What’s your bounce rate like?
A high bounce rate on your website can impact many things. Not only will it mean you are losing sales, but it will affect the ranking of your site in Google and the performance of Facebook and Instagram ads, so you will be losing money in more ways than one.
So what is a high bounce rate?
The bounce rate is the % of people who land on your website and leave it again without browsing any further. You would expect a certain amount to bounce automatically – if, for instance, they are just checking for information that is immediately visible on the page they land on.
A high bounce rate would be around 55% or above. It can vary by industry but here are the key classifications:
- 25% or lower: this is too good, something is probably broken
- 26-40%: excellent, you have a superstar website
- 41-55%: average, your website is performing well (but there is room for improvement)
- 56-70%: higher than average, you need to put some focus on it and make some changes
- 70%+: not good, or something is broken – make it a priority and implement changes immediately
Reasons for a high bounce rate
- Bad content
People generally visit a website for more information. If that information isn’t immediately visible or is hard to find, they will go to where it is more easily obtainable (probably your competitor’s website). It is also important that your content is easy to digest – it speaks the language of the user and is easy to scan-read.
Identify the ‘why’ for your website visitors and ensure you are delivering it in the easiest, most concise way possible.
2. Your website is too slow
It’s almost 2020, the era of superfast connection speed and people just do not want to hang around waiting for a webpage to load, particularly if there are other options available to them. According to research from Google, 53% of people will leave a mobile page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. That’s not even enough time for them to see how good your content is!
Check your page speeds and check them regularly or risk losing prospective customers to your competition.
3. Poor online customer journey
So we know that people will decide within 3 seconds whether or not to remain on a website. Their first impression will be the biggest impression. If the navigation is complicated or layout/design is not pleasant, the next button they will press will be the ‘back’ one.
Walk your customers journey online yourself and ask yourself – do they have to think in order to find what they are looking for? A good website directs the user through the information with very little thought involved.
4. Your site is not optimised for mobile.
In this day and age, if your site is not optimised for mobile then you really shouldn’t even have one! How many people do you know who sit at a computer (when not at work) or laptop surfing the internet, instead of on their phones or tablets? I rest my case.
5. Technical error
If you are seeing an extremely high bounce rate on a particular page, check that there isn’t a technical error causing it. These can be very common due to the increased amount of plugins now available for websites and often, you will not be aware of them until you actually visit the page yourself.
6. Misleading search titles and meta descriptions
These are what a user sees when they type a search term into Google.
Google will match the search term to the titles and meta descriptions on your webpages – so if a user lands on the page and the content doesn’t reflect these, they will bounce right back out (and Google will penalise your page/website quality, in turn reducing how often you appear in search results).
Do an audit of your website (or get someone to do it for you, like me) and make sure you have relevant search titles and meta descriptions. Without them, you are missing out on free traffic.
Bounce rate is a key performance indicator for any website. So if your site is your vehicle to gaining brand awareness and new customers, make sure you are aware of it and monitor it regularly.
Here are some more factors that affect bounce rate, which you might find useful as a reference:
Source: Neilpatel.com
If you would like assistance with any areas of your Digital Marketing, get in touch.
