Bounce Rate | What It Means and How to Improve It

April 17, 2017

You may have heard the term bounce rate thrown around by your web developer or IT guru. You may have also had absolutely no idea what they were referring to or why you should care.

In this post, we'll explain what your bounce rate is, why you should care, and how to improve your rate if it's too high.

Let's dive in.

What Is A Bounce Rate?

To put it as simply as possible, a bounce rate is the number of times someone lands on your web page, stays for a few seconds and then exits out, without navigating around or visiting other parts of your site. Hubspot explains it really well:

" Keep in mind that bounce rate is different than an exit rate. Bounce rates only measure "one-and-done" visits -- the ones in which people arrive and leave your website without navigating away from a single page."

You want people coming to your site and spending time there, navigating from page to page, consuming content, and ideally converting (whatever that may mean for your particular business).

If your bounce rate is high it means people are landing on your site and immediately finding themselves disinterested or off-put for some reason. This is a red flag. This is not a metric to ignore or blow over.

How Do I Fix It?

So, if you do have a high bounce rate how do you fix it?

There are a few things you can start with to help bring you bounce rate down. Here they are*:

1. Ensure The Content is Relevant to the Keywords
2. Remove Any Annoying Popups
3. Ensure Your Site Is Mobile Optimized

*Note: This is by no means an exhaustive list. Just a few spots to get started.

Content and Keywords

Firstly, ensure the content on your pages is related to the keywords those pages rank for. For example, if you are driving people to your site using a post about massage therapy and users arrive to find no mention of massage therapy on that page, they may bounce. Don't mislead your visitors by promising content that is not there. Make sure your keyword selections match the content offerings you have.

Remove Popups

Secondly, remove any obnoxious popups. Calls to action that immediately pop up and interrupt user experience can be downright annoying. Relevant popups that are not overly intrusive and add context to the site content are welcome, but keep in mind the nature and frequency of pop-up messages. Too many messages too soon can cause people to bounce.

Mobile Optimization

Finally, your site absolutely must be mobile optimized. This is something we cannot stress enough. More searches are done on mobile devices than desktops, and if your site is difficult to navigate or displeasing to the eye on mobile, this needs to be resolved.

For more tips and advice on this topic read the inspiration for this article on the Hubspot Blog here.

Want help getting your site mobile optimized? Need better content for your site's pages? Need an all around website refresh? This is what we love to do. Contact us today!

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