Your website bounce rate is an important metric that measures the percentage of people who land on your website but do nothing. They don’t click on a menu item or read any of your blogs. Because there’s no engagement, the Google Analytics server doesn’t receive a trigger from the visitor.
While you won’t win everyone’s approval, a high bounce rate indicates that your website isn’t performing well for your audience. Let’s look at how bounce rates work and the best ways to lower this rate.
What is a Bounce? How is it Calculated?
A “bounce” is a single-page session on your website. The visitor lands on your website but leaves without doing anything. They either close the tab or click on the back browser. There are many reasons why someone might bounce off your website, but some of the most common are having poor navigation, not offering the right products or services or having the wrong vibe.
To get this metric, Google Analytics takes the number of single-page sessions and divides it by the total number of site visits overall. Your average bounce rate is then used as a ranking factor. Here is how you can measure your website’s bounce rate:
- 30-40 percent is an excellent bounce rate.
- 50-70 percent is an acceptable bounce rate, but there’s room for improvement.
- 80-90 percent is a poor bounce rate and improvement is needed.
How to Reduce Bounce Rates
While there are many ways to reduce your bounce rate, here are some of the best:
- Remove pop-ups. If you want to get visitors to do something, rely on your calls to action and site design.
- Make your site easy to read. Good readability will help keep people on your site. Here are some ways to format your content:
- Use clear subheadings
- Use bullet points to explain key points
- Add charts, images and screenshots
- Insert internal links to other web pages on your site
- Bold, italicize or underline important words and phrases
- Ask questions or share facts to get readers thinking
- Make your conclusion actionable
- Write relevant content. Keep your website up to date with the latest information. Evergreen topics are always valuable, but readers also crave new information related to industry trends and new product releases.
A good website with low bounce rates starts with the right web developer. Magna Technology creates optimized websites that people enjoy using. Get in touch with us today to discuss your website and how to make it work for you!
