14 Tricks to Reduce Bounce Rate And Increase Your Sales (2020)

upqode | Aug 7th, 2020

If you are currently experiencing poor sales or a sudden decrease in your customer conversion rate, you might be going through an increase in bounce rates. There are a lot of factors that can affect online sales, however, one important thing to look out for is a maintained and minimized bounce rate. I brought a list of tweaks to reduce bounce rate that can help you increase converisons.

A high bounce rate can be the number one culprit behind many unsuccessful online businesses. Even if you have excellent web design skills you sometimes get a higher bounce rate.  This is why learning to assess and evaluate your bounce rate as well as understanding the different methods you can employ to help you reduce it, is so important.

sales increase diagram

Today I will be discussing what a bounce rate is, why is a low bounce rate important, and why it is so important for you to learn and apply tricks to reduce bounce rate and keep it at a minimum.

What is Bounce Rate?

Let’s say a new visitor stumbles upon your site, they could either continue browsing through different sections and pages or exit entirely. A “bounce” occurs when a visitor enters your site then exits immediately without further interaction with the rest of your website. This could probably be caused because your visitor was unable to find what they need or want from your site. Perhaps, they changed their mind. 

Whatever the reason is, it should be your goal to oversee every possible reason for a visitor to exit your site. 

If you care for a technical definition, Google defines bounce rate as the percentage of single-page interactions wherein a visitor leaves immediately without further exploration or interaction with your site. There are many researchers and web development agencies that specialize in this issue. 

There are plenty of ways on how to reduce bounce rates. But before we get into this, let me talk about how to assess what a good bounce rate is?

What’s a Good Bounce Rate?

It might be obvious that you should look for ways to reduce bounce rate and increase your sales. But is a high bounce rate always a bad thing?

It depends!

If you are new to the online platform, it might be worrisome to see a high bounce rate on your website. However, the implications and meaning of this metric can vary depending on several factors. 

Here is a short checklist to help you assess if you are doing fairly well with your bounce rate or if you need to work on means and ways to reduce it.

Having a High Bounce Rate is Normal if:

  1. You are running a single-page site like a blog
  2. All your content can be found on one site
  3. You do not have any other pages or sections for your audience to go to 
  4. It is not your goal to monetize or have your visitors complete a purchase or an action 

A High Bounce rate is Bad if:

  1. Your website’s success depends on visitors viewing multiple pages on  your site 
  2. The main landing page is a gateway for other critical content 
  3. Your landing page only contains information about your organization and not the products that you have designed for your target audience to purchase 
  4. You are in the retail, customer service, or portal industry.

Additionally, your website’s bounce rates can also depend on what industry you are in. 

As mentioned above single-page sites like simple landing pages would normally have a high bounce rate. It is normal for a blog or landing page with just one call to action to have a 70-90% bounce rate. 

Content websites experience 40-60%, Lead generation such as services for sale experience 30-50%, Portals, and Service sites usually experience 10-30%, while online retail stores commonly experience a 20-40% bounce rate.

buying online

With this said, it should be your goal for your audience to stay on your site, complete the intended action, or convert them to actual customers. Minimizing your bounce rate to the ideal percentage in your industry can tremendously increase your online sales. Because your visitors will actually start buying. 

I call a high bounce rate the enemy of good conversion rates. No matter how good your digital marketing is, if the customer is not going to stay on your website, sales won’t increase. Since conversion rates are a good measure of your ability to attract and appeal to your target audience, it is an influential factor in determining your company sales.

Here is What You Need To Do to Reduce Your Bounce Rate

Now that we have gotten what a bounce rate is and what it can do for your online sales, let’s go into ways to reduce the bounce rate and boost your sales. The baseline principle in reducing your bounce rate is making sure that your landing page is well optimized.

First, identify and work on the issues and problems visitors may be encountering on your landing page. To help guide you on what the problems may be, you can compare your best-performing pages with those that have a high bounce rate. 

These are some tried and tested ways for you to increase your conversion rates and keep your bounce rates at an absolute minimum.

1. Provide a Better Overall User Experience

Your landing page, is usually the first page visitors see of your website. This means your landing page is your only shot for a first impression. Providing an easy and enjoyable experience for your customers and potential buyers will help remedy your issues with a high bounce rate.

laptop on the table

Think of every detail and element there is to your website then assess how you can make it better for your customers. It is helpful to imagine the user experience as the overall feel your audiences get when using and viewing your site. It is the message and identity your landing page is able to communicate to your audiences through all its elements. 

One important thing in improving the user experience is having an efficient and intuitively designed website. Nowadays, accessibility and functionality are just as important as your website’s aesthetic design. 

There has been an increase in the use of tablets and mobiles for online shopping. This means, making sure that your site renders seamlessly and perfectly on mobiles and tablets is a good place to start. 

2. Improve Your Content’s Readability

The content communicated in texts needs to be easily read and understood. In order to increase conversion rates, your content should be optimized for reading on all devices. On the writing, itself, make sure you use words and keywords that are easily understood. 

Avoid putting walls of texts right next to each other to help make the reading experience of your site visitors enjoyable and less of a burden. The last thing you want is a visitor to exit because they were intimidated or overwhelmed by the number of texts on your website.

Empty space, choosing the right font, and good use of color combination can help you in improving your content readability.

3. Improve Your Site’s Speed

A good way to reduce the bounce rate is to ensure your site runs at optimal speed. The average attention span of online users is around 8 seconds which means you have very little control of whether a potential customer would wait for a slow website to load. 

Improving your site’s speed goes together with increasing your site’s responsiveness. 

Minimizing the waiting time for any action on your website can help improve the user experience as well. A fast loading site will enable you to funnel visitors in completing your intended action- whether its to purchase, donate, or to subscribe for full membership on your website.

4. Avoid Pop-ups – Don’t Disrupt the UX

UX or user experience talks about the emotions and attitudes users feel when using a product or service.

Popups can easily distract a reader or a user from the current content they are viewing. Avoiding pop-ups will make sure the user experience seamless and enjoyable. Cramming ads and calls to action on sidebars can also divide the attention of your visitors so use them sparingly.

Frequent pop-ups can be annoying or unbearable for many users. As much as possible, run popups at the minimum and give your target audience the chance to opt-out quickly and easily form them. 

This means allowing them to easily exit from the popup by making the exit option more visible. 

reduce bounce rate

Too many dynamic elements on a website such as pop-ups can also give a website a less credible feel. Especially if the content on pop-ups are irrelevant to what the user is currently viewing. This takes time away from your visitors or customers from completing purchase so use them sparingly and wisely. You can avoid pop-ups by hiring a professional web development company

5. Use Videos To Engage Your Audience

Videos are a great way to capture your audience and engage them further with your website. A video on the background or placed strategically to attract visitors to your call of action can do wonders in improving your bounce rate.

Videos on customer testimonials are also a great way to showcase your product in use by actual purchasing costumers. (I’ll discuss the importance of testimonials later on in this list). Videos can help show your product and how well it functions when actually being used by a real customer.

6. Keep Your Blog Fresh With the Right Content

It is important to find what your target audience prefers to see or read on your website. However, having a consistent type of content posted on a regular frequency can help ensure your customers come back.

The right content is relevant to your target audience. Make sure to produce content that directly talks about common queries and topics your target audience is concerned with. It is not enough to target high performing keywords and employ them on all your content. 

The real deal-breaker is being able to actually provide the information or the product your customer is seeking.

7. Create a Compelling Call-to-Action

Your call-to-action should be compelling and easily accessed by your visitors. As mentioned above, it only takes a few seconds for an online consumer to decide if they will carry on interacting with your website. 

Making sure your call-to-action is effective and strategically placed on your site can help them complete their action. More importantly, your call-to-action should be clear and honest. Online consumers are highly sensitive to false advertising. This means that they are great judges of whether what your offering is true and beneficial or if it is trying to deceive.

What you are offering or promoting should be easily visible in your call to action to avoid misleading your target audience. This will encourage trust and confidence with your brand as a whole as well.

8. Use High-Quality Images to Captivate User Attention

High-quality images and photos are also another way to reduce bounce rates. Images take less loading time than videos and can be easily seen and accessed by your potential customer upon entering your site.

In line with this, images, therefore, have a massive influence on the way a visitor decides on their first impression with your site. High-quality images can communicate credibility and authority to your target audiences. 

Using high definition images or photos for your website’s background helps make your site more dynamic and engaging as they easily grab people’s attention. 

9. Add Customer’s  Testimonials Slider

Online shoppers and consumers tend to value what other customers have to say for your products. Featuring an array of customer testimonials can help build your brand’s credibility thus encourage your potential customer to stay and interact more with your website. 

 You can improve your website’s credibility by showcasing testimonials and reviews about your products from customers That hold their own authority over the subject. 

For example, featuring a testimonial from a highly credible source in your industry can help boost Audience trust and credibility.

If this does not apply to you, Simply providing a name and picture To your featured customer testimonial Can help boost your credibility online. Videos and images of your customers using your actual product can also help demonstrate the success and benefits your product has to offer.

10. Target Abandoning Users

Sometimes despite all your efforts, a visitor would choose to still exit you. However, there are great technologies out there that can help you track is a potential customer is about to leave without completing your intended action.

Before a customer or potential buyer leaves your site you can target them by providing a message specifically targeted for them to stay.

Examples of these messages are last-minute discount offers, Special subscription plans, Or by simply asking for their Email for you to continue to be in touch.

A great technique is to combine an exit offer with a subscription form to encourage your visitor to complete the purchase and become a subscriber!

11. SEO-Target Keywords With High-Value Traffic

As mentioned above, it is important for you to use produce relevant content for your target audiences. One way to reduce bounce rates is to make sure your site is visible in the first place. Using SEO-target keywords that are relevant and highly sought after, would help peddle your content to the top of search lists.

Actually talking about the keywords and not just mentioning them repeatedly throughout the article will make sure your target audience sees and finds what they want from your site. 

SEO audits and maintenance should be regularly done to help keep your website relevant.

12. Split Test Everything

Perhaps you are looking for leads for your new market strategy. One way to achieve the best results is by performing A/B testing on all your content. As stated in previous sections your landing page defines whether a potential customer exits or continues interacting with your site.

Split tests would allow you to experiment with different strategies, designs, and elements to find out what generates the most audience engagement. Split tests give you a good lead on what your target audience actually prefers and what they do no respond well to.

Customizing and localizing landing pages and content can help you reach your different target audiences better. 

Say you are an international brand with customers all over the globe. Simply personalizing the user experience for them by changing the content to their local language and currency will encourage them to stay on your site.

13. Simplify Your UX

As mentioned on the very top of this list, the best way to reduce bounce rates is to improve your overall customer experience. One way to do so is to make everything as simple and accessible as possible. 

reduce bounce rate

User experience can be optimized if your website is intuitively designed where the most inexperienced user can easily find what they are looking for. Seamless navigation on all devices is an excellent way to reduce bounce rates. 

As mentioned above, the design and aesthetic value of your website are just as important as its features, structure, and functionalities. 

Having a simple UX also means getting rid of unnecessary steps that might cause friction in your potential customer’s purchasing process. This means, only provide or ask for information that is absolutely necessary for your site visitors to know in order to complete their purchase.

Avoid steps, pop-ups, or any form of possible distraction for your potential customer. 

14. Find Your Target Audience 

This might be a no-brainer but all of these tricks to reduce bounce rate will render useless if you do not get to know your target audience. Finding and understanding your target audience is will help you come up with the most effective market strategies.

Part of finding your target audience is getting to know their common behaviors and preferences are online. As mentioned previously in this article, split testing or A/B testing can help you assess which elements and content perform best with your customers. 

Additionally, finding out how visitors and customers navigate through your site can give you insightful leads for a more efficient market strategy.

Developing a buyer persona helps in communicating effectively with your target audience. 

Here are is a checklist I recommend you used to help you identify and find your target audience

  • Who is your current customer base? What are the important demographic details they have in common
  • What products or services do they commonly purchase from you?
  • Why do they purchase from your site despite having many other options?
  • Who are your top competitors and how are you doing in terms of market share?
  • What demographic, culture, type of person do you want to target?
  • What does your social media and website analytics tell you?
  • Which other virtual groups and communities are they part of?
  • Which online platform is the most active in?
  • Is your product or service statement clear and relevant to your customer base?

Putting Everything into Action

Now that you are aware of the tricks and strategies to help decrease your bounce rate, it is time for you to apply them! As you probably know by now, a reduced and minimized bounce rate can effectively increase your conversion rate and total online sales.

Do keep in mind that some sites are prone to high bounce rates, making 70-80% a normal bounce rate. This is why it is important to assess what bounce rates mean for your site while considering what industry you are in and what your goals are as a company.

This list is just some ways to reduce bounce rate and increase your conversions. The common denominator between all these tricks is to focus your efforts to make your website more customer-oriented. Making sure your website offers the best customer experience as it can- from its structure, design elements, functionalities, and site speed, can do wonders for your conversion rates and online sales.

It is also important to get to know who your target audience is and what they prefer to see and read online. This is, after all the first step to optimizing your user experience and making it customer-oriented, identifying their buyer persona and their common demographics can help you be as targeted and efficient in your next market strategy.

Make sure your site and landing page renders well across all devices. Increase accessibility and efficiency by ensuring your site speed is at its optimal level as this can make or break your success as an online business. 

Remember that working with the Top eCommerce Marketing Agencies is profitable in a world that is rapidly being replaced by digital marketing. Therefore, more and more companies are working with agencies to develop their business. First, you need to do good research before deciding which agency meets your needs.

Filed under: Marketing

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