Bounce Rate

A bounce is a unit that is used to calculate a single-page session on your site. In simple language, a high bounce rate is calculated when a user opens a single page on your site, and then they exit without triggering any other requests (such as: links, images, videos, etc.) on that site, during that session. 

Accordingly, we define bounce rates as the ones which are measured when a single-page session is divided by the aggregate of all sessions. 

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Bounce rate is also used by Google as a ranking factor. With low bounce rates, your website will certainly earn a position on the first page of Google, because it means that users followed images, links, videos, etc., presented on your website, which can be understood as a sign of trustworthiness and reliability of your website. 

A higher bounce rate on a website might mean that a particular website has issues with content, user experience, page layout or copywriting. We will discuss these things in detail further ahead in the article. 

High bounce rate – Good or Bad?

To be honest, it depends whether a high bounce rate is good or bad. If your website runs with the principle of showing users more than one page to make a profit out of it, then the high bounce rate is very bad for you. Let’s take an example: imagine you run a news page. If users only visit your home page, and do not open an article on news, then a high bounce rate is bad for you.

Alternatively, high bounce rate can have a positive impact, if you run a single-page website like a blog, or let us just say a single-page content, which does not require you to visit other pages on your website. If your website is listed among the just mentioned type, then a high bounce rate is good for you, because it means your website has provided the users with what they were looking for!

Exit Rate vs. Bounce Rate

To understand the concept of exit rate and bounce rate for a particular page, you must keep the following facts in mind:

1. Exit rate measures the percentage of viewers who exited a particular website, in order to visit another one. 
2. Bounce rate measures the percentage of viewers who are redirected from a particular website, through pictures, links, videos, etc.
3. The bounce rate for a page is based solely on sessions that start with that page. 

In order to understand this better, you can take a closer look at the graph presented below. 

The picture on the left stands for a situation when the bounce rate is ranked high. The visitor, for instance, entered the website, and left it, without following any hyperlinks, images, videos, or other presented content. As mentioned above, whether this is good or bad depends on the nature of the website.

The picture on the right is a situation where a visitor follows other presented links or content on the website – low bounce rate. By default, Google ranks these websites better than the ones talked about in the paragraph above. 

Finally, exit rate is determined by the website which is the last one in the row to be visited by the user. 

What is the average bounce rate of websites?

You must be wondering whether other websites also face high bounce rates and what is the average rate for all websites. According to some reports by the experts, the average bounce rate ranges between 41 and 51%.

However, to define a “normal” bounce rate, we have to consider many parameters such as the industry and where your traffic comes from. 

Different types of websites have completely different bounce rates. eCommerce websites come in with the lowest average bounce rate of 20-45%. While almost every blog has a bounce rate that goes all the way up to 90%. We have discussed the reasons behind it above in the article. 

So, if you are worried about your bounce rates, we suggest you check out other websites in the same category for their bounce rate. 

Top four reasons behind users bouncing

Before we get into details about how to reduce bounce rates, it is very important to know what makes them bounce in the first place. Here are the top four reasons why:

Content

People usually google something and land on websites to learn more about a particular subject. But if your website offers poor content which is neither engaging, nor informative, then it is highly expected that the user will close your website. 

User Experience

The design of your website contributes to whether they want to stay or leave within a few seconds. If you have engaging content in place, but your website’s color, design, font, etc. are dull and confusing, then there is a very good chance of users leaving within a few seconds. 

It’s better to have an eye-pleasing website with good content, so as to reduce the bounce rate. 

Technical Error

There have been many reports in the past year about users leaving the sites without any reason. But when the experts looked into it, they found out that the users were leaving because there was a technical error with these sites. 

These errors can be anything, for example: your site’s JavaScript may have malfunctioned or a plugin may have gone down, which led to a form not loading. Because of this, the bounce rate can also increase. 

Speed Issues

In the world of 4G and 5G internet, any website taking more than a few seconds to load is incompetent. Your website should load instantly because users don’t like to wait. Even a single second improvement to your website’s loading time can ensure lower bounce rates. 

Ways to reduce bad bounce rates

Now that you know what your website is lacking and what is causing your users to bounce, we can start with the tips and tricks you need to decrease your bounce rate and utilize every single option, so that you can make users’ experience better. 

1. Optimizing your page loading time

Many people make assumptions when their bounce rate is high, assuming that the issue must be lying within the contents of the page. But they never guess that major problems can happen before users even get a chance to read wonderful contents and see a beautiful website.

One of these problems is the loading speed of a website. Every time you receive an organic user, they visit your website to get info, and not to waste time. 

So, if your website is taking more than 3-5 seconds to load then there is a 70% chance that your potential user will close the tab and look for the answers on another website. 

In the era of 4G and 5G, the internet speeds have reached newer heights, and with a new and faster internet connection, users’ patience has also grown thinner. 

They do not want to wait for anyone or anything. With this competitive market, you cannot afford to cash in your users’ visits,  if you have a slow website. The only way to fix this issue is to optimize your website for faster loading. Here is a list of things you can do to make your website faster:

1.      Minimize HTTP requests;
2.      Minify and combine files;
3.      Use asynchronous loading for CSS and JavaScript files;
4.      Defer JavaScript loading;
5.      Minimize time to first byte;
6.      Reduce server response time;
7.      Choose the right hosting option for your needs;
8.      Run a compression audit;
9.      Enable Compression;
10. Enable browser caching;
11.      Reduce image size;
12. Use a CDN;
13. Use third-party hosting platforms;
14. Optimize CSS delivery;
15. Reduce the number of plugins on your website.

2. Make your content more user friendly

Have you ever clicked on a web page, and found an article so big that it looks like a physics book back from high school? 

When you spot such a website, no matter how urgently you need information from that website, you will exit it and look for the info somewhere else. After making your website faster, you will need to serve your users with something they will want to read either partially or fully. 

In most cases, the user will only read a part of your article first to gauge your knowledge on the topic then read the rest of it. 

So never overwhelm your visitors. Never show them articles that have weighty paragraphs that span entire pages, and make use of white space to make your content more approachable. You can follow these steps while writing content for your website, these are as follows:

• Appropriate use of headers
• Frequent subheadings
• Suitable images
• Bulleted lists 
• Friendly Tone
• Correct information
• Add table of content

The use of these formatting options will make your content less intimidating and user friendly.  

3. Tender use of sidebar widgets and promotions tender

The content has to be your primary focus while trying to develop a stable and trustworthy website. Even if your website collects money by placing ads, those ads should be neatly placed, without preventing users from having direct access to the content. 

Otherwise, you risk a high bouncing rate from your website, as well as users’ decreased interest. 

The prime example of this are blog pages. There are many blog websites that offer decent content, but which are cramped. By cramped, we mean the sidebars of the article are full of ads, offers, award emblems, and other irrelevant things. 

This is a surefire way to overwhelm your visitor and compel them to quit your website immediately. So, now you know how overwhelming sidebar widgets and promotions can be. But without such ads, your revenue will decrease considerably. 

So we suggest you do these things when you customize promotions on your page. 

1. Add only those ads that offer readers additional value;
2. Offer the option to choose SFW (Safe for work) ads;
3. Try to stop/minimize the use of popup ads because these are very annoying and will definitely give rise to the bounce rate;
4. Offer them options to turn off the ads or an option to hide the ads;
5. Allow ad blockers to run freely –  some websites do not allow entrance to the users who have ad blockers installed, which leads to enormous bounce rates;
6. Stop using notification ads. These ads can be very confusing and many will fall in the ad trap and click it. This will not only increase your bounce rate but it will also tarnish your reputation for future use.

4. Serve your users right

If you look for SEO tips online, you will find information like the use of keywords, keywords density, etc. These tips regarding keywords will make sure that you rank higher in SERPs. 

But what after that? Are you sure that you are serving your users right? Is your article just a mixture of multiple keywords to get higher ranks? If you think it is true for your website, then sadly this may be the reason why you may face a high bounce rate.

Remember that users only visit your website to get info, buy a product, hire services, etc., and if your site will not provide these, then why would they stay? Customer service is everything in this market. Those websites that rank lower than yours and provide better and information-rich content will suffer less bounce rate than you. 

In technical terms we call it relevance, it decides the conversion rate optimization of a website. How relevant your website is to the search result is directly proportional to the bounce rate. 

To fix this issue of balancing between SEO practices and your content, you must optimize your content according to the keywords used in it. Always make sure that the content of the page you serve is highly relevant to that query. While choosing keywords consider the intent of the user.

5. Optimize for mobile viewing

There are many websites on the internet whose owner thinks it’s a waste of time and money to optimize their website for mobile users. 

Let us give you an estimate of how big this market of mobile browsing is: the latest global figures show an increasing number of smartphone users in 2020, the number of global smartphone users was recorded at 3.6 billion. And it is making a 5.9 % annual increase!

This increasing population of smartphone users has started to rival desktop PC users, which means that the number of people using their phones to browse the internet has also exploded recently. If your website looks like the picture on the left, as opposed to the one on the right, then sadly you will lose the interest of your users and this will lead to higher bounce rates. 

It is very crucial to improve your user’s experience to decrease bounce rates. To do that, you must optimize your website to look more user-friendly on a smartphone too. 

Your website should look something like the picture on the right that is mentioned above. Failing to optimize your website for smartphone users is practically begging them to bounce and take their business elsewhere. To make your website more mobile-friendly, you should follow these tips as follows: 

1. Make your website more responsive; 
2. Make accessing to information easier for your visitors; 
3. Stop using text-blocking ads and pop-ups;
4. Make your website speed a priority;
5. Make your web design simple;
6. Make sure that your button sizes are large enough to work on mobile; 
7. Use a larger font size; 
8. Don’t use flash;
9. Remember to include the viewport meta tag;
10. Add an option to revert back to desktop mode; 
11.   Regularly visit your own website as a user using a mobile phone to test your website.

Final thoughts 

The point of this blog was to introduce and explain thoroughly the concept of bounce rates. 

In the growing world of the online environment, the ones who want to make money on the Internet have to follow strategies which will make them more appealing to the customers and highly ranked on Google.

In order to do that, one of the crucial things to follow, if we are to talk about website popularity, is to reduce bounce rates. Lower bounce rates, in turn, indicate that one’s website is up to the standards, trustworthy, and reliable. 

We hope that you have found our pieces of advice useful and helpful, and we strongly believe that we are soon to find your website as one being highly ranked on Google and up to all the most recent standards.