Prevent bounces on your website

A bounce, or bounce rate, is the percentage of your website visitors who leave your website after a short time and have only visited one page. This can be positive or negative, but for most purposes it's better if a visitor stays on your website a little longer. So in this article, let's take a look at how you can keep people a little longer with the following tips!

A high bounce rate on a website is not always a negative thing. In a use case like an ingredient list for a recipe, a visitor might just be looking for that specific piece of information. They search for it, find your information, pick it up, and leave. The visitor is satisfied. But it can also be a negative experience if the visitor doesn't find what they're looking for and leaves the site immediately. With a tool like Microsoft Clarity, this can be monitored more closely on a per-user basis. You can see a user's entire session in a video. This is a natural way to determine if a user has found what they were looking for.

With the following tips, your website can also counteract a high negative bounce rate!

A fast website

A fast website will likely have a positive impact on many different factors. Mobile load times in particular are extremely important, as there is a high barrier if your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Therefore, always choose the fastest hosting for a production website, at MijnHostingPartner.nl this is in many cases the SSD package we offer. If you still have doubts about this, you can always contact us to find the most suitable package for you.

The fastest hosting can only mean so much for your website. To make a website optimally accessible, you also need to give it some attention yourself. For instance, take a look at the theme or design you're using to see how long it takes to load. And especially check to make sure you're optimizing your website's images and content. For example, a website homepage should always load less than 1 MB. This will ensure that your website loads quickly even if mobile speeds are not optimal.

Image sizes can be scaled, an image in 4K for example is not very useful on a website. In most cases, an image size of 1204 x 800 is more appropriate. If you are a freelance photographer and want to show these images on your website, load them only when the visitor asks for them. For example, in a particular gallery, by showing a small photo first. This way your website will stay fast.

There are many other clever tips and tricks that we have covered in previous articles and in the knowledge base. So feel free to look around the site to make your website faster too.

Easy navigation and search on your website

Once a visitor is on your website and has found the information they were looking for, it's important to give them the option to quickly add additional information or not leave the site immediately. You can do this by making navigation on your website as easy as possible. A visitor should be able to find the menu where they have the option to contact you, add to cart or navigate further on your website at a glance and without thinking, on any device. The exact purpose of your website has to do with this, of course.

Searching for more information or a specific product should be easily accomplished through the website itself. If a visitor has to return to Google to do so, you've already lost them in almost all cases.

Reading experience on a website

The reading experience is important for your visitor and your bounce rate, once a visitor finds the information interesting and spends some time on your website, this is a positive sign for Google's algorithm, and of course in most cases positive for your website. Interest means a subscription to the newsletter, a purchase, a click on an ad or a request for more information.

If that experience is disrupted by pop-up messages, interrupted by a series of ads, or otherwise distracting, a bounce is very likely. The example of a recipe website can also be used again when the actual ingredients are hidden behind a paywall or an advertisement takes their place. This can lead to a poor reading experience.

A reading experience can also be understood as the fact that the text itself should be easy to read. Things like few or no spelling errors, shorter paragraphs, and occasional interruptions with an image can contribute to a better reading experience.

Offer multiple forms of content

It's also becoming increasingly important to offer multiple content forms: Instead of an article with text, you can add an infographic where the same information can be found at a glance. The same article in audio and video format. So, podcasts and videos are becoming more and more important for the marketing of many companies and websites to offer their services in a new way. It can be more interactive and personal than an article.

Focus on the user experience

User experience is one of the most important factors: are the people who land on your website happy with what they find here? With each Google update, this becomes more important and is looked at more closely. Based on the experience of your website visitors, you will also see how your Google search results change. For example, a person in the search engine optimization (SEO) world asked his users to stay longer on his website for a certain keyword. The result was visible within a day and he was at the top of the search results.

So, always try to focus on the visitor and make his experience as good as possible with the tips we have given you in this article.

Inspiration for this article: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/reduce-your-bounce-rate/415394/