15 ways to lower your Bounce Rate

You probably found this post because you have a nice website that nobody seems to like.

If you have an Ecommerce site, then having a high bounce rate is understandable.

Google views a bounce as a visitor who visited 1 page, and didn’t visit any other page on your website. If they stayed 1hour on the page they landed on, and didn’t visit another page, then that would be considered a bounce.

Everyone seems to ask the wrong question about reducing the bounce rate.

When you look at your website your question should NOT be “How do I lower my bounce rate?’

It should be “How do I make my website ENGAGING?” Engaging – tending to draw favorable attention or interest -Merriam Webster

Does your site draw favorable attention? ….are you sure?

Here’s a few factors to look at (in no specific order)

1. How many pages do I need to scroll DOWN to get to the information I’m looking for? I don’t want to scroll through 4-5 different FULL posts just to get to the post I’m looking for. There are businesses that have a homepage where you can scroll down at least 3 pages. Also, how W I D E is your website? NOBODY likes to scroll sideways to read information that has been cut off.

2. Do you have a side navigation bar or do you have it at the top or both? A lot of old pages have the navigational bar on the left side. There’s nothing wrong with this if you have a short nav bar or it floats when you scroll down. The issue is that most websites have a long navbar on the side, and it’s annoying to have to scroll down just to get to the next tab. Newer websites tend to use both, but try to get the important tabs on the top of the page (going horizontally).

3. What order are you using in the nav bar? Do you put the best selling products or the information most ppl are looking for at the top of the nav bar or all the way to the left (if you’re using the top horizontal navbar)
I would recommend putting the Contact Us or Apply page all the way to the left (if you’re using the top navbar). Most people read left to right…so they’ll always see it when deciding to go to another page.
or
Placing it on the top of the navbar if you’re using the side navbar. Placing it at the bottom shows the importance of it. Placing it at the top will make sure it sticks out like a sore thumb.

4. Do you provide valuable content about your products or are your pages only pitching products? Most people get easily turned off when someone is trying to ’sell them something’. If you sell comic books, then put an informational page of when the ‘comic book idea’ was first created. When was the first comic book sold, who wrote it, where was it sold, etc. Providing information will help build your ‘trust’ with potential buyers.  You can also use interlinking for seo to direct visitors to your product pages from the information pages.

5. Colors – Are you using a light gray font color on a white background? Are you trying to have your visitors buy something or have them go blind? Make sure that the colors are completely different so the words/letters stand out. Also, are you using purple/pink colors on your website that sells male products? Banks use a white background to demonstrate ‘trust/authority’. I wouldn’t put my private information in a website that has a black background. Most sales pages from large companies use a white background. They spent millions on determining which colors will ‘engage’ their visitors. Hacker websites use black or dark colors to engage their visitors. The dark colors will help create the ‘naughtiness’ feeling of hacking websites.

6. Font size/bold tags - Is your title so large that it requires 2 lines? I still see a lot of websites that have titles on 2 lines because they like to use BIG font sizes.  I also see websites using bold tags on  the whole page. Not only is this bad for SEO, it’s also not good if you want to emphasize a phrase or a word.

7. Time it takes for your page to load – Huge pet peeve for a lot of people who are shopping during work hours. They’re usually on their lunch break, and don’t have time for a page to load. There may still be a lot of people who are still on slow internet connection. If any page on your website takes a lot of time to load, you better expect your visitors to leave.

8. Popups – nobody likes to come to a page, and have a few ads popup. If the visitor has a slow connection, then you’re going to slow down the most important pages, and your potential buyer will bounce!

9. Accessiblity - Can users access the rest of your website with one click? Are you utilizing categories, drop down menus, tag pages, or a search box? Everyone loves easy access, and do not like to jump hoops for information.

10. Broken links/broken images – If the landing page is a 404 page, then you better believe most visitors will leave. If the images have a Red X, then your site will also look like it’s not being maintained.

11. Complimentary products – Some visitors may not buy the main product, but if you offer a selection, then you’re more likely to have a sale.  Placing suggested items next to main products will help you get more sales. Also, placing the best selling products on the homepage will also develop more sales.

12. Header – I have seen a few webpages where the header is HALF of the page, and everytime I visit a new page, I need to scroll down half a page to see the content.

13. Mispelled words – Nobody likes to see misSpelled words. A lot of scam websites are done overseas, and the scammers are not fluent in English. Misspelled words also make the site look unprofessional.

14. Music – Imagine this …. you’re at work, and just started your 10 minute break. You decide to search for a local realtor, and as soon as you go to the website there’s music blaring from your speakers. Even if that website may have had the best information a person needed, they’ll probably never know because of the bad first impression.

15. Displaying personal names/pictures – There are a lot of people who discriminate for other things besides the 7 protected classes. Can you imagine visiting the Men’s Hair club website, and when you view the corp page, it shows the President/Vice President/Secretary as all women? Nothing wrong with that but it just doesn’t look right. What if you’re trying to find a conservative church, and you find this website that holds all the same beliefs you do. The day you decide to visit the church, you go on the website to find some directions. You bump into the ‘pastors page’, and you click on it to see what the pastor looks like. There you find a picture of the pastor wearing jeans/white t-shirt with tattoos & piercings on the face. Most conversative folks will never go to that church. Some women would love to deal with other women, and some latin people would love to deal with other latin people. I would remove anything that will give a person a reason to discriminate by their personal nature. My sales increased with a lot of websites because I removed the owner’s picture/name from the website.

My best recommendation is reviewing your website, and send it to your friends/family to give a review. I would also ask coworkers for their opinions. YOUR opinion maybe ’special’ , and sometimes everyone may not think like you.