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Are you working on promoting your blog? Are you trying to increase your online store sales? Then the problem of decline should be close to you.
What is a site's bounce rate?
Let's look at an example. During the month, only 140 visitors visited the site, 60 of them viewed only one page and closed your resource, the remaining 80 viewed two or more pages. Divide 60 by 140 and multiply by 100%. As a result, we get a failure rate on the site of 43%.
The normal bounce rate on a website - what is it?
Achieving a zero level is almost impossible. Even popular online stores have a failure rate of 30-40%. The average for different sites varies greatly, and we need to be sure to take this into account:
- for a portal site or service site this value is approximately 10% to 30%;
- For online stores, the normal percentage of failures on the site is already higher - 20-40%;
- even more for information sites - 40-60%.
You should not focus on any specific number. It is more important that the bounce rate is lower than that of competitors.
Reasons for refusal on the site: how to keep visitors on the site?
1. Download speed
The average user strives to obtain all the required information as soon as possible. Believe me, a few seconds of waiting can be a good reason why the site will be bypassed. Put yourself in the visitor's shoes. It is unlikely that you will wait more than 10 seconds. You should look for site errors that affect this parameter. Also, remove ads before content. Many ad servers are extremely slow, so the likelihood of immediately saying goodbye to the site is very high.
2. Too much advertising
Remember forever: the site is not a Christmas tree.
Flashing and sparkling elements really attract the eye, but at the same time they cause persistent disgust among visitors. Stupid tabloid-style headlines and pop-ups lead to this effect. Is your resource filled with really interesting content? Feel free to launch pop-up ads a minute after the visitor logs in - this will help reduce bounces on the site.
3. Clear navigation, competent search
Do you think intuitive algorithms are only important in computer games? Give the guest the opportunity to feel like a fool; you will never see him again. Of course, the desire for uniqueness and originality is commendable. However, such originality will have a negative impact on your bounce rate if you force visitors to search for information.
We should also mention an effective tool - search. Its absence on sites with a large number of pages and products causes a lot of inconvenience; an ordinary visitor will prefer to quickly leave the site and look for the necessary information on another resource.
4. Music and video are obvious enemies
Unlike supermarket customers, where there is no way to hide from the background music, your guests can always say goodbye to it instantly. People are tired of unnecessary pictures and sounds. Do you like a beautiful melody playing endlessly in a circle? The only desire is for her to stop. Desperate to turn off the music, the visitor will leave the site.
Let's discuss the video, here the situation is even worse than with music. Many users refuse to pay for the traffic of the imposed video. This behavior of a webmaster is directly associated with a thief picking his pocket. Do you like this kind of role? Then give up unnecessary attributes.
How to keep a visitor on the site? Don't force him to listen and watch something he doesn't want.
5. Unregister
You know about the high competition on the Internet. Have you ever seen the free use of numerous sites without the slightest hint of registration? Many sites offer registration through social network accounts. But mentality and natural laziness force us to look for warmer places where “registration” is completely absent. If you remove a feature that irritates guests today, you will stop being surprised by the number of refusals tomorrow.
6. Update information
Prices from two years ago, a catalog of clothes that lost relevance 10 years ago are good reasons for refusal on the site. If phone numbers or terms of delivery of goods have changed, immediately update the site data. Is your creation well-designed and up-to-date? Then feel free to add interesting articles. New visitors often study the dates of the latest publications, try to please the audience.
7. Use your 404 page correctly
It is impossible to insure against software errors, so the appearance of a 404 page should be provided for. Thanks to Google's suggestions, improving this page is easy by using Google Webmaster Tools. Simply adding a link to the main page and a search box will help smooth out the awkward situation with the 404 page. It remains to be generous with humor, design and the problem can be considered solved.
8. Add contrasts, sort out fonts
Minimum steps are needed to make it easier for visitors to read the information offered. It is the contrasting background and bright pictures that will help highlight areas of the site that need special attention.
Choosing the perfect font is quite easy. You should layout the article and read it carefully. If your eyes feel comfortable while reading, then everything was done correctly. It is also necessary to take into account the impact of content color, font type, line spacing, background color, and the presence of paragraphs on readability.
9. Improve your design
Only a beginner can afford cheap, unprofessional design. Such savings will make visitors doubt the seriousness of the resource owner and the veracity of the information posted on the site.
Imagine walking into an untidy office or store that hasn't been wallpapered for decades. Nice? Also, visitors rush to neat, beautifully designed websites.
10. Get rid of gray sheets, improve text quality
No matter how interesting and unique the text posted on the page is, its design should be given at least minimal attention. Bright headings, sensible lists, and correctly highlighted paragraphs will help convey the necessary information to the reader.
Use the advice above. Format your articles correctly and your visitors will read them to the end!
In addition, you should get rid of clumsily entered key phrases, spelling and punctuation errors. If you are working with a highly specialized topic, then try to use terms carefully. Be generous by compiling a mini-dictionary or simply providing clear definitions in articles.
11. Offer additional content
If you are familiar with the term "related products", half the battle is done. Imagine the process of purchasing beer in a store. Fish, crackers, and chips are perfect as complementary products. This principle also applies when working on website content. For example, a woman chooses a stylish dress in a store, invite her to look at the section of modern jewelry and luxury underwear. The simplest technique will help increase the number of pages viewed and make the entire resource more attractive.
12. Extremely useful information
Competent, unique, but absolutely useless texts are also included in the reasons for refusal on the site. A visitor who comes to look at the cost of orthopedic mattresses will be disappointed to see lengthy discussions about their relevance, high quality and health benefits. Give specific answers to a specific request, stop pouring water.
Of course, the provided list of factors that irritate visitors is not complete. But you have plenty of work ahead of you. Using the suggested tips, you can significantly reduce the site’s bounce rate.
If you operate globally, create local landing pages for each country. Use local language, currency and cultural sensitivities to improve the user experience.
Here, for example, is the PayPal website for the Chinese market:
7. Use video to engage your audience
Video attracts more attention than text or pictures. You can use full screen video as background. Or add to call to action.
Video offers many opportunities to reduce bounce rates. You can use animation, music, audio, voiceover, colors and other methods of persuasion.
You can create a very impressive video presentation on a low budget by hiring a freelancer. This can be done on exchanges, Freelance, etc.
8. Use only high-quality images
Images are another effective tool that can reduce your bounce rate.
The reason why high-quality images are now available on many sites is simple. They increase conversion. Even companies like Google, known for minimalism and plain backgrounds, are now using professional photography on their landing pages.
You can download high-quality images from photo banks. Here 11 free stock photos with professional photographs.
They can be used as a background, for a parallax effect, slides or an image that appears after a call to action.
9. Let customers talk
We've all seen websites with small review inserts that show one or more quotes from customers. It works. But we can do even better.
Create success stories from reviews. According to all the rules of storytelling. Make several formats: audio, video, illustrations, text. People love success stories. And they read them more. For example, here's how Facebook uses this technique.
You can make a page where only reviews from your clients will be posted (for example, as they did in Callbackhunter).
10. Plan to create content on an ongoing basis.
While many marketing experts advise experimenting with different content strategies, I want to say something about consistency in creating a content plan. Can these two things even complement each other?
They can. You need to create a content plan that allows you to use different content strategies at the same time.
11. Make your site readable
Most of the content on the site is in text format. Unfortunately, visitors don't like to read and usually skip such important parts of the site. That is why you need to work on the visual component of the text.
You need to make sure that the text is comfortable and easy to read on all devices.
It should not be too small so that it does not have to be enlarged on a smartphone. Use large font sizes on small screens.
Readability is not only about font choice, size and color. The text on the site should look beautiful. Leave some white space and increase the line height and indentation margins. Make the text look neat and beautiful.
Another important point regarding website text concerns style. Use simple and easy language. Which even a schoolchild will understand. There is no need to overload the text with terms and literary delights. The simpler the better.
12. Show that you can be trusted
Buyers are becoming smarter every day. This means that you constantly have to pass the exam when they make a decision. After the initial acquaintance with the product, users begin to look for signs of your company's reliability.
It's not so easy to give your money to a stranger or a new company. New visitors don’t know how much they can trust you and what your reputation is.
Prominently display reviews of you or your product from independent experts they can trust. The more famous the expert, the higher the conversion.
Show awards, certificates, industry reports. Check your security and show it on the site. Additional signs of reliability increase your credibility. Especially when users need to leave their card details or personal information.
Here are the services that issue a site security certificate.
13. Stop visitors from leaving
Despite your best efforts, some visitors will still leave. This is not your fault. Maybe something important happened to them. Or they're just not in the mood.
You have 2 options: you can let them go or you can make some of them subscribers.
With Exit-Intent technology in KEPLER LEADS, you can track user behavior. And when he starts leaving the site, automatically show a trigger message. This tool gives very good return rates.
Exit-Intent in action:
Most ask visitors for an e-mail. This allows you to create a chain of touches. You can set up emails with relevant offers and turn subscribers into buyers.
You can also show a discount at the last moment before the visitor leaves the site. But remember that if the user doesn’t see the value in this, he will simply close the window and never come back to you.
Netology, for example, offers to subscribe to useful content using exit-intent.
You can combine a discount offer with a subscription. This will allow users to choose the option they like best. You will be surprised how many customers you can acquire using exit-intent.
14. Engage users
Often, engaged users may leave the site without taking any action. This is very common for blogs and news sections.
A visitor comes to your article. Finds what he was looking for. And leaves (this is normal).
But this doesn't help conversions. In this case, you can show visitors the most suitable offer (an offer is a profitable offer that is difficult to refuse).
For example, if a user visits an article about cooking, you can show them a recipe book instead of the latest fashion items. This is also about relevance, which we talked about above. But here you show the offer while the user is on the site.
In KEPLER LEADS you can show different offers depending on the page that users came to. Or show returning visitors a new offer. For example, we invite readers of the article to subscribe to new articles. And to those who look at product cards, we show a gift or a discount.
This helps reduce bounce rates, increase engagement and conversions.
Conclusion
We hope this article will help you reduce your bounce rate and get more subscribers and clients. Reducing the bounce rate is a set of work that goes into improving your website and interaction with users (user experience).
,Increasing conversions is often directly related to bounce rates. If visitors to your site click on a link in an ad, social media, or anywhere else, go to the site, but immediately click on “close” - something is clearly going wrong. Pam Neely's article will help you figure out what's going on, and from it you can learn some useful tips on how to reduce the number of bounces - leaving the site without taking, let alone a targeted action, any action at all! The material is written in the first person.
It seems that the bounce rate is a fairly simple and obvious metric (read about why it is so important to count metrics for any project and how this can affect profits, but if you dig deeper, you can easily get confused. Even the definition itself raises questions. The Google Analytics Help Center defines bounce rate as “the percentage of one-page sessions (that is, visits in which a person leaves the site immediately after entering it without interacting with the page).” Sounds simple enough until you realize that your Google Analytics reports don't reflect this definition. Bounce rate calculations do not track page scrolling, which is one of the key ways a user interacts with a page. After all, someone might be interested in your blog post, read it in its entirety, and then return back to the search results. Such a visitor will be equated to “refuseniks.”
There are many other examples of how inaccurate a metric bounce rate is, but I'll spare you the SEO wisdom. The only thing you need to remember is that bounce rate is a relative parameter. All you need to care about is that your bounce rate is lower than your competitors.
How to Calculate Bounce Rate for Your Website
You can see the bounce rate for your entire site in your Google Analytics account dashboard. Google will give you information about the number of bounces on each page at any time. You can also go to the navigation section, look for behavior > site content > all pages, and you will see something like this (without the arrows, of course):
Here's how to find bounce rate information on your most visited pages. The left arrow shows where to find it in the navigation section. The right arrow points to the bounce rate column in the report.
Average bounce rate for different types of sites and devices
Before you panic about what you're seeing in your Google Analytics account, take a look at this:
As you can see, depending on the type of site, bounce rates can vary widely. Above was part of QuickSprout's How to Reduce Bounce Rate infographic, and according to them, this can range from 10% to 90%, depending on the type and purpose of the website.
If that's not enough for you to feel more confident, check out this graph, which shows the dependence of the bounce rate on the type of device the site visitor is using:
Remember, bounce rate is a relative parameter. All you really need to care about is making sure your bounce rate is lower than your competitors. To make sure of this, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the most common reasons for a high failure rate and how to eliminate them:
1. Your website consists of only one page
Of course, users are unlikely to move to the next page of the site...if it simply does not exist. As a rule, this leads to a high bounce rate on landing pages. According to QuickSprout's infographic, the average bounce rate for landing pages is 70-90%.
But still, is it possible to reduce it? We'll look at a few ways in detail below, but first, make sure your landing page is mobile responsive, has good layout, loads quickly, and has a clear call to action. If your bounce rate is still over 90%, consider filtering the traffic on that page, or consider tweaking your site to better accommodate that traffic flow.
2. GoogleAnalyticsconfigured incorrectly
This happens more often than you think. If your bounce rate is too high (over 90%) or too low (less than 10%), make sure you've set up Google Analytics correctly and there's nothing wrong with it. An indicator that something is going wrong can be sharp jumps in indicators over a short period of time (1-2 days).
If Google Analytics is not configured correctly, something like this might happen:
Not setting up Google Analytics correctly is one of the most common reasons why your bounce rate is too high (90% or more) or too low (10% or less).
3. Your site loads too slowly
Most Internet users are unlikely to tolerate a slow website. This is especially true for those who use mobile devices. Slow websites kill any user interest and increase the bounce rate.
This infographic excerpt from Red Website Design demonstrates this clearly:
Page load time has a major impact on your bounce rate.
4. Confusing page navigation
Many sites are guilty of this. Use generally accepted web design standards to make navigation simple and easy to use (everything should be intuitive). Creativity is great, but not if it conflicts with website visitors' expectations of the page's functionality. Here are some basic examples of website design improvements that will help improve navigation: a logo that includes a link to your home page, and a full-width footer with links to the main sections of your site.
Of course, navigation greatly influences the bounce rate, because it measures whether users went to another page or not, and navigation, in turn, shows exactly where to click.
5. You don't have a mobile responsive version
As was the case earlier this year, a good half of the traffic on the entire Internet comes from mobile devices. If your page is awkward or impossible to view on most mobile devices, rest assured your bounce rate will be high.
When SEOs start working on a website to reduce bounce rates, the first thing they usually do is improve the design so that the page looks good on a mobile screen. Typically, a responsive design is created in which the overall layout of the site is automatically adjusted for different devices.
Even if your bounce rate is good, but your site does not have a responsive design, address this first.
Pages that are not easy to view on mobile can significantly increase your bounce rate.
6. You don't have a clear call to action.
At first glance, this only applies to landing pages, but in fact, it applies to your home page, blog posts, and any other page on your site. Every page should have a clear call to action, whether it's signing up for an email newsletter, reading a blog article, or filling out a form on a landing page.
About 80% of all your website traffic comes directly to the internal pages of your website, not the home page. The home page typically receives between 20% and 40% of incoming traffic. So, in addition to having a clear call to action on your home page, try to work on it on others as well, and treat each page of your site as a landing page. (You can read about why it’s worth working on the landing page design and how to make it effective in the article: “”).
7. Pop-ups on your site may be annoying to your visitors.
Pop-ups are great (especially if they help you grow your customer base), but if you have a very high bounce rate, try disabling them for a while and see if that helps reduce your bounce rate. If your bounce rate has decreased after you removed pop-ups, there are two possible reasons for this:
- Whatever you offer through pop-ups is of no interest to your customers.
- Some of your target audience hates pop-ups.
Even if some of your customers hate them, there is a simple solution. Show pop-ups only to users who stay on your site. Showing this widget as soon as a person enters the page is not the best solution; you will collect more contacts with its help if you show it a little later.
It's important to experiment with your popup display settings to figure out how to make it most effective.
An example of possible pop-up window settings.
Settings for widgets on the site
8. Too many ads
Getting rid of a third of the ads is unlikely to have a major impact on your site's profitability - analyze the cost and quality of each ad. When you start getting rid of ads, remove the worst examples first. Statistics show that your profit will fall by somewhere between 10-15%. But over time, you'll start making a lot more money because users will stay on your site longer and be much more likely to come back.
9. Write for those who read “diagonally”
As a writer, it's hard for me to admit this, but people on the Internet read quite a bit. As a rule, they “scan” the text and read it diagonally. If they come across a page with long paragraphs, many will simply leave the site because it is difficult to understand and they find it difficult to read.
If this problem is also affecting you, there is an easy way to fix it. Just follow these tips to make your text more easily scannable:
- Paragraphs are no longer than five lines.
- 3-5 sentences per paragraph.
- Use bulleted lists whenever possible (if you are listing two or more items).
- Use subheadings.
- Don't forget about the pictures.
- Don't use fancy, long words where you can use simple, short ones.
- Break long sentences into several shorter ones.
10. The page must be able to handle the traffic load
It's a shame that Google removed the top keyword reports earlier this year. Currently, in our Google Analytics accounts, we only see the depressing phrase “keyword not provided.” Since April of this year, even AdWords accounts no longer show popular keywords. However, we can still use "search query" data in Google Webmaster Tools.
Despite all the shortcomings of Google Webmaster Tools, the Search Query Report is one of the best ways to find out what users expect to see on your page. Check your search queries on pages that have bounce problems - it's possible that what users want to see isn't what's written on the page.
If you've optimized your pages according to all the tips above, but you're still not happy with your bounce rate, try clearing the traffic flow to that page or adjusting it to handle your current traffic load. For example, if most of your traffic comes from AdWords, add a few negative keywords. If the source of traffic is Facebook, make sure that your landing page externally matches the needs of the Facebook audience - focus on its design.
Here are ten methods you can use to reduce the bounce rate on your pages. Just remember – you don’t want a 0% bounce rate, you just want to outrank your closest competitor’s sites in the search engine rankings.
Bounce rate is one of the key metrics for website behavior. This article will tell you what is a normal bounce rate and how to reduce it.
Site bounce rate
In order to somehow measure the effectiveness of websites, the concept of “bounce rate” was introduced. This parameter shows how well your site meets visitors' expectations. Expressed as the ratio of non-targeted visits to the total number of visits.
We figured out that a low bounce rate is good. The understanding of these quantities differs in different analytics systems.
Yandex Metrica
In Yandex Metrica, a visit lasting up to 15 seconds is considered a refusal. I will tell you how to change this indicator a little later.
Google Analytics
In Google Analytics, the default bounce rate is a user visiting more than one page per visit. Let's figure it out.
If you have an online store or a news site, this model will probably work. But if you have a one-page website, for example the Landing Page of some service, the bounce rate will tend to 100%.
Or you have a blog, the pages of which respond in detail to the needs of users. They got the answer after studying the article for 15 minutes and left. And you were refused again. I'll tell you how to fix this a little later.
What is a normal bounce rate?
On different types of sites, the indicators will differ:
- For online store, depending on the specifics and size of the catalog, the normal bounce rate is less than 30%.
- For one-page sites - no more than 40%.
- High-quality thematic blogs - less than 10%.
- Corporate websites - no more than 20%.
These values are affected by the type of source, the quality of the traffic, and the quality of the landing pages themselves. For example, advertising has more bounces than organic search:
How to reduce the bounce rate on your website
The bounce rate is influenced by two factors: traffic and the quality of the site itself.
Quality traffic
A high bounce rate may be caused by untargeted ad clicks. Review your Yandex Direct ads, Google Adwords, social media targeting campaigns.
One of the reasons may be GDN (Google Display Network) traffic from mobile applications. If this is your case, figure out how to optimize your display campaign.
Transitions to sales pages based on information requests also provoke refusals. Keywords of the form "How …", "which …" and people like them need to be stopped.
Quality of site pages
Most often, a high bounce rate is caused by low quality landing pages, namely:
- Visitors do not find an answer to their queries - the topic of the page is not disclosed.
- Navigation is not convenient, difficult to find - it’s worth working with the site structure
- There are no responsive or mobile pages - the site theme needs to be improved.
- Bad taste in page design - tidy up the design, change the template.
- If the site takes longer than 7 seconds to load, it’s time to start technical optimization.
People want to see fast, easy-to-use websites that meet their needs.
Setting up analytics counters
The bounce rate can be reduced by changing the criteria for evaluating it.
Setting up in Yandex Metrica
In the counter code, find the line "accurateTrackBounce" and instead true set the value in milliseconds, for example 7000 .
JavaScript
w.yaCounter12345678 = new Ya.Metrika((id:12345678,clickmap:true,trackLinks:true,accurateTrackBounce:true,webvisor:true));
|
w. yaCounter12345678 = new Ya . Metrika (( id: 12345678, clickmap: true, trackLinks: true, accurateTrackBounce: true, webvisor: true } ) ; |
Setting up in Google Analytics
This is where analytics has taken a step forward. Non-rejected visits are any visits in which at least one Event was sent.
Let's refuse to make visits up to 15 seconds, as in Yandex Metrica.
For new gtag.js counters:
JavaScript
setTimeout(function())(dataLayer.push(("event": "GAEvent","eventCategory": "NoBounce","eventAction": "15 seconds have passed"));), 15000);
If this option did not help, try this one for gtag (this one worked for me):
setTimeout(function())(gtag("event", "GAEvent", ("event_category": "NoBounce","event_action": "15 seconds have passed"));), 15000);
For the Universal Analytics counter:
JavaScript
setTimeout(function())(ga("send", "event", "NoBounce", "read");), 15000);
We can also make a visit without refusal the one during which at least two page scrolls occurred (on scroll event).
Two weeks ago, I gave you 22 reasons why people leave my site. Today I will tell you how to make sure that people do not leave the site, and the bounce rate is close to zero. First, you need to understand what a bounce rate is? I like the definition of bounce rates from Yandex most of all: “Bounces are the proportion of visits lasting less than 15 seconds, during which only one page view took place.”What is bounce rate?
Simply put, if I visit your site, no matter where (from a search engine or from some blog), spend less than 15 seconds on it and do not click on any internal links, then this will be considered a refusal. If I go to another page of your site or read for a few minutes into the material I came across, then this will no longer be considered a refusal. It's that simple.
So why is everyone trying so hard to improve (reduce) the bounce rate? Yes, because for Yandex this indicator plays a huge role when applying the AGS filter to the site. To prevent this filter from affecting you, you need to work on your bounce rate.
How to find out your bounce rate?
The bounce rate can be determined using popular counters: Yandex.Metrica, Google Analytics and Liveinternet. I will give you an example of the Yandex.Metrica service (the picture is clickable - it will open in a new tab):
As you can see, my blog's overall bounce rate is almost 85%. For blogs, this is an average result; it is advisable that this figure does not go beyond 80, then search engines will love your site. As for online stores, such an indicator would be considered very good for them. As you already understood, each type of site has its own failure rate. I can’t give you exact numbers, since they are not disclosed by search engines.
How to reduce bounce rate?
- To begin with, you must understand that each page of your site answers a specific user question. Therefore, the page must be relevant and match the title.
- Write the right title because this is one of the success factors for any website. It should contain the keywords of the material. For example, Strategy games in Russian are quite an apt title.
- Content. Please ensure that all published material is readable. If it is difficult for a person to read it, then he will most likely immediately leave this page.
- Download speed. The page must load instantly (no longer than two seconds), otherwise the user will leave to look for the answer to his question on another site. You can increase the loading speed by optimizing the resource, changing hosting or purchasing (renting) a dedicated server.
- Pop-Up windows. Don't use pop-up advertising because it irritates users and me in particular. The only thing I can "migrate" is the subscription popup.
- Mandatory registration. Don’t force users to register on your site in order to download, much less read, anything.
- Fonts. Use standard fonts and not garish colors that hurt your eyes.
Leave a comment, click " I like» (« Like") And " Save“, and I’ll write something else interesting for you :)
