What’s a Bounce Rate, and how Do I Lower it? | Iceberg Web Design

What’s a Bounce Rate, and how Do I Lower it? | Iceberg Web Design

There’s a saying some people use when they need to leave a social situation. “I’ve gotta bounce!” Keeping this in mind makes understanding what a bounce rate is on your website. The bounce rate is what percentage of people go to your website and then leave right away before clicking on anything within your site. This means they aren’t seeing what they were hoping to find. Since Google is all about the customer experience, and a high bounce rate indicates customers aren’t happy with their experience on your site, so they leave right away, that bounce rate could cause you to have a diminished page ranking.

It also means that they didn’t do anything to initiate a relationship with your business. They didn’t buy anything, subscribe, view any ads, etc.

bounce house with children

How Do You Know What Your Bounce Rate Is?

Use a tool like Google Analytics, which can it tell you what your bounce rate is overall. It can also break the statistics down by location, source of traffic, medium, mobile vs. desktop, browser, landing page, etc. If you only serve one place, sources from other areas you don’t serve will bounce right away—and that’s okay! They aren’t potential customers, anyway.

In Google Analytics, you can look at your bounce rate overall or from within any or all of these other parameters to draw your conclusions about your bounce rate. If your rate is higher than those listed below, work to lower it.

Here are some general guidelines

Retail Sites                                      20%-40%

Simple Landing Page                   70%-90%

Portal Sites                                     10%-30%

FAQ Sites                                         10%-30%

High Content Sites                       40%-60%

Lead Generation Sites                60%-70%

Increase your Load Time

People bounce when a site takes a long time to load. By ramping up your load time, you will retain visitors longer. 47% of people expect a page to load within two seconds, while 40% will leave if it takes longer than three seconds to load. To learn how long your visitors are waiting for your site to load, go to Google Page Speed Insights to run a speed test. Be sure to test both mobile and desktop speeds. If your rate is below 70, there is room for improvement. They will let you know what to focus on. It is often pretty technical, so you may want to talk to your developer about making some changes to speed things up.

Consider What People are Coming to Your Site to See- and Showcase it Right Away.

If visitors don’t see what they are looking for right away, they will bounce and go back to the search engine results page to see if another site will have what they are looking for. That’s why your home page or landing page (and even your Google listing) should match whatever they clicked on to get there. If there is a disconnect, you will want to make some changes to match them more accurately. People don’t like to sift through many images, information, or opt-ins to find what they are looking for.

This also happens when they arrive at your site from a source that tells them they will be finding out about something, and then visitors get to your site, and it isn’t anything like what they expected. Not only do they bounce, but they also feel like your business is shady. You don’t want to get that reputation.

No matter what, your page should be clear about what you offer, what you do, and why readers should keep reading.

Make Your Pages Easy to Read

This means black text on a white background and a more minimalistic design. And of course, you must optimize the mobile pages, where half of the people do their searching. By the way, Georgia and Arial, set at 14-18 pt. fonts are the easiest to read on mobile. Set your line-height at 150%. Have clear links with stylized buttons to help visitors keep searching your site. Use headers and sub-headers to organize your post. This makes it easier to help your reader find what they are looking for. Also, when possible, make a list post. They have the lowest bounce rate. Incorporate bullets when it makes sense to help these key points stand out.

Minimalism Doesn’t Mean You Shouldn’t Have Images.

Whether you use images, video, or audio files, they will break up the text, making the page more visually appealing. They will also offer your visitors another way to learn about the topic or product you are showcasing. Also, videos will keep visitors on your site much longer. Just don’t set your video to autoplay and be sure to find a nice thumbnail. The brain processes visual information much easier than text. Utilize this!

Cross-Link

Once you sprinkle your site with links that can take your reader to other pages relevant to them, you increase the chances that the visitor will continue to look at your site and may even make it a go-to reference for their needs. This creates the ideal user experience. Give your visitors a holistic experience around the thing they have come to your site to get. Have FAQs, engaging content, video, audio, great images, etc. This will meet them where they are at.

Use Caution with Pop-ups

People tend to get annoyed with pop-ups. They have their place but be sure to use them with caution. Exit pop-ups, on the other hand, can be helpful. These show up when the site sees that you are moving your cursor toward the back or exit button. At that time, the pop-up will appear to allow your visitor to rethink whether they are going to leave or not. It is at this time when you can effectively use a lead generator.

What if your bounce rate is super low?

A bounce rate of less than 20% can indicate an improper analytics set-up. While this low bounce rate might make you feel great for a while until you figure it out, it is a false sense of security and won’t help your traffic or ranking in the long run. So, look into it.

At Iceberg, we would love to create a site for you that will connect to your customers. We can maximize the effectiveness of your site and lead generation efforts. Contact us today to find out how!

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