – analyze, test, change – until your bounce rate hits your target. Good luck!