The Sexy Metric: Bounce Rate

There are many different reasons people don’t stick around on your website for very long, and having a high bounce rate on your website is a frustrating experience. Often, what causes them is a mystery to website owners, as they can seem to point out just what is causing users to leave their page. But fixing a high bounce rate is actually a pretty manageable problem, one that has many easy fixes.

Make It Faster
If you’re website loads slowly, then you may be irritating potential visitors. Waiting for a website to load can cause frustration for the user, who most likely doesn’t like waiting. Instead of letting your website finish, they can be off visiting a quicker site that loads immediately. A slow loading webpage is a major cause of a high bouncing rate, especially with the speed of today’s high speed internet. Nobody wants to wait around anymore, so having a fast webpage is essential. To fix a slow page, simply optimize your code and remove unnecessary plug-ins, or anything else unnecessary that is causing your page to load slowly. It’s not worth it.

Avoid Intrusive Pop-ups and Registration
Nobody likes to be interrupted, and a pop up does just that. Having an advertisement pop up when the user is enjoying your webpage is kind of like an argument at a party, it ruins everything. The simple fix to that is simply to not do it. Push you’re ads to the side, make sure they’re not in the visitors way. And forced registration is another thing never to do. Nobody wants to give out their personal information, especially if you have nothing they want in return. Obviously, if you’re selling something, they’ll be registering anyway if they want to buy it, but if you’re not selling anything, then never force users to register just to maintain access to your site. You can offer a few select services to registered users only, but the bulk of your site should be accessible to anyone, signed up or not.

It Needs to Look Good
A professional looking website is key. If your site looks cheap, users will assume it is. Your site is your product, your selling it. Or you’re trying to attract users to buy your actual product, but even still, a professional appearance for your site is important. The site must be easy to navigate to and from pages, it must be easy to find what you’re looking for, and it should be easy on the eyes. No lime green in large doses. Or hot pink.

Good Content
Your site’s content is its vitals. If these aren’t up to snuff then you’re back to step one. Everything on your page should have a purpose and every word written should have meaning. It’s not always about quantity (although you should have enough to keep people coming back). Fewer, higher quality articles will destroy a mass of redundant, poorly written articles every day. And it’s not just words; make sure your site has some images on it. Nobody wants to read a wall of small font text. A picture helps entice a user to stay awhile.
The Social Media Advantage
Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are huge in this day and age. Not utilizing it to its full advantage would be a waste. Advertise your page on Facebook and tweet about it. Join the revolution of social media and your site will be rewarded.

These fixes are generally quite simple, and no site should have a high bounce rate. The causes of it are just oversights, and oversights can be fixed with a simple use of repairing. Follow these tips, and you should have users sticking on your page like glue.

A/B Testing

If you have pages with high bounce rates then consider A/B tests, these allow you to test different versions of your website’s pages to reduce bounce rate. Try experimenting with different content, images, tiles and colors and layouts to see which has the biggest impact on reducing bounce rate.

This is a guest post by Ralph Johnson

Ralph Johnson writes for Maxymiser where you can learn more about A/B testing, multivariate testing and website personalization.