Alexandra Dalgoutte
How to Improve Your Bounce Rate – and Understand it!
Let’s get straight to business as you are a busy guy/gal, and this is important so we are just going to cut straight to the facts.
What is a Bounce Rate?
A Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors that click onto your website before leaving without taking any action, such as making a purchase, clicking on a link, going to another page on your site, or filling out a form. Basically, they bounce away from your site because they just don’t like it.
What is a Healthy Bounce Rate?
Depending on the type of content being produced and offered, a healthy bounce rate can vary with every website, CTA and industry.
However, having said this, a general rule to stick to is that a healthy bounce rate should sit around the 26% to 40% mark. Anything higher than 55% could show that improvement is needed or that there may be a fault in the system, particularly the installation or tracking code. If it’s higher than 55%, you may need some help!
Another thing to remember is that the lower the bounce rate percentage is, the better. Although it’s common to receive artificially low or high results so take things with a pinch of salt. So, if your bounce rate is below 20% or higher than 90%, it is more than likely that the results are inaccurate.
How to Improve Your Bounce Rate
There are several ways on how to improve your bounce rate and the best part? You don’t need to change any content written on your website!
Keep reading to find a few ideas on how to improve your bounce rate –
Update Your Web Design.
When you visit a cluttered and confusing website, you will generally click back out of the website straight away. Bad websites are not helpful, professional or enjoyable and your potential customers simply won’t bother if it doesn’t look trustworthy.
If you think this might be the reason for your rubbish bounce rate, it’s time to revamp your website so it’s aesthetically pleasing, modern and easy to navigate. Put yourself in the shoes of your customers and try to imagine what they would look for on your site then make sure it’s clear.
Improve Page Loading Speed.
No matter how competitive your prices are, or how amazing your products might be, if you don’t have good quality pictures or your loading speed is faulty, then the chances are that will cause a lot of your potential customers to click off of your website in just a matter of seconds. People need to see what they want straight away.
Widget Wisely.
Optimise For Mobile.
Not only does the above statistic signify the importance of having your website readily accessible on mobile phones and tablets etc., but don’t you want your customers to have an amazing experience? Having a website that is clunky and hard to navigate on mobile is just not user-friendly and it can turn people away from your brand.
Appeal to your target demographic.
This sounds super obvious, but it’s surprising how many people design their website to suit them – not their customers! Take the time to really look at your website to distinguish if it would actually appeal to your target demographic. If your target demographic is young, does your website look bright and attractive? Or, if your website is aiming at religious or married people, do your images and text reflect this?
If your website doesn’t look like it’s aimed at your target demographic, then your site’s visitors will decide very quickly if your products or services are right for them or not.
So go ahead and browse through your competitor’s websites to feel what is to be expected in your industry, and then adjust your website accordingly.
Revise your marketing strategies.
If your bounce rate starts to drop, you have to check the different traffic channels to see where the hits are coming from. Doing this can show you which channels are your increasing bounce rate, and give you the chance to think about why it may be happening.
For example, if you have paid ads running and notice that your bounce rate is much higher than your organic search traffic, it’s more than likely that your ads need to be adjusted. This is because your customers might be expecting to find something particular off your ad and then immediately leaving the page when they don’t see it. Another good example is if you were working with a micro-influencer and find that the traffic they are diverting is quickly navigating away. This might highlight how their audience isn’t the right fit for your brand.
Clear Messaging.
It is so important to make it really clear what your business does straight away. You don’t have long before people just give up and disappear in search of a clearer website. Make sure you use short paragraphs so it doesn’t require lots of reading or look too cluttered and overwhelming. It’s also important to have plenty of white space between text blocks and to highlight the different sections with relevant headers. This means people can easily skim-read your site and find the areas that matter to them.
Get Help.
If you are still scratching your head, our team at Cheshire Cat Marketing can sympathise with you. It’s not easy keeping your website up to date and running smoothly while balancing other parts of your business.
Cheshire Cat Marketing specialises in helping SMEs and Start-Ups grow, develop and reach new potential and goals with both their on and offline marketing.
Marketing can be challenging, but with the help of our bespoke packages, we can help businesses of any size and budget. If you would like to have a free marketing consultation with us, please get in touch, and one of our experienced team members will be happy to provide you with advice.
Share this post
