The internet is a highly saturated place, so if your website doesn’t provide what a user is looking for at first glance, they will have plenty of other websites to go to. This is why many website bounce rates are higher than ever, but there are plenty of things you can do about it. So let’s find out a few different things you can do to reduce your bounce rate and improve users’ engagement with your website!
Know The Standard Bounce Rate For Your Industry
The best place to start is by identifying the standard bounce rate for your industry. You may think that you have a great bounce rate or a really poor one for your industry, when in reality, this isn’t the case at all.
Every industry is different, so it is worth doing your research. However, the average is around 50-70%. For really niche industries, for example, if you work in whole turnover insurance, you can expect your bounce rate to be higher as they know exactly what they are looking for. If they aren’t immediately faced with what they are looking for, they will leave.
If you work in fashion and have a website with a wide variety of different styles, sizes, and colors and have found your website through quite a generic keyword, people are more likely to browse for what they are looking for. In this case, you can expect your bounce rate to be around 30-50%.
Overall, make sure that you know whether or not your bounce rate is around average for the industry before making major changes to your landing pages.
Make Sure You Target The Right Keywords
Next up, when you optimize each page of your website, the best way to make sure that the bounce rate is as good as possible is to target highly relevant keywords to the products on the page. If you target any keywords that aren’t closely relevant to the page and begin to rank, when people land on the page, they are unlikely to find what they are looking for and will leave.
So, when conducting keyword research, focus closely on what is on your website. It is much better to target keywords with less searches that will bring qualified users to the website, rather than targeting a keyword just because it gets lots of searches but doesn’t result in conversions. Targeting lower searches will also give you a much better chance of ranking.
To summarise, make sure that your keyword is as relevant as possible to the page!
Consider User Experience Testing
If you have found out that your website’s bounce rate is higher than the industry average even though you have pages optimized with highly relevant keywords, the next thing to consider is user testing. User testing involves people going through your website with fresh eyes and discussing their experience through a range of prompts that you can create. For example, this might be about how easy it is to find a particular bit of information, how easily they can get to a contact form, or whether they understand exactly what the product or service is.
You can find so much information about your website that could dramatically reduce your business’s bounce rate.
Final Thoughts
Reducing your bounce rate might not be the most simple task, but there are plenty of things you can try to reduce it. Looking into the standard bounce rate of your industry, making sure your pages are optimized with highly relevant keywords, and considering user experience testing are all great options that could transform your business.
