Owning a well-designed website that ticks all the boxes when it comes to functionality is not enough. You still might end up with a high bounce rate, which means your earning potential won’t increase. If you want a website that manages to generate revenue, it’s vital to decrease your bounce rate considerably. These days there are tools to monitor your bounce rate and—in case you notice your bounce rate is too high—you need to come up with a plan to reduce it. If you are wondering what you need to do to lower your bounce rate, then let’s take a look at 12 proven techniques that are known to work.

Better Content & Readability 

It’s not just the quality of content on your website that plays a critical role in decreasing the bounce rate, it’s also the readability. A visitor will always want to read the content on your website without having to strain their eyes or scroll too much. A lot of text cluttered together seldom attracts visitors. People always prefer to read small paragraphs that are to the point. 

Irrespective of how good the content on your site is, if it’s cluttered it won’t be appealing to read. Make sure you always include headings, subheadings, and bullet points to improve the readability of the content. You can also use elements like images, pull quotes, and iconography to make your content more visually appealing..

Avoid Pop-Ups

It’s a known fact that about 70% of users hate seeing pop-ups when they access a website. As much as possible, you should avoid having a pop-up on your website because this often leads to a higher bounce rate. 

One of the major reasons why a pop-up is not advised is because it interferes with the reading process. This is because just when a reader is about to gain interest in your business, it’s interrupted because of the pop-up. If you have multiple pop-ups, visitors will avoid coming to your website altogether because it’s not a pleasant experience.

Strong CTA 

Once you manage to get a visitor to your site, you need to let them know why you got them there in the first place. A website without a strong call to action (CTA) is like a story without an ending. It’s an incomplete experience and visitors tend to drift away and forget the reason they came to your site in the first place. Your audience wants to know what the next steps you need them to take: should they call your offices, fill out a form, or browse your product catalog? Clearly letting them know what action you want them to take removes uncertainty and removes having to figure out what to do next.

A compelling CTA doesn’t necessarily need to be direct. It can be as subtle as possible as long as it manages to convey the message effectively. Websites without a CTA usually have a high bounce rate.

Better Branding 

Your website should convey a strong and clear message, not only through its text but the overall design and logo as well. The minute a visitor comes to your website, they should not only know exactly what service or product you sell but also your values and attitude. There are tiny elements and details every designer can add that helps a website synchronize with the brand. Not only does this lessen the bounce rate, but it also focuses on brand awareness, differentiating you from your competitors.

Fresh Content 

Outdated content could be one of the leading reasons why your bounce rate is at an all-time high. It is necessary for you to regularly update your content and ensure it matches the latest trends. Gone are the days when people wanted never-ending pages of content. People do not have a lot of time in hand today and they always look for short and precise content.

In a time where software and services can often vanish in a short time, knowing that a company they could be working with is active lends a sense of stability. No one wants to work with a company that might not be around in a few months.

The Right Keywords in the Right Place 

We are in a world where we already know the importance of using keywords but that’s not sufficient. Using keywords is not the key, using the keywords properly is what matters the most. It is important to conduct proper keyword research and understand what kind of keywords suit your business. You also need to check what your competition is doing and the number of times each keyword has been searched.

We already discussed readability, and making sure your keywords stand out can be key. Modern day users of a website rarely read content top-to-bottom on a webpage. Instead, they skim and page looking for relevant info. By placing keywords properly, your users can catch the “info scent” and be led further into your website.

Target Marketing 

If you have a local business and you are promoting in international markets, your bounce rate is bound to be high. If you want your business to shine, you’ve got to target the right audience. There are various marketing tools available so you can market your business effectively online.

Combining good SEO practices and website analytics, creating user/audience personas, and even conducting interviews with current and past customers are all great ways of gaining insight into the needs of your potential audience.

Meta Description 

A strong meta description goes a long way. It should be eye catching yet incorporate your primary keywords. There is no point in getting to the first page of a search engine if you do not have an effective meta description to match.

Multiple Landing Pages 

The primary reason business owners create a website is to increase sales. If you check your website statistics, you will realize that the bounce rate is the highest on your homepage. If you want to avoid this, the smartest way to go about this is to create multiple landing pages.

Ideally, you should choose one landing page for the products or services you have to offer. This will help you cover more target-rich content and you will also be able to approach a wider target audience.

Less Load Time 

One of the major reasons why a website suffers from a high bounce rate is because it takes time to load. We live in a fast-paced world and nobody likes waiting, even if it means a couple of seconds more. When designing your website and choosing your hosting plan, the most important thing you need to take into consideration is how fast your site will load. It shouldn’t take more than 3 seconds because visitors tend to drift away after that.

One pitfall we often see are clients relying on website building services or premade templates. While cost effective and quick to set up in many cases these types of sites create clunky code that slows a site down. Hiring a like Lform—which uses professional web developers to code custom websites—makes sure that your website is lean, mean, and optimized for speed!

External Links To New Windows 

For many years, visitors have had to click the back button if they wanted to go back to the previous page on a website. This does increase the bounce rate by a fair bit. If you want to avoid this from happening, you need to ensure that every time a visitor clicks external links on your site; it opens up in a new window or a new tab. This allows your users to access the information you’re providing while keeping a reference point of where that information came from, making your company and brand more valuable in their eyes. 

Mobile Friendly

It’s been a trend for a while now that customers expect an excellent mobile experience. In B2C markets, over 80% of customers are visiting your site on mobile phones. In our experience with B2B companies, this number hovers around 20%—however that’s still 1 in 5 users coming to your site!

Making sure that your website works great on small screens is a must. The reason for this is when somebody accesses your website on their mobile phone and your website is not compatible with a smaller device, navigating the site becomes a complete nightmare.

Designing the perfect website might be difficult, however, designing one without errors and one that can benefit your business is something you should target. There are just a handful of things you need to do to lower your bounce rate and this can increase your revenue greatly. So get fixing and get growing.