Reducing bounce rate

What key factors need to be analyzed to help reduce a sites bounce rate?

I've seen a lot of references to Google Analytics as a tool to see what your visiters are doing and such, but what do you actually need to analyze to see what needs to be done to reduce bounce rate?

In terms of analysing pages a good tool to use is an overlay heatmap, what this does is tell you what your users are actually doing on a page while they visit your site: there's an open source php/JS script called ClickHeat that does the job well. Shouldn't add any load either and you only want to run it short term anyway.

Improving bounce is all about content and how visitors discover it. Are you providing an organic method for visitors to discover related or relevant content? The heatmap should help with that, but also consider your internal linking structure and more generally the way people move around your content.

If you have a well constructed UI and internal linking system then you've done a good portion of what's possible with passive reduction. If you want to get into active reduction you need to somehow incentivise click depth, but it can be hit and miss and varies so much from site to site that I (or anyone else) can't really offer much advice without a lot more information.

Some ways to Lower Bounce Rate

1. Provide Relevant Content
2. Use the Language of your Target Audience
3. Have Clear Navigation
4. Provide Ample Content
5. Update Your Content

As I know you need to analyze bounce rate not only in general but
1) for every major keyword (if it's high it means that people don't find the info they expect to find for these keywords - maybe you need to change the content or the keywords)
2) every landing page.

What I've tried doing is analyzing the keywords with a higher bounce rate (for me, I'm trying to find 50% or higher). Type that keyword into google, see where it leads you on your site, and then analyze that page. Sometimes it could be a formatting issue, broken images, etc. Find the problem and fix it.

Most of the time on my site, it leads to a "help me" question thread. So what I do is do a 301 redirect to what the user is actually looking for (informational thread instead of a "help" thread). I've noticed great reductions in bounce rate because of this for many of my keywords.

Bounce rate is of course an indication that the visitors expectations wasn't met when finding your page - it could be down to several different factors.

- Badly written landingpages (t.ex uninteresting reading)
- Bad linkstructure
- Bad design
- Many exit links on page (linkhubs)

to name a few reasons

I like video tutorials on a site to decrease bounce rate. I just wonder if landing pages are advisable to have videos because at some point this will defocus the buyers instead of focusing on buying, what do you think?

I put a scrolling marquee with links to some active topics up at the top of my forum. Not sure if it catches people's attention but join rate has not DECREASED at all since I put it up, so...

I know we have a higher bounce rate for some keywords than others, like for me "Warrior cats" has a higher bounce rate than Warrior cats rpg, but Warrior cats is a much more common search that will net more viewers overall.

Development phases of the websites too could be very important. For example, simplifying the shopping check out processes because people do not like to spend ages on the websites to simply buy something. Usually the beautifully made sites could enjoy better sales that would be among the results gained after reducing the bounce rates.

My bounce rate has risen slightly over the past couple months. I've noticed it seems due to the fact that I've had more visits from random google searches related to my niche. Now I just need to figure out how to make them to visit the rest of the site and not just read the random thread they happened to stumble on.

i think putting in fresh contents and eliminating bad link structure.

Rockatteer said:

What key factors need to be analyzed to help reduce a sites bounce rate?

Click to expand...

I never took stuff like "bounce" et al very seriously until just the last two weeks. Google analytics all of a sudden "clicked" for me and all I wanted to do was have it tell me more.

I've been away a bit from Taz last two weeks because of this new site I found:

Most Important Parts to Google Analytics: How to Read Your Analytics in 19 Minutes

I just love the way that site is written. Tone, examples, writing style...I keep going back to it to see what I can apply to my own Wiki.

He used words like "are you burning through new leads" ...

wow... that completely threw me for a loop and got me thinking to how/why our site works and what it has been failing at.

We have lately been looking at pages with big bounce rates and instead of having barred doors at the bottoms of those pages, we have now introduced "revolving doors"

Links at the bottom of all the pages in our Wiki that had peeps clicking on the page then leaving. With new links showing them other pages in our site that we "think they may like" introduced as " See Also" we have, in just two weeks, effected a 5 % reduction in overall bounce rate, while increasing from 6.53 minutes per visit to 7.42 !

All because of the little "revolving doors" we've begun to place all over our site.

Just by understanding that instead of letting peeps leave...show them more of your wares that they may also be interested in...and keep them looking/shopping.

Changing exit signs to revolving doors... it worked.

Now get goin on those renovations!



gogo

Here are a two important tips from someone that runs his own online business.

1. Always make sure that your content is updated. No one will stay and read outdated information. So make sure that your site always has the up to date content so everyone knows your site is the one to keep them posted.

2. Make the site look good. From what I know 80% of people will either stay on your site depending on there first impression. So make sure that your site looks good (design). Take a look at other websites to learn from others.

breeches said:

i think putting in fresh contents and eliminating bad link structure.

Click to expand...

Yes i totally agree,
but there is something else - if you want to keep visitors on your page - just add some videos - perhaps 1 clip per page i OK. This tip works fine for me

great help and now 10 post

Links at the bottom of all the pages in our Wiki that had peeps clicking on the page then leaving. With new links showing them other pages in our site that we "think they may like" introduced as " See Also" we have, in just two weeks, effected a 5 % reduction in overall bounce rate, while increasing from 6.53 minutes per visit to 7.42 !

All because of the little "revolving doors" we've begun to place all over our site.

Just by understanding that instead of letting peeps leave...show them more of your wares that they may also be interested in...and keep them looking/shopping.

Changing exit signs to revolving doors... it worked.

Now get goin on those renovations!

Click to expand...

I agree with what you said and you bring up a valid point - content is king, but the bounce rate doesn't really matter if you're focusing on content.

Why? More people learn about your site, can bookmark it, and then come back to register when they're ready.