How to Reduce Bounce Rate

At Yoko Co, we often say, “you are your web presence.” That is simply because your website is almost always going to be either the first or second impression someone has of you or your organization. In this article we’ll explain how to make sure your website helps make the best possible first impression, better engage users, and tips on how to reduce bounce rate.

What is Bounce Rate?

Simply put, bounce rate is the % of people that leave your site without visiting more than one page. They don’t get below the surface, they hit it and bounce out. While it’s an often misunderstood metric, it’s core purpose is meant to indicate what percentage of your total audience is engaging beyond a surface level.

How to Reduce Bounce Rate

At its core, a high bounce rate indicates a disconnect of what a user expected when they clicked (or tapped) the link to your website and what they actually got once they clicked. A misalignment between the introduction or intent and the first impression your site delivers. The mis-alignment may be an obvious one – like you searched “worlds best hoodie”, clicked a link titled “get the worlds best hoodie for free” and were taken to page that required you to enroll in their scam to win a hoodie.

Or, more often, the mis-alignment is a minor one – you again click on a page but before it finishes loading it starts playing music, or a pop-over appears, or it doesn’t work well on your phone, or it simply doesn’t look professional… there are a myriad of reasons you, and all users of the web, are ready to tab that back button in a heartbeat.

Theses searches, clicks, taps, and “backs” happen on the web millions of times per second. Most impressions are created in less than 0.7 seconds. That may sound too fast, but we’ve all done this. How many of us have gone to a website where the page starts to load and before it’s even finished – BOOM! you’re already hitting the back button, going back to search results or wherever you came from? In fact, kudos to you if you read this far for not hitting the back button immediately.

The same thing happens with your website, and there are a couple of things we can show you to teach you how to reduce bounce rate on your website and ensure you don’t fall victim to what we call “pogo-sticking” – hopping in and out of a page.

Reduce Page Load Time

First thing first when it comes to how to reduce bounce rate on your site – make sure your website loads quickly. We’ve listed the most common culprits of a slow to load site below. And if you use WordPress, our How to Fix a Slow WordPress Site article might just be for you. Bottom line if your website’s taking too long to load, people are almost certainly going to begin to bail out in higher numbers.

• Slow hosting company/server resources
• Unoptimized large size images
• Not using a content delivery network
• Loading unnecessary javascript

Be Relevant to Their Need or Desire

The second item on the list – make sure you show very quickly that you’re addressing the problem they came there to solve. If they’re coming into your homepage, you need to be able to let people understand who you are in relation to them using something we call a “you statement.” i.e. who you are in context to them.

If they’re landing on an internal page from a link from another article, email, social media, or search result you need to make sure the question that they’re asking or the problem that you’re solving is addressed in very large letters at the top of the page.

Be True to Your Brand

Lastly – ensure that your website reflects who you are as a brand. This can be the colors, the overall look, making sure it works on mobile, etc. If you as an organization do not come across well online, you’re going to see a decrease in overall conversion and contact rates, and subsequently lower revenue and overall impact.

You’re also going to see a number of people that may have met you in person, or perhaps you had a good meeting and you felt like things went well, and you’ll never hear from them again. All too often we find that’s because they went back to check out the website (over 90% of people who get a word of mouth referral check out the referred company’s website before deciding if they’re going to reach out) saw something was incongruent between the website and who you were in person and decided not to follow up.

It’s a simple problem to solve; don’t fall victim to it.

And if you are – fix it, or ask us to help you fix it.

What does a lower bounce rate mean for you?

Use our free funnel evaluation worksheet to calculate the revenue impact on your organization.

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