12 Website Changes to Lower Your Bounce Rate

In simplest terms, when a user lands on your website and leaves without visiting the other pages or taking any further action (e.g., subscribe, contact, inquiry, or purchase), it is called a bounce. So, the bounce rate is the ratio of the number of visitors who left the site from the same page to the total no of site visitors. The bounce rate is measured as a percentage.

Ideally, the bounce rate should be zero. And almost every business owner often wishes for the same, but technically, it is impossible. Bounce rate is a common and unavoidable factor. 

But the question arises, what bounce rate is considerable for a website? According to Semrush, an optimal bounce rate would be in the 26% to 40% range, while a bounce rate above 80% is considered very poor. 

The bounce rate varies according to industry type, device, and channel. Check out the following bounce rate benchmarks by HubSpot Blog. 

A critical reason a visitor leaves a site without taking action is not getting the content, products, or services they are looking for. Also, if the visitor is irritated by unnecessary data like pop-ups or ads and the pages are not user-friendly, there is a high chance of a bounce. Considering these examples, a bad or poor user experience is the main reason behind the high bounce rate.

Here is the solution, by making these changes to your website, you can improve the user experience and lower your bounce rate.

As of August 2022, 62.02 percent of global traffic comes from mobile devices. Approximately more than half of the web traffic worldwide comes from mobile devices. It is a clear indication that you need to create mobile-friendly websites. 

That is why even Google suggests making your website responsive for mobile devices because mobile sites perform better as they provide a better user experience.

If a potential customer visits your site using a mobile device and your site is not responsive, there are certain chances the visitor will have a poor user experience and leave your website immediately. 

So the first change you need to make is to make your website responsive and mobile-friendly.

While doing so, ensure all the content, such as text, images, and videos, is visible to the viewer. The use of the available space is another essential concern. Mobile devices do not provide space as much as desktops, so you must be careful when placing different website elements in the available space. That means no element should overlap with each other or hide behind another one.

Moreover, the user experience with mobile devices is more focused than desktops because of limited space, making it super important for you to design the layout. When visitors land on your page, they get a clear idea about your site and get encouraged to take necessary action. 

Your website is the face of your brand and one of the most valuable assets of your business in this digital world. Since your website talks about your business, it must be in its best form. An aesthetically appealing website improves the average time a visitor spends on your website, indirectly resulting in a lower bounce rate. 

Beginning with the basics, the very first thing you need to look after is the color scheme of your website. Each color has its significance and is used to show different emotions. So while selecting the color scheme of your website, you need to consider your brand values, targeted audience, and the emotional sentiments of your potential customers.

Another essential thing to consider is all the elements should be in the right place and the correct size. For instance, the text on your website should be large enough that one can read it easily. The images that you use should be of high quality. The tabs like call-to-action should be visible and correctly highlighted. And most importantly, there must be a correct flow of data that you add to your website.

And lastly, you need to focus on website design that connects with the people. Depending on the locations, you can create a Culturally Sensitive Website with different pages targeting different audiences. For example, for targeting older people, you can use a conventional design, while for a young audience, a minimalistic website design will do a better job.

When a visitor lands on your page, he might get precisely what he wants, but if he has put lots of effort into finding that content on your site, there are high chances of bounce. On the other hand, if the visitor has a clear idea of where he will find what he is looking for, it will be a good experience for him. 

Navigation is one of the most important features of a great website. Because apart from the user experience, easy website navigation makes it easy for search engines to crawl and index your different website pages more efficiently and effectively.

There are different types of website navigation. You can choose the best for your website that fits the aesthetics. But more importantly, you must focus on a navigation type that creates a smooth experience for your visitors. 

Depending on your website type and targeted audience, accurately categorize differently. You can also use subcategories if your website has many pages. All the category and subcategory headings must be noticeable to the reader. Apart from this, make sure your search box is working. The search box in your site can significantly affect the navigation.

For pages with bulk content like blogs, you can add a feature like a table of contents and can include the headings and subheadings of the blog with a link that redirects to that part of the blog. It will make it easy for the reader to find the particular content.

With the increasing competition, you have to pay special attention to the load time of your website. Nowadays, people have less patience, and if your site takes excess time to load, there are high chances that visitors may get to your competitor's site.

In general, a website must load within 1-2 seconds. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, it will be counted as a slow website. Besides the visitor's point of view, there are chances you may slip in rankings if your site is consistently slow. 

The first thing you have to do is check your site loading time and find your website speed. Pingdom is one of the helpful tools where you can test the speed of your website. If the site speed is below 3 seconds, your website is good to go. And if not, you might need to make some changes.

Your hosting server plays a pivotal role in your site loading time. Many website owners often make the mistake of using poor hosting services to reduce the hosting charges. If you are also using one such cheap hosting solution, you need to switch to a better one. 

Furthermore, the images and videos on your site cause delays in loading time. You can  optimize the images  and compress the quality of these images and videos to improve the load time. 

Eliminating unnecessary plugins from your website can be helpful too. Also, you can enable browser caching, which will store your site data in the user's browser and load the same data when the user reopens the site.

This and other technical issues on your site can be checked with Serpstat Site Audit tool. This is where you can:

• get recommendations on speeding up site pages for computers and mobile devices;
• check all issues divided into three groups, depending on their severity: high, medium, low priority;
• find ways to solve technical problems found;
• estimate the level of site optimization by a set of criteria and our own Serpstat Domain Optimization (SDO) Score.

No one likes to get disturbed by annoying popup ads while reading something on a website. A survey found that 73 percent of readers find the popup ads annoying. People will always hate popups. Ethan Zuckerman, who invented popup ads, has publicly apologized by saying, “We ended up creating one of the most hated tools in the advertiser’s toolkit: the popup ad.”

But this doesn’t mean you should completely stop using the popups on your website. This is what can help you convert your site visitors into regular readers, but only if the popups are relevant and do not disturb the user experience. 

With engaging popups, you can also generate high-quality leads that you can convert into customers. But while creating and showing such an ad on your website, there are several factors that you need to consider.

To create engaging popup ads, first, you need a clear purpose for that particular ad. Then considering that purpose and your targeted audience, you can create popup ads of different designs. The color scheme, content, text visibility, CTA line, and what value to provide to the customer are the solid factors affecting the outcomes of your ad.

Another thing you need to take into account is timing. It is crucial to decide when you are going to trigger your popup. To grab the attention, determine the right time for the popup to appear on the site. It should not be too early or too late. You can select a suitable time depending on your website content and message in the popup. 

There is no doubt that content is still the king, as it can make or break your brand identity. So you have to be very careful while publishing content on your website. Many site owners are still finding the mantra for creative content writing that will improve traffic and generate website leads. 

The new age trend of automating content creation using artificial intelligence is rapidly growing. For example, using Serpstat Content Generation and Analysis tools based on AI, you can: 

• generate meta tags and articles;
• check grammar and spelling;
• paraphrase texts;
• create articles;
• highlight important insights from competitor texts, etc. 

While using AI-generated content, you need to verify that the content is actually helpful for the reader and does not just contain the targeted keyword. 

To write quality content, you first need to understand what your targeted audience is looking for. Identifying your audience will help you write user-specific content that will create engagement. 

After deciding your targeted audience, write content that provides value to your reader. In the recent Google helpful content update, the search engine giant has specifically mentioned focusing on "people-first content," which means you should give more importance to information that is helpful for readers. 

To create engagement with the reader, you can add a personalized touch to your content while you write. Try to explain things more relatable manner and in an easy language that everybody will understand.

And lastly, keep updating your website with fresh and updated content. Adding new blogs on the trending topics of your industry will help your website rank higher. And with value-adding content, your bounce rate will be reduced automatically. 

No matter how value-adding your web content is, it is worthless if readers find it difficult to read. A vital part of a good user experience is better content readability. As discussed earlier, you need to pay attention to the formatting of your website content depending on various devices.

To enhance your content's readability, the first thing you need to pay attention to is font and text size. The font style and size of your text significantly affect user experience. Using the right font style and size will make it easy for readers to go through the website content effortlessly.

Furthermore, strictly avoid lengthy paragraphs with lengthy sentences. Readers do not prefer reading such long paragraphs. Instead, using short paragraphs with 3-4 sentences each helps to improve the readability. Another advantage of keeping the sections short is better text alignment in all the device types.

Use different text formatting options like headings, subheadings, and bullet points. Use bold and underlined text to highlight the important content. You can use charts, graphs, tables, and similar data representation tools to represent the data. Adding the source link will validate the data you provide in your content.

Try to add relevant images and screenshots to your content. It makes it easy for your reader to understand the topic you are trying to explain. And lastly, use a tone and language that relates to your reader. Try to write in such a way you are talking to that person.

There is no doubt that visual content is the top content type that attracts more traffic to a website. People nowadays are more attracted to visual content like videos and infographics. Even though these types of content can not replace text like blogs, you should include audiovisual content on your website. 

Content forms like videos and infographics efficiently provide the information keeping the visitors engaged and encouraging them to check other pages on your website. A well-designed visual content can lower your bounce rate and increase the website traffic you can convert into regular visitors and even customers.

Conduct industry research and discover the current trends and the issues your targeted audience faces. Based on that, you can create videos, infographic posts, and similar content that will provide solutions, tips, tricks, and hacks to solve those problems.

To improve your website loading time, instead of uploading the full video, you can add a preview of your video with a link that will redirect to your social media channels like YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. 

The links on your website play a crucial role in the user experience and are also responsible for the higher and lower bounce rates. Moreover, the internal links of your website affect its position on the search engine result pages (SERP). So you need to improve the linking structure of your website. 

Including the relevant links on your website will add value to your visitor. It improves the user experience by redirecting the site visitor to the other relevant pages. But it does not mean you should include links as much as possible. Unnecessary link stuffing disturbs the user experience and increases the chances of a higher bounce rate. 

While adding a link to your website, you have to pay special attention to the anchor text of that link because an anchor text is a path between the reader and the page where that link redirects the reader. By reading the anchor text, a person decides whether to click on that link or not. The anchor text must be clear and should inform what that link is about. 

Apart from that, focus on eliminating the broken links from your website as they affect the experience and reduce your site ranking. Check for all the broken links and remove them from your website. And keep checking the links regularly and ensure they are working.

While adding the external links, make sure they open in a new tab because opening in the same tab and going back to the main page can be annoying for the user.

Another factor that affects the rate of your website is the use of targeted keywords. Keywords help the search engine to analyze what your website is about. And by analyzing that search engine shows the search results when someone searches for that topic.

Including a targeted keyword ensures that your website reaches the specific audience that is actually looking for your website. Let's take an example. If you have a salon website, you must include a particular keyword, whether the salon is for men, women, or both.

If you don't include a targeted keyword, your site will appear in any random search results, and even after getting the traffic, your bounce rate will be high. Because visitors will land on your site but won't find what they are looking for.

For example, Serpstat Keyword Research tools help you find the right targeted keyword to include in your website. You can use these keywords to make attractive headlines. And also, have them in your content to help the search engine analyze them. But while doing so, add the keyword only where they are required; unnecessary keyword stuffing won't help you.

The service offers a lot of different reports, for example:

• "Related Keywords" represents all search queries that are semantically related to the searched keyword, so check and use new variations of the queries here;
• "Search Suggestions" is the report that shows the queries offered to users under the search bar;
• "Search Questions": here you can see all question forms of search suggestions. These are questions that include a selected keyword that a user is looking for an answer to.

This is one of the ways to overview the most popular keywords and find out what interests your audience the most. Using this platform you can learn about your competitors, find out your potential buyer's questions, and peruse in-depth SERP analysis. 

As its name suggests, a meta description describes what that particular webpage is about. It gives brief information about the content present on that page. The search engine displays the meta description to readers, which helps them decide whether to open that webpage or not.

The bottom line is that the meta description is the first impression of your webpage, so it must be engaging enough to attract a potential person to open your website. Generally, an ideal length of a meta description is 160 characters (including spaces). And if your meta description has more than 160 characters, the excess part won’t be visible, as shown in the above image. 

There are some easy tips for writing a compelling meta description. First, do not forget to include the targeted keyword in it. Because if there is a targeted keyword in your meta description, the chances of your web page appearing in top search results increases when someone searches that keyword. 
Likewise, adding the targeted keyword once is enough, and also, make sure the keyword goes with the natural flow of content. Do not try to stuff the keywords in the meta description.

The meta description should be short, concise, and descriptive. It should tell the reader how this webpage has the solution you are looking for. Include a call to action in your meta description to create more engagement. 

Have you already tried to generate a Description with the Serpstat Description generation tool we mentioned earlier? If not, here is a short instruction on how it works: you go to the "AI content tools" section → "Description generation". You paste your Serpstat API token, paste a fragment of the text from the page, and a tool composes a description according to the requirements of search engines and the analysis of competitor pages in the search results.

With increasing competition and continuously changing guidelines of search engines, you have to adopt the trial and error method to keep your bounce rate as low as possible. There is no fixed formula that will ensure a reasonable bounce rate.

Keep monitoring your website based on parameters like page ranking, average time spent, bounce rate, click-through rate, keyword performance, etc. And make the necessary changes wherever required. By doing this, you will have a proper track of your website performance, and you will get to know what strategies work for your website.

You can use Google Analytics to monitor the performance of your website. It is a free tool that keeps track of your website performance. You can analyze the bounce rate of your website before and after making the appropriate changes to your website.

When it comes to lowering your bounce rate, an essential factor you need to consider is providing the best possible user experience. A smooth user experience will do most of your job. Keep your potential visitors in mind whenever making changes to your existing website or making a new one.

Make your website visually appealing. Color schemes, fonts, designs, and images, videos you include on your website play a pivotal role, so use them correctly. Make the text easily readable with any device.

While publishing the content of your website, keep the user intent in your mind, and try to solve your reader's queries and doubts through the website content. Keep updating your website with fresh content.

The use of appropriate keywords to make sure your website is reaching the right audience. Keep updating the keywords of your website. Use different keywords for different web pages.

And lastly, keep an eye on your website performance and make appropriate changes whenever required. Adapting to the new trends and making the right changes to your website will help you lower your bounce rate.