Understanding that a high bounce rate can be fatal to your set-up and negatively influence even the conversion rates is crucial. If it is likely that over 90% of people who have clicked on a link or a banner leave your site after page view, you most likely will not be able to convert them to subscribers or buyers.

While it may be a nagging indicator that should not be taken seriously, it may also indicate more serious problems that can negatively impact organic search position. These concerns can range from a long time to load a specific page, poor layout or design, or the lack of a friendly page layout when viewed on a mobile device.

In this article, I will outline a total of twelve ways that can help you succeed in reducing bounce rates and boosting conversions.

What is Bounce Rate?

“Bounce Rate” is the proportion of first-time visitors to the site who arrive at one specific page and then navigate away from the specific site without going any further in the particular site. It is an industry standard used in web analytics to estimate visitors’ behavior or activity on a particular site.

Here’s a more detailed bounce rate meaning:

• Bounce Rate Definition: Bounce rate measures the percentage of visits to the site where the person left the site immediately from the landing page without interacting with the page’s content.
• Bounce Rate Formula: Bounce rate computation is attained by evaluating the relation between single-page sessions and overall sessions. For instance, if your site was frequently by 1000 visitors in a month but 500 of them left, not to view any second page in your site, your bounce rate would be at 50%.
• Interpretation:
  • The high bounce rate might mean that the page is uninteresting to the visitors, the content does not interest the visitors, or the users are not having a great experience whenever they visit the page (for example, the page’s loading rates might be prolonged, the style of the web page might not be engaging, etc. ).
  • Bounce rate refers to the percentage of first-time users who leave immediately after only viewing one page: a low bounce rate signals that the page being viewed can ensure visitors access other pages on the website and perhaps have a deeper interaction with the content being relayed.

This means that bounce rate can have a highly changed meaning depending on the online resource type and the page’s function under analysis.

For instance, a high bounce rate on a blogging site might not necessarily be bad, especially if the main focus is reading a particular post. In contrast, the same bounce rate on an e-commerce website could signal a major problem since the users do not seem to engage with other pages on the site, which is critical for business.

Bounce rates are considered low, which indicates that you offered sufficient factors to the user to click on an additional page. This is the goal!

A visitor can bounce from your site in several ways:

• Making a move of the cursor to another link that directs to a different website
• Going back to results or a previous website that directed the user to the target page
• They include clicking on the ‘X’ button on the top right corner of the browser window or clicking on The ‘New Tab’ button at the top right corner of the browser tab.
• Entering a new URL on the address bar of the browser
• Timing out the session is mainly attributed to problems that emanate from web hosting.

The WebTrends tool always shows a bounce rate of 0%, and it is almost certain that 20% is a tracking error. While the goal of having an actual bounce rate of 0% is unattainable, there is a difference between having a good bounce rate and a bad one.

Now that we have defined the bounce rate let’s compare it to other industry averages and figure out whether a high or low bounce rate is desirable.

What is a Good Bounce Rate?

Some of you may know the meaning of a good bounce rate, while others may be confused, asking themselves what it is.

Here’s a baseline to start:

• 26-40% is optimal
• 40-70% is average
• 70-90% is poor
• 90%+ is very poor
• 80%+ is very bad

Here, sanity should prevail, so do not celebrate or pat your back if your bounce rate is below 20%. This is probably due to issues such as having two analytics scripts, mishmashing the events tracking, or even 3rd party extensions such as live chat.

However, the rates mentioned above are just the initial point to start from, and the bounce rate itself is not universal and totally depends on industries, your blog topic, and even the device you use. These bounce rate patterns hint at why visitors bounce and what perfect action to take, if any.

Average Bounce Rate of Industries and Website Type

Take a look at the chart below to see an average bounce rate by industry:

Retail and eCommerce sites have the lowest bounce rates among the six categories due to the high volume of pages usually found on a shopping site. Most customers will go to one page and find another product that might capture their attention, and such a customer will open that page.

Or they will buy that product, which will lead them to the checkout page of the website/online store. It is a very straightforward event that is easy to navigate and has a single main route.

More specifically, while traffic rates from initial visits to specific pages such as landing pages, dictionaries, portals, and blogs range considerably, they can be significantly higher than those from unique visits.

However, this does not imply that all such sites are not making sales or are conversionless. They indicate a particular honor normally done on one page only. It helps to sum up what normally would be written in a full page or more than a full page….

A person using a dictionary will leave the house as soon as he or she has obtained the meaning of the word he or she was looking up. As the concept of the portal suggests, the site connects to other sites, and therefore, the readers may spend one session on the portal site.

The landing pages are usually created not to have any other navigation or internal link so people do not deviate from the intended desirable conversion event.

Average Bounce Rate by Channel

Next, let’s look at the average bounce rate by channel or traffic source:

As demonstrated in the above figures, display, and social modes have the highest percentages of bounce rates. That is because people from channels will be in a state of passive browsing, perhaps even clicking a banner ad or following a link from a social media site, then immediately exiting to perform the task they were previously engaged in.

By contrast, the percentage of bounces due to referrals and emails is traditionally the lowest. Users arriving through a link from the comparable website are likely the same people interested in your blog posts.

Another group of customers is the e-mail subscribers, who are even more interested in your business since they subscribed to your e-mail list. Reading through this post as you reflect on ways to lower the bounce rate on your site, try to identify channels that attract most of your traffic.

Average Bounce Rate by Device

The last variable that has an impact on the internet site’s bounce rate is also the device that is utilized to access the said internet site. The problem lies in the fact you do not control which devices your visitors use, but at least you can take it and use it to shoot for a lower bounce rate.

What is more, if we consider the bounce rate of the site users by their device type, it can be seen that mobile users have a higher bounce rate across all industries. This makes sense for the obvious reasons of people’s multitasking or having their attention pulled by a phone notification while standing in a line, on a bus, etc.

Instead, your bounce rate could look even higher if you are getting a lot of mobile users than if you are a site that is heavily visited by those with desktop computers. Remembering this is just good as you work to reduce your bounce rate. Actually, I should say this is the first step to working on your bounce rate.

This, therefore, makes the determination of what can be considered a good bounce rate rather relative. Somewhat more useful, however, than measuring how your bounce rate compares to that of other sites may be tracking changes in your own bounce rate.

For instance, if you have a thousand visits daily on your blog, your bounce rate may always be higher than your daily bargain site visitors. That’s okay! What is the bounce rate? Well, it is not the only aspect of how you do as a site with conversion, and is definitely not the biggest one.

How to Find Bounce Rate on Google Analytics

The change in bounce rate metrics from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 is a consideration for measuring user engagement in website activity. Here’s a deeper look into this key difference

Universal Analytics (UA)

In UA, the bounce rate is calculated based on a straightforward criterion: if the user engaged with the page after the session view, for example, if the user went to other site pages after viewing the page.

A bounce is made when a visitor opens a site page and immediately closes it without activating any other links or initiating any script that uses the resources of that page.

It is a very understandable method, but it may be quite optical in its nature at times. For instance, a user would have spent considerable time on the website, reading a lengthy blog article (meaning that the user is engaged), yet still be considered a bounce if there were no other interactions with the site.

Here’s how to find the bounce rate on Universal Google Analytics (UA):

Viewing the general bounce rate in Universal Analytics (UA) is easy by going to Audience » Overview.

One can click on Behavior – Site Content – All Pages to look at more concrete bounce rates by individual pages.

You will sometimes see another number mentioned as an exit rate. Regarding bounce rate vs exit rate, it might seem that both these parameters are similar, which isn’t completely true. The exit rate reflects the number of visits that end on that page, whereas the bounce rate is pen-based and based on the number of visits that have occurred only on that page.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

GA4 revolutionizes the bounce rate by using another swan dive and considering engagement. It considers many things more than just the page views of web blogs.

A session in GA4 is considered engaged if it:

• Conveys more than 10 seconds of duration.
• Triggers a conversion event,
• This causes the generation of at least two page views in interactive mode or two screen views in proximate mode.

In GA4, the bounce rate is actually the opposite of the engagement rate The engagement rate indicates that 60% of the viewers are coming to the site and are either bouncing or carrying on with their navigation by engaging with other pages. A bounce rate of below 75% in GA4 suggests high activity in the site as more sessions engage a minimum level of activity.

This approach gives a more detailed insight into the site’s usage patterns than the basic access count. It recognizes that engagements do not necessarily have to lead to a new page. For instance, users can be engaged with a ‘click here’ button.

Here’s how to find the bounce rate on  Google Analytics 4 (GA4):

• Step 1: In the backend admin, select Engagement » Pages and screens
• Step 2: Go to the User’s Profile section and click the pencil icon at your screen’s upper right; a sidebar will appear.
• Step 3: After the experiment is complete, click on Metrics.
• Step 4: Expand the window and go to the bottom of the page to find the option ‘Add metric. ’ In the search box, type ‘bounce’ to search for Bounce rate and select it.
• Step 5: Once the Bounce rate is selected, it will populate the list of Metrics. Click Apply.
• Step 6: Tap on the save button. A dropdown will appear, and select Save changes to the current report.
• Step 7: A pop-up window will ask if you want to continue the save operation and discard all the changes. Click Save

How to Reduce the Bounce Rate on Your Website

After determining which pages of your site have a high bounce rate, you will attempt to lower the bounce rate next.

So, to reduce the bounce rate, the first step would be to determine the reasons why visitors are leaving the site. Without that understanding, you may physically attempt all the strategies in the world with little results.

We’ve seen 3 main reasons that visitors bounce from a website:

• Unfortunately, instead of roaming for something exciting, interesting, or unusual, the visitors did not find what they were looking for.
• The subjects discovered what they wanted but were confused about what to do next, so they exited.
• However, Kmart’s website is not user-friendly.

Now, let us consider how we might deal with these reasons individually.

1. Suggest Other Content

It will only mean that maybe, the information on this particular website was not what the viewer was searching for. Don’t you wish you could capture their attention and make them stay on your site longer? Instead of leaving your visitors or customers just leave, OptinAble’s Exit-Intent Technology can help bring them back to what they want.

It would be great if they could use a related post plugin that will ensure they take you to other posts that might help you more. Since WordPress shortcodes can be used perfectly with OptinAble, you could probably create an exit intent popup or a set of related posts.

2. Show Targeted Content to Engaged Users

It is important to note that not all bounces are unhealthy and negative for an email campaign. A user can come to your article, skim through it, find the information he was looking for, and that’s it; he’s gone. This is reasonable and normal in blog posts and resource sections, specifically when several authors have contributed to creating that content.

But that is not good for your bounce rate and conversion ratio. The situation in which you’re desiring to display these users with the most proper offer.

For instance, if a user is on a blog post dedicated to cooking, your suggestion should be a download for a recipe book rather than clothing accessories.

With OptinAble’s page-level targeting, you can offer visitors specific pages depending on their visited pages, the traffic source, and plenty of other parameters. Depending on your platform, you can even continue the campaign to only the clients who have scrolled down to a certain level or spent a required amount of time on the page.

This means that, by displaying relevant content, you should be able to lower your website’s bounce rate, encourage users to interact with the content, and make purchases.

3. Give Users Something Else to Do

Ensuring the website’s layout and all the pages calling to service require a Call to Action is crucial.

Some examples of CTAs are buying an online or offline product, subscribing to the newsletter to receive articles, sharing the article, or filling in the contact form.

Thus, OptinAble can effectively implement all the CTA campaigns of any target audience.

For instance, you could use OptinAble to design a survey pop-up or mimic the look of an exit Intent menu.

4. Display External Media Onsite

It is common for some companies to use feeds in their social media or video content, such as updated ones.

But this inadvertently curates too many possible paths of bouncing or not really engaging with the exhibit. You might notice an interesting picture from your Instagram highlight and get to the site. Even if you have more than one link on your site directing them, this is considered a bounce even though they are going to your social media.

Some examples are built-eye-catching social feeds on the site using Smash Balloon plugins. Using Smash Balloon, when one clicks on an image or video, they can go to the next stage, where they find the caption, description, and comments section on your site.

5. Optimize Content for Search Intent

Individual’s and businesses’ accounts may also bounce due to ads placed on search engine result pages (SERPs). A visitor comes to a site through a search result to find something or learn about something specific. Implicit learning or unlearning may occur if they cannot discover the answer or solution to their problem or query in the shortest time possible.

The next option is to use a top-of-the-line SEO plugin like AIOSEO to help make the content more relevant to the most searched terms.

6. Improve Your Site Speed

Another measure that could be taken to reduce bounce rate is speed – or lack thereof, as slow-loading websites will only drive people away.

The users are very busy and can spend only a few seconds deciding whether to linger on a site. Most will dismiss your site as unresponsive since it doesn’t load quickly, or they may lose interest and exit it midway.

Tools like Pingdom and Google Page Speed are invaluable for driving and measuring it. Overall, all these tools also provide suggestions for improving your site’s speed.

To improve your site’s speed, optimize your images, use Content Delivery Network (CDN), employ better caching, and/or change to a website host provider such as Blue Host.

CDN is another very efficient tool that might be implemented almost immediately to help your site comply with the speed parameters. Check those ones we recommended to improve your website’s speed on the list of the best CDN providers.

7. Optimize Your Site for Mobile Users

Some people are on the run, so most traffic is probably from mobile devices. If they end up receiving the message and seeing a full desktop site shrink down to fit on a screen that is the size of a shoe, they will not sit there trying to fathom out how they can navigate around your site.

Make sure your site’s navigation is mobile-friendly, and test your site on a Smartphone. Perhaps it would be useful to provide a dedicated mobile website or have m-dot domains, click-to-call, and click-to-scroll buttons to improve the usability of a website on a small screen. You can check the rest here for more best practices regarding mobile landing pages.

8. Make Your Text Readable

Most communication on the website, page, or article uses text, even if visual images and videos attract our attention. It might be useful to consider that sometimes, the mere attractiveness of a composition interferes with its readability.

For instance, while this site looks good, reading content is hard. The links are below the fold, in low contrast, and have no prominent icons. They even have a banner on top of the site saying ‘best viewed on desktop,’ and the text is of low contrast that even the banner itself is hard to read. This all leads to an unpleasing view, even worse when viewed through an iPhone!

The text on the website should be easily readable and consistently well-formatted across all devices. It also should not be too large, and a large size will strain users’ eyes or cause them to zoom in to be able to read it. This is particularly important on smaller screens, where it is greatly beneficial to employ large font sizes to make text readable and immediately visible.

Select fonts that do not look ugly or ambiguous when printed out. Reserved or cursive/written accent fonts are acceptable but should not be overused. These colors should completely complement each other and ensure that the amount of line space, font size, margin, padding, and weight stands sufficient to read the content with no confusion. This example is quite good in terms of social media engagement by combining high contrast body font with the accent font and a highly contrasting button call to action.

Another vital area to look into is the language and tone used to communicate one’s message online. Always try to write in plain language and avoid using complex terms and prestige – formal language should be medium or low, but not formal.

9. Split Test Headlines and Page Design

That is why the use of A/B testing different elements on your site is important because A/B split testing is a kind of split testing where you generate two different versions of the same page, where one version differs from the other by headlines, copy, imagery, social Proof or call to action. Then, you can see which of the two versions did well.

This means you can have landing pages for different audiences, regions, keywords, or other appropriate segmentation. If yes, you can determine a user’s geographical location and show him the particular language or region landing page. Presenting some content in users’ languages, currencies, and cultural environments would effectively enhance usability and decrease page bounce rates.

10. Help Visitors Find Their Way

Link your content to the question so that you are not circuitous if that is needed. If it is long, you make several small points throughout your blog post or webpage, so consider creating a table of contents or, in WordPress editing mode, placing a ‘scroll-to-top’ button that takes you straight to the best section.

For instance, while writing their recipe blogs, many are very particular about offering a detailed account of the elaboration process of the recipe accompanied by several procedural pictures. While some visitors may consider such content informative, many others only seek the recipe for reheating the food.

Many recipe bloggers have a Jump to Recipe button on all of them as a hint to readers who may want to skip the entire content of a post. This makes it easy for the visitor interested in what to cook currently without browsing through the rest of the post.

11. Match CTA to Intent

To achieve further, you always want to ensure that the CTAs are visible and correspond to the visitor’s desire.

User intent can fall into 4 categories:

• Informational: The second reveals their expectations: do they expect something specific or general knowledge?
• Navigational: may seek a particular site or webpage, possibly one associated with an organization.
• Commercial: again, it is revealing the intended buying behavior in a product or brand they are currently investigating
• Transactional: they are in the process of making a buying decision or in a continuum to the final purchase intent.

A user that searches ‘How to clean a sneaker’ might not be interested in a popup selling new sneakers, interrupting their usage. Still, in terms of concluding your sneaker-cleaning demonstration, you can introduce an accompanying post about reviewing machine-washable sneaker brands.

On the other hand, there might be a user looking for that specific review about any brand; for him, the affiliate coupon for the brand would be appealing. It all boils down to a very crucial factor, which is understanding the visitor’s intention on your site and ensuring that all the contents on the site meet that very intention.

12. Optimize Call to Action Placement

Most users make up their minds about the site in less than two seconds, and their decisions are usually based on the site’s design. Therefore, what is contained in the first section of your web page should be engaging and relevant. This region can be optimized to inform the buyer instantly of what you are offering and feature a large button that would say ‘Checkout.’

Ensure the call to action is impactful and does not mislead the targeted audience or depict falsehoods. This would just mislead the users, leading to a bad user experience and people being the major cause of bounce and low conversion rates.

This is what our favourite strategy is to regulate a website’s bounce rate, in a nutshell. If you create content relevant to the visitor’s intent, your visitors will not leave your site, thus reducing the bounce rate significantly.

Importance of Conversion Rate Optimization

Regarding online marketing, Conversion Rate Optimization, often abbreviated CRO, is one of the most essential features. This will entail improving your website and the content to produce the intended conversion level where the visitors are willing to engage in the intended action, including purchasing, subscription to the newsletter, and/or filling in some contact information.

Increased Revenue

The reasoning here is that conversion rates can be greatly improved. As such, the overall revenue will increase immensely without necessarily having to generate more traffic to the websites. Optimizing conversion rates is instrumental in increasing the overall ROI for marketing expenses, which implies that even slight increases in conversion rates can have a big impact.

Improved User Experience

One of the main elements of CRO is precisely the study and, if necessary, enhancement of the audience experience. As a result of user feedback, the convenience of using the Internet resource and its services can be increased, while businesses can improve customer satisfaction. This results in traffic being generated repeatedly and long-term patronages from various clients.

Cost Efficiency

In a nutshell, CRO is one of the most efficient approaches if practised at a lesser cost since it is aimed at increasing sales. Unlike SEO, which involves attaining massive traffic for a website, which may include efforts such as buying traffic, CRO involves working as a team to make productive use of the currently available traffic. This can effectively control and reduce the cost incurred on the marketing processes, enhancing profitability.

Better Insights

In addition to increasing conversion rates, the optimization process yields a more profound benefit as one understands clients’ behavioural patterns. Some available approaches to using information include A/B testing and user feedback to improve the available strategies by using information relevant to target audiences.

Competitive Advantage

The four key elements of ubiquity, distinction, immediacy, and control make a website effective and unique in the market. Businesses with higher conversion ratios to the market average than competitors can record higher sales and more customers than their counterparts. This is where CRO plays its role, continually removing barriers and allowing companies to innovate digitally.