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5 Reasons Why Your Website Has A High Bounce Rate

5 Reasons Why Your Website Has A High Bounce Rate

If your website is struggling to convert or retain its readers, you may have a high bounce rate problem on your hands. A bounce rate refers to the percentage of your site visitors that leave without viewing any other pages. Whether this is due to a misdirected visitor, a general lack of interest, or poor site structure, a high bounce rate can signal a range of different issues, and figuring out just what they are can be an involved process. But letting a high bounce rate go unchecked means you’re sacrificing valuable traffic and leads, and may be overlooking a larger problem with your website. So to make things more manageable, we’ve compiled a list of top reasons you may have a high bounce rate, and steps you can take to improve your site’s performance.

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    What Is A High Bounce Rate?

    At this point, you may be wondering: “What constitutes a high bounce rate, and what is a good bounce rate?” The answer, unfortunately, isn’t so straightforward and depends on the type of page you are analyzing. For example, a well-run retail site should have a bounce rate between 20-40%, while higher percentages would be considered average or poor. On the other hand, a simple landing page will typically have a bounce rate between 70-90%. Generally speaking, a bounce rate of 80% or higher is considered high (with the exception of simple landing pages, as just mentioned), while a bounce rate ranging from 30-50% is considered excellent.

    ” Some sites might view a bounce rate of 80% as awesome, whereas other sites might see this as nothing short of catastrophic. It really depends on your site and business goals. ”

    – wordstream.com

    Why Is My Site Experiencing A High Bounce Rate?

    You can check your bounce rate by logging into your Google Analytics page, and navigating to Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages. This view will let you compare the various bounce rates across your landing pages so that you can pinpoint the areas where you need to do the most work. Armed with this information, you’re ready to take a look at some reasons your bounce rate may be high, as well as steps you can take to help improve it. 

     

    1. Slow Loading Speed

    Did you know that most visitors will leave a site if the page they opened fails to load under 3 seconds? That means, your site has that much time to either attract or turn off a potential lead, and that’s before they even set their eyes on your design, your content, or your products and services! In addition, slow loading speed will also negatively impact your SEO ranking, making your site and its contents less visible to its audience. It goes without saying that you cannot convert a lead without ever delivering your offer, so if you’re experiencing high bounce rates on a page that is slow to load, you’ll need to address the reasons behind it.

    Slow loading time can be a result of various issues, such as overly large images, extraneous code, or text-heavy descriptions, so it’s important to analyze the page in detail and remove anything that could be slowing you down. Again, you’re aiming for a loading speed under 3 seconds – so the faster the better!

     

    2. Hard-To-Read Content

    You may have a brilliant blog post, filled with a treasure trove of information on a relevant topic, but your formatting may be making your content difficult to read for your audience. If your page is filled with blocks of heavy text, minimal negative space, and is devoid of any visual elements, you risk turning off a majority of your readers. The same goes for content that is spammed with internal linking or obviously jammed full of keywords. These practices, once used for SEO purposed, will now only work against your SEO score and readability.

    To make your content easier to digest, try breaking it up into shorter, concise paragraphs and adding plenty of subheadlines and/or bullet points. Also be sure to use images that help illustrate your point, whether that’s an infographic or a stock photo. Just be sure to keep an eye on your loading speed.

    3. Wrong Keyword Usage

    Simply putting out content based on your whims alone will likely result in a higher bounce rate. The reason for this is simple, even if you consider your topic interesting, it may simply not be relevant to the members of your audience.

    When it comes to content, keywords are – as their name suggests – key at attracting the right traffic. The right, high-quality keywords can capture the search volume of an audience that is naturally interested in your product or business, and most likely to convert. This means a significantly lowered bounce rate, as your readers will likely engage with the information you are offering.

    To get the most relevant, quality keywords, you can use Google’s Keyword Planner, which gives you valuable ideas based on your qualifiers. All you’ll have to do from here is craft content around these keywords to drive new traffic and engagement to your site.

    4. Annoying Popups

    Many businesses use pop-up windows as a way to gather email information from their visitors; and yet, an overuse of popups can create an undesirable effect on your audience and cause a rise in your bounce rate. Some would argue that opting out of popups altogether can actually be a better long-term strategy, but if you insist on using them, be sure you’re being careful about where and when your popups are being activated. If you suspect your popups could be the reason behind your high bounce rate, try removing them or running a simple A/B test to measure the difference.

    5. Targeting The Wrong Audience

    If you’re experiencing a high bounce rate and not enough conversions from your content marketing, it may be the case that you’re not targeting the right demographic. This is a serious issue since your entire site (if not business operation) should be centered around a well-developed customer persona. But if that target is off, you could be spending your time and money directing an uninterested audience to your site.

    To turn things around, you’ll need to rethink and recreate your content in a way that makes it attractive to the right specific audience. Doing so will require research into your target customer persona to understand what truly matters to this demographic and how you can build content to engage with them.

     

    Final Thoughts

    We hope these tips help identify possible issues on your site and help you improve your high bounce rate. The possibilities listed above are just a few reasons you may be experiencing a high bounce rate, and there may be certain issues that aren’t as easy to identify or fix. If you’re still experiencing an above-average bounce rate, or are unsure about what steps to take next, reach out to trusted digital marketing professionals to help you analyze and optimize your website. Remember, that not all pages yield the same average bounce rate, but nonetheless, there is always room for improvement.

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