Reducing Bounce and Exit Rates

Often encountered in spite of all efforts the visitors come and go without returning back? Yes, it happens a lot. Even after offering millions of pages to them they do not stay for long, it is needed to change this trend for better.

What is Bounce Rate?

It is a metric that represents the number of the visitors who visit your website and then quit instead of continuing to view other pages within your website. They just traversed a single page for a short span.

All of the following ways of leaving your site constitutes a bounce −

• Hitting the back button
• Opting to surf a different URL
• Exiting the tab
• Shutting down the window
• Clicking on an external link
• Session timeout

Reasons for a High Bounce Rate

It might happen owing to the following reasons −

• Single Page Site − Your website has no other page to visit.

• Slow Page Load Time − people tend to give up if the website does not load in 4 seconds.

• Bombarding Visitors with Offers − Lot of induced banners and intrusive advertisement force the users to leave the page. Such sites are even lesser trustworthy.

• Irrelevant Content − When a user does not see what he is looking for, he will quit in seconds. Also the content should use proper grammar and easy to understand literature.

• Long Fill-up Forms − It is a nasty thing to keep filling the forms. The longer is the form, the more the users sway. Asking for too much information is never entertained.

• Design of the Page − A messy page with lot of images and banners with unclear text do not hold the visitor for long.

Ways to Reduce Bounce Rate

Through continuous efforts, strategic approach and a few best practices might help you in reducing the bounce rate.

• Set Realistic Expectation. Unrealistic goals will only demotivate you.

  Checkout benchmark averages for bounce rates −

  • Content Websites: 40-70%
  • Lead Generation Pages: 30-40%
  • Blogs: 70-90%
  • Retail Websites: 30-40%
  • Service Providers: 20-30%
  • Dedicated Landing Pages: 80-90%

• Attract Relevant Traffic − Use targeted keywords that matches with your content. Swarming irrelevant traffic will only bounce. It will serve no purpose.

• Create Multiple landing pages targeted with specific keywords. Write attractive and useful meta description.

• Improve Usability − Make use of readable and grammatically correct text. Use white background, proper fonts. Make your headlines shine boldly. Use clear headings and subheadings.

• Well-Organized Layout − Create a website that is easy to navigate. Make it simple and easy to navigate the design of the webpage. Do not put too many call-to-action buttons in the first page itself. Too many call-to-action buttons is the reason for high bounce rate.

• Page Load-Time − Improve the page speed score of the website. Avoid using self-loading multimedia content. Set external links to open in new tab. This will help you to improve bounce rate and traffic as well.

• Avoid distracting pop ups in the website − All intrusive advertisements should also be gotten rid of. You may entertain static ads and place them onto the sides.

What is Exit Rate?

The exit rate is the percentage of people who were the last in the session i.e. who left your website from that page. It may or may not be one page in a session. If it is not the one page in the session, it means that the visitor may have landed from another page and exited from this page.

To analyze the exit rate you need to check your funnel. Track who are the customers leaving your page. Find out what type of customers may get you maximum conversion.

Work to optimize that segment. When you are done optimizing traffic, optimize pages of your website.

Ways to Reduce Exit Rate

Following are the ways to reduce the exit rate.

Create exit surveys − Exit surveys can save you more than 15 percent visitors. It is loaded with essential information about the visitors’ satisfaction level at your website. You can retain your customers here and give them exclusive offers to lure them to convert.

Trigger exit pop-ups with a different persuasive message − Pop-Ups with messages can direct them to some similar products.

Optimize Call-to-action button − We have to check on the page if the call-to-action button is hard to find for the users. If call-to-action button is not visible to the users, then the exit rate can go high. Try to place call-to-action button in the first fold of the page itself.

Do A/B Testing − A/B Testing is almost a perfect solution for any dilemma. If we talk about exit rate, it works tremendously well. To make your test result clear, you need to include both testing measures, i.e. quantitative and the qualitative analysis of your website.

The second best practice is start testing from the bottom part of the funnel and keep testing towards the upper levels.

Undoubtedly, higher conversions or increase in sale means your testing was successful; decreasing leads means you’ve failed, though not miserably, because it was just a test.