Part of the guide: Blog Traffic
Unless you’re a brand new marketer or you’ve been underground for the past 10 years, you should know exactly what a bounce rate is. You should also know that the higher your bounce rate, the less money you’ll make. Your bounce rate is a great indicator of how successful your website or blog really is. A successful site is really when your visitors stay on your site longer and visit lots of pages.
You’re talking in riddles…. what the heck is a bounce rate?
Well essentially it’s the percentage of your website’s “single” visitors. By single, I mean visitors who’ve come to your site and left without clicking through to another page or website. Just visitors who’ve left from their entrance page. So obviously, you want to decrease your bounce rate.
In this guide
Can you stop your bounce rate altogether?
Nope, it’s simply not possible. It would defeat the laws of physics! People close pages, and not everyone will like your stuff. You just can’t please everyone. BUT, there are several things you can do to dramatically reduce your site’s bounce rate.
What’s a good bounce rate?
Well, anything below 50%. To be honest with you, most people have 80% or more. Especially as your site grows, you’ll start to attract a ton of random visitors. You’ll receive completely untargeted traffic that will, of course, have no interest in your content. It happens… and there’s not much you can do about it. That’s just Google doing its thing, sending you a bunch of untargeted traffic.
So here’s a short list of simple ways to decrease your bounce rate:
1. Get Rid Of Popups (Distractions)
I know, I know… this is sort of sacrilegious. Popups work and they convert very well. I like them and use them on all of my websites and blogs. Unfortunately, the majority of your visitors will disagree. By using a popup you’ll immediately increase your bounce rate by 10%-30%. So if you’re willing to give up your popup, it will dramatically decrease your bounce rate.
You should also get rid of anything else that will distract people from reading your content. You need to make sure your visitors get exactly what they want as soon as possible. Otherwise, people will bounce. This stuff is all about human psychology, people are impatient.
2. Good Layout & Design
This one is completely obvious, but the most important. It’s usually the obvious things that make the biggest difference. Clearly, if you have a good layout and design, visitors will stay longer. And… They’ll be far more likely to read and buy your stuff. Seriously, having an attractive design should be your top priority.
You can do this by choosing a premium theme. If you’re using WordPress then there are plenty of reasonably cheap themes around. Look around and find a theme that’s easy on the eyes and will also “suit” your readers.
3. Killer Content
Shhh… I know this is obvious, but I need to reinforce this one into your brain. After getting people to your website, you need to seduce them with killer content. Content that will knock the socks off of everything else out there. You’ll also want to “uniqueify” your content to make it a little different. While some people hate “different”, it’s definitely going to reduce your bounce rate.
4. Be Specific
Whatever you do, don’t go too off-topic! You’ll just be shooting yourself in the foot. As when you start to go off on a rant (which I do too often) people tend to get annoyed and leave. So like I said, give people exactly what they want. You need to make your content extremely title specific and vice versa. If your title doesn’t explain/talk about exactly what your content is all about, people are going to start reading and think… “WTF”… which will result in them closing the page. Which of course leaves your bounce rate boosted.
You were never meant to do this alone
Reading this changes nothing. Doing it with people who show up changes everything. That is the whole difference between the people who transform and the people who keep starting over.
Start free →5. Easy To Read And Navigate
Whatever you do, make sure your content is easy to read. And… Make sure your website or blog is easy to navigate. If visitors can’t easily browse through your pages or posts, how will they? They won’t and they’ll just leave. So even if your design rocks and your content is killer, you’ll still have a ridiculously high bounce rate if your readers can’t find your other stuff. Solution?
A related and best posts widget. In the sidebar of your site, display a list of your best and most popular posts. Also, display a list of relevant pages/posts. You should display banners that link to your other posts/pages instead of external sites. You need to focus all of your energy on getting your visitors to click through to other pages. Another tip: link to your other pages contextually. Throughout your post/page content, link to other pages.
Follow all of the above tips and you’ll decrease your bounce rate dramatically.
In Prosperity,
David Wood
P.S. Leave me your comments, thoughts, and questions in the box below!
Comments (carried over from the previous site)
Pj Zafra, September 16 2011, 12:45
Great post David! Definitely something I was wondering before. When I first started my site the bounce rate was around 59%. That’s more than half leaving and that sucked. Now its below 10% and I’m super happy with that. Thanks man!
Dan, September 16 2011, 00:12
Good article. I was aware of all these tips, but it’s always good for them to be reinforced sometimes. It’s also good to read how others approach this topic. We went with pop-unders in the beginning. Got us some members, but killed the bounce rate. We got rid of it and decided to go more for organic growth. That turned out to be a good move.
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Sorry if this is obvious, but if popups increase bounce rate by 10-30% like it says here, why does practically everyone still use them? Feels like it can’t be as costly as it sounds or nobody would bother.
Bonnie, it’s the same trade corporate ran for twenty-two years: the thing that wrecks the user-experience numbers is often the thing that pays the wages. My old employer kept email popups on the intranet knowing the engagement stats hated them, because the conversion numbers loved them more. Nobody in a boardroom fixes a metric that’s making money.
Graham’s right about the trade. We called it something else in the banner-ad years — same fight, different label.
Bonnie, easy answer — I run a script that toggles popups on and off every fortnight and just watches bounce rate against opt-in rate, no manual switching. Popups win on list size, lose on bounce, every single time in my data. Pick the metric you actually care about.