How to Decrease Your Bounce Rate in 2022

Are you interested in lowering your bounce rate while increasing sales? If so, you're not alone. Your bounce rate is one of the most important factors to keep in mind if you hope to see your small business grow.

Simply put, bounce rate is described as the percentage of visitors that leave your site after a single-page session. In other words, if someone reads a blog post and finds what they are looking for, they may leave without checking out the rest of your site. While this example isn't necessarily a bad thing, too many users bouncing from your website can negatively impact your reputation and sales.

Generally speaking, here are the numbers many people use when determining if they need to take action:

• 70%+ bounce rate - Very poor
• 50-70% bounce rate - Average
• 30-50% bounce rate - Poor
• 30%< - There's likely an error

You can quickly check your bounce rate by reviewing your Google Analytics account!

Your bounce rate could become too high if you're not minding things like the performance of your website and how you choose keywords. Today, I'd like to share some of the most common reasons business owners have an abnormally high bounce rate. I'll also go over several tips and tricks you can use to keep visitors engaged with your site long after they land on the first page.

Let's get started!

Check Your Loading Times

Did you know your loading times can significantly impact your bounce rate? It's true! Research shows that a one-second delay in loading times can lead to a dramatic 11% drop in pageviews. In most cases, the people leaving due to poor performance and speed decided to bounce from your site.

Think about the last time you left a website because it wasn't loading properly. Odds are, you navigated to the site and didn't get a chance to make it to a second page. After you noticed the abnormally long wait time, you likely decided to leave without taking further action. You are now a contributing factor in that business's bounce rate.

Just so you know, the average online user expects websites to load in 2-seconds or less. If your site doesn't meet these standards, you could take several courses of action.

I suggest using Google's PageSpeed tools. You can see at a glance where your site stands and what actions you can take to reduce load times and improve overall performance.

You can also make slight changes to your site to increase speed and engagement. For instance, adding a caching plugin can make it easier for your site to pull resources for return visitors, which can bolster loading times and save resources for first-time visitors.

Optimize Your Site for Smartphone Users

Next, let's talk about mobile optimization. You may be surprised to learn that 66.53% of the population owns a mobile device, and many people use their phones to shop online and browse new brands. If your site isn't optimized for mobile users, you will see a noticeable hit to your bounce rate.

Think about it. With so many mobile users out there, you could be alienating over half of your audience because your site simply isn't accessible on smartphones. If you're like most people, you'll instantly leave a site if they have a poor mobile interface or don't offer an alternative way to engage with their site, like an official application.

The good news is there are plenty of ways you can make your site more accessible for these users. I suggest using a mobile-responsive design that supports various devices and operating systems. Google also has a test that ranks the mobile-friendliness of your site. I recommend using this tool to learn how you can improve.

It doesn't matter if your goal is to secure more sales, build your email list, or simply lower your bounce rate; optimization for mobile users is a must.

Create Customer-Specific Landing Pages and Content

If your goal is to keep people engaged for as long as possible, customer-specific landing pages, content, and offers are necessary. Studies show that 80% of people want more personalized content from businesses. So, if you're not meeting this standard, many users will leave before they get a chance to experience everything your brand has to offer.

I suggest getting to know the people who visit your site. You can create buyer personas from your analytics account and customer feedback forms. Essentially, buyer personas are profiles that describe each customer subset's needs, goals, and pain points. For example, a sporting goods store would have personas for users interested in specific sports.

It wouldn't make sense for a company to bombard a user who is only interested in baseball a ton of articles about football. Odds are, the visitor won't care and may end up leaving your site prematurely. On the other hand, if a football fan makes it to your site and sees nothing but football-related blog posts and offers, they are far less likely to bounce from your site. We know this is true because 60% of people say they are likely to buy a product after reading a blog post about it, as long as it's relevant to one of their goals and/or pain points.

You should apply this rule to your landing pages too. When creating a new landing page, make it as specific as possible. You'll want to target one, perhaps two personas on each landing page. This type of laser-focused marketing leads to more people sticking around instead of bouncing as soon as they make it to your site.

Simplify Your Checkout Flow

Your checkout page can also have a significant impact on your bounce rate. Sometimes, visitors will add an item to their cart, only to come back later and complete their order. If a visitor ends up leaving a second time, they are contributing to your bounce rate. The last thing you need is more people leaving with an accompanying stack of unpaid invoices.

The best thing you can do to avoid this situation is work on your cart abandonment strategy and fine-tune your checkout flow. When I say checkout flow, I mean every step a visitor has to go through to complete their order.

For instance, if a visitor waits to pay for their order, then sees a bunch of hidden costs on the final checkout page, there's an excellent chance they will leave your site without taking the next step. You can avoid this situation by keeping the final total visible on your shopping cart, which should be available on every page of your site.

Another thing you should do is go through your checkout process as a customer. Ask yourself if you can do anything to reduce the clicks they need to make to finalize their purchase. The easier you make the checkout process, the more potential customers you can save from leaving your site early.

Use Intent-Driven Keywords

Finally, the keywords you use on your site can also help you reduce your bounce rate. The mistake many business owners make is they seek out high-traffic words and include related keywords in their content. When you consider that a whopping 90% of websites get zero organic traffic from Google, this sounds great, right? Not quite. While this is a good plan at face value, there's a more nuanced way to optimize your SEO strategy.

Instead of seeking out keywords that get a ton of search volume, you may want to narrow your choices to keywords that line up with the intent. In other words, think about keywords users will type into Google when they are ready to take action right away.

For example, a marketing firm may choose to target the phrase "Upgrade my email marketing strategy" over "email marketing tips." The reason for this decision comes down to intent. A user that types in the first phrase is ready to take action; their intentions are clear. On the other hand, a term like "email marketing tips" is vague and could lead to more people bouncing from your site.

Back to You

As you can see, there are a ton of ways you can decrease your bounce rate in 2022. The tips I outlined today are all powerful ways to start the process. I suggest keeping a careful eye on your bounce rate as you make changes to your site. This particular strategy requires patience and plenty of fine-tuning. The deeper you're willing to look into your customer's behavior and the experiences offered on your site, the easier it will become to lower your bounce rate and improve sales.