When looking at important user behavioral statistics, none is quite as essential as the bounce rate. It is the percentage of single-page session or percentage of visitors who enter to the website and then exit rather than continuing on to view other pages on the site.
Brief time spans on your website can be caused by a number of reasons, some of which we’ll tackle below.
Of course, as the website owner, you’ll want to decrease this number as much as possible. Experts state that a bounce rate of 40 to 60% is a good number to aim for. You can do this by following these five handy tips.
1. Create an Eye Pleasing Layout
If visitors clicks onto your page and doesn’t like what they see, why should they stick around? Ugly formatting, mismatching colors, and garish animations can drive people away from your site before they’ve even found out what you offer.
To reduce your bounce rate, think about which layouts and templates are easy on the eyes. Give visitors something obvious to focus on without making them search high and low around the page.
By refraining from assaulting the senses of everyone visiting your page, you’ll have a much better chance of retaining them for an extended period of time.
2. Make It Easy to Navigate Around
Another reason for a high bounce rate is if people get frustrated with how difficult it is to find information on your site. If you have layers and layers of embedded pages, it can be troublesome for visitors to get what they need causing them to leave in exasperation.
When you create a website, you should lay everything out in an ordered intuitive manner. Provide enough links so that everyone can get around with ease. Take the time to make life simpler for your site visitors and watch as they stick around for long.
3. Tell Your Visitors What You Do
This may sound obvious, but there are still plenty of corporate sites where it isn’t immediately obvious what that company does. State it out in clear, simple English on the homepage. Don’t use reams of text either as a simple bullet list or table will be far more user-friendly.
People’s attention spans are short these days, so you need to cater to this with a basic home page that can be scanned in a matter of seconds. Be direct with your potential customers, giving them a reason to stay.
4. Respect Those Viewing Your Site
One of the best methods of improving your bounce rate is to treat your visitors in the right manner. Assaulting them with unwanted pop-up windows, audio ads and flashing animations will simply put them off wanting to explore your site further. Just lay the information out on your site and let the user browse at their own pace.
No one likes a pushy salesman, yet this is exactly what many websites do with their forceful ads and invitations. Treat the visitor exactly how you’d like to be treated and there is a good chance they won’t close your website in annoyance!
5. Carefully Plan Ad Placement
The first cause for these fleeting visitations is that someone accidentally clicked on your ad by mistake. While these visitors weren’t intentionally searching for your site, they can help blur the actual statistics so you’re not sure how many people were actually interested. These unintentional visitors can come from:
- Ill-placed ads found next to crucial website links
- Advertising that blended in too well with the site
You should also pay attention to where you put any ads you have on your actual site. Let users navigate around your page without having to fight through hordes of ads.
What are your thoughts on this? What techniques are you using to reduce bounce rate of your website? Please share in comments.
About Author: Aly Chiman writes and blogs about all things technical. To learn more, check out his writings and personal blog @ www.alychidesigns.com
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