5 Reasons Why High Bounce Rate Will Cost You Money

The Google’s definition of a “bounce rate” states that it is the percentage of single-page sessions on your website. I don’t know how, but by using technical terms, Google has made the bounce rate sound way too benign.

Translated into layman terms, it sounds way more serious. A high bounce rate means that many visitors don’t like your website for this or that reason and they decide to close the tab and seek what they need elsewhere without spending much time or going to any other pages on your website.

Let’s look at some of the common reasons that cause visitors to leave your website or landing page and what you can do to decrease the bounce rate and get users engaged with your content.

Optimize Your Website’s Loading Speed

I’ll try to keep it simple. If the website takes forever to load, users will leave. With the high-speed internet available pretty much anywhere, users have very little patience and high expectations when it comes to page loading speeds. According to one of the surveys done in this field, almost half of all Internet surfers expect a site to load within 2 seconds or less. And they expect this loading time to work across all devices and networks, which is very important today, as there are more and more mobile internet surfers.

The first thing you want to do is check your website’s speed by using one of the many speed testing online services and check the current state of your website. Optimizing the loading speed may be very easy if you have a simple blog or a business portfolio website.

When it comes to big eCommerce websites, the situation may be quite different. In this particular case, you might have to tinker with the code since speed optimization will likely need to be done either on the server management level or by recoding some parts of your website.

Make Sure to be Mobile Friendly

I’ve already mentioned that it is important to make the site load fast over mobile networks. But, there is also one more important factor when talking about mobile platforms. If someone visits your site on a mobile device and it’s not mobile friendly, they’ll most likely leave too.

If you are still not sure that you should optimize your website for mobile platforms, here are some more facts to sway you into the right direction. According to TechHive, 68% of all likes clicked on Facebook are made from mobile devices and a stunning 90% of shared links to blogs on Twitter originate from mobile platforms.

Besides, Google is favoring websites that are mobile friendly and has made responsive design a ranking factor. By making your site mobile friendly, you will make both your users happy and your rank higher. There is no reason not to go for it.

Improve Content Readability

Once you get the visitor interested to come and visit your website or to hit that link that leads to your landing page, you have done a tremendous job. Now, you have to do everything in your power to make the user stay on your website. To achieve this, you have to provide pristine content. In other words, if it’s difficult to read, or of your calls to action are confusing or unclear, users will likely leave your website.

Since readability is one the major factors that shape user experience, popular search engines followed the users and incorporated content readability as one of the ranking factors. The most popular content readability test is the Flesch test.

There are a few things that you should know before you start writing or editing content for your website:

• More readable: words with fewer syllables and short sentences
• Less readable: words with more syllables and long sentences

People prefer to get information that they were led to believe they’ll get before clicking on the link. If you manage to convey your message quickly without sugar-coating it, visitors will be happier. At least the ones that are not interested in your content will not leave your site frustrated for being lied to. Remember, honesty, simplicity, and consistency are the keys to engaging content.

Gain Users’ Trust

Online security and privacy are burning topics in today’s world. With all those cyber criminals out there trying to steal personal information, you have to do your best to ensure that your website visitors are safe and their information is secure and protected.

A lot of users are educated these days and they will look at the security measures you implemented, especially when it comes to providing any personal data on your website. This is why you want to make sure to have an SSL certificate installed and an up to date privacy policy available. Besides, Google has announced that HTTPS is a ranking factor way back in 2014 and privacy policy is part of the requirements for the websites in many different countries.

Avoid Using Popups

Do you like being interrupted when you are trying to find something that you want? Neither do your website visitors, especially not when they land on your website for the first time. In fact, it’s very annoying and can disrupt the reading and user experience.

But how will I ask my visitors to subscribe to my newsletter or reward them with free content, discounts, coupons, and offers? Try using less intrusive exit-intent popups. Many case studies have found them to be less intrusive but still an effective solution. In short, JavaScript will track mouse movement and some other variables to determine when the visitor is about to leave the page and, at this moment exactly, it brings the pop up on the visitor’s screen.

These 5 ways will most definitely help you to decrease the bounce rate and improve the visitor’s experience across the website. As a bonus, your website will be ranked higher since the first 4 are important SEO factors.