Top 10 Mistakes that cause High Bounce Rate
Does your site have a high bounce rate? If you already have an active website with a decent number of visitors, you may have run into this problem. Google Analytics shows you a high percentage in the bounce rate section. This term is synonymous with the rejection rate; in short, the percentage of people who access your site and leave it without taking any action.
To be clear, in the case of the bounce rate, there is no 0%. Whatever site you have, whatever the category, and no matter how targeted the traffic, some of your traffic will bounce. The only way the bounce rate can be 0% is if you have no visitors.
If this is the case, then you have bigger problems than your bounce rate.
In other words, as a reference, a good bounce rate for a site with various pages is 15%. In the case of blogs, you can expect a higher bounce rate. The main reason is that once the visitor has finished reading the article, he leaves. A blog should make visitors read more. But, most of the time, the visitor reads the information sought and leaves.
What is considered a high bounce rate?
A percentage below 40% is considered excellent, but the average is somewhere between 40% -55%. A bounce rate that falls between 55% and 70% is considered higher than average. In the worst case, a bounce rate of over 70% is considered high, and the reason for this high percentage should be investigated.
I should mention that blogs and news websites can have a bounce rate of over 70% without having any problems. These types of sites generally have a much higher bounce rate than others.
To understand things better, I have prepared a list of reasons why visitors leave your website too quickly. You can also find out the main causes of a high bounce rate.
So, let’s get started and see how to avoid a high bounce rate.
1. Too many or no Call-to-Action button
In the case of a site that sells, it is necessary to have a call-to-action button. This will make the visitor focus on the action suggested by the button. If there is no such button on the site, or there are too many buttons of this kind, the visitor will not take any action and will leave.
It is also crucial to position the call-to-action section. In most cases, this section is towards the bottom of the page. Usually, before the call-to-action button, the benefits and advantages of the service or product are presented. This way, when the visitor has to take action, he will be fully informed.
2. Your site is not mobile-friendly
According to a statistic made by Statista in 2019, over 52.5% of the global traffic comes from mobile devices. This means that half of your visitors will access your website from a mobile device.
If your website is not mobile-friendly, then your website will display the desktop version. This means higher loading times and poor user experience, which ultimately leads to an increase in your bounce rate.
Text size is another reason why your site may be considered unoptimized for mobile. If the text is too small, it isn't easy to read from mobile devices. Simultaneously, if the text is too large, it takes up too much screen space and requires a lot of scrolling.
In both cases, inappropriate text size can cause the visitor to leave the website. The site's content must be clean, with enough space between text blocks, and the paragraphs should not be longer than 250–300 words.
3. Spelling errors or poor quality content
First of all, you have to make sure that the articles and pages' content is of high quality. No one wants to visit a page full of expired or inaccurate information.
For this reason, you should only publish quality articles, well-structured, well-documented, and without typos. So, after you have finished writing the content, make sure there are no spelling mistakes. An article written correctly, qualitatively, and well documented will prove to the visitor that it is worth allocating time to your website.
4. The user did not find what it was looking for
If you have this problem, there are two possibilities as to why this is happening.
In the first case, the user may not know exactly what it wants to look for. A user does not realize at first what keyword or phrase to search on search engines. For this reason, most of the time, the user arrives at an article or site that is not relevant to what it wants to know. If you fall into this situation, it is not your fault, and you do not have much to do to lower the bounce rate.
In the second case, the user did the right search but could not reach the information sought. This can happen due to errors or poor organization of the site. Whatever the reason, you need to fix it as soon as possible. If the website has errors of any kind, it must be fixed. And in the case of organizing the content, it must follow a logical pattern and be organized by certain criteria.
5. Low-quality images or the images are too large
If your website's content includes images or media files, make sure they have the right resolution. Both in terms of resolution and content, poor quality images can make the user leave the site.
No one wants to access an article and see pixelated or blurry images. In contrast, the user does not even want to wait seconds for each image to load. Make sure not to use images that are too large.
So, choose the perfect images and media files and make sure they are at the right size and resolution.
6. Bad layout and the lack of space
Although it seems intuitive, the layout and white space should be used correctly. In the case of the layout, you can opt for a clean and not very loaded design. In the end, it is the information that will keep the user on the site.
White space is often omitted and is not treated as it should be. To make the content as attractive as possible, it must be surrounded by space. This makes the user focus their attention and attention on the content and not on other design elements.
In this way, the user can easily read the text and admire the pictures without ignoring the colors and design elements.
7. Slow loading website
Nowadays, speed is an important factor when it comes to obtaining information. For this reason, many users will leave the websites if they do not get the information they are looking for in the shortest time.
If your site has too many elements to load or too many animations, the user will have to wait longer until viewing the information it requested.
You shouldn’t be surprised that Google uses site loading speed as a search engine ranking factor. If your site loads heavily, you should give up certain elements that make the loading slow. In this way, you can shorten the loading time, and your bounce rate will definitely decrease.
8. Your website is not secure or doesn’t use an SSL
More and more articles about hacked sites or stolen personal data appear. For this reason, people have become very careful with their information. One reason bounce rates can be high is the lack of security and an SSL certificate.
The SSL certificate certifies that your site is secure and that user data is encrypted. If you do not have an SSL certificate installed, I recommend you do it as soon as possible.
Google advises users, and in some cases, displays the message before the user accesses the site, not to enter their data on sites without SSL.
This can cause the user to leave your website, increasing the bounce rate, or not accessing it.
9. Missing content or 404 errors
Links to pages that do not exist are quite a problem for your website. This usually happens when a page or article has been deleted. If you have deleted content from your site, be sure to notify search engines and redirect the deleted content link.
If you don’t know how to fix a 404 error, there are many guides on Google on how to avoid the problems caused by this error.
10. Too many ads and banners
I know that often the only way to generate revenue with your website is through advertising. In the case of blogs and news sites, this is the main source of income.
I’m sure you know at least one site you left instantly because of the exaggerated number of ads. This can lead to a major increase in the bounce rate. Even if the income is lower, keep the number of ads as low as possible. As for positioning them, make sure that they do not obstruct or disturb the website content's reading.
Another intrusive type of ad is the pop-up. You can use a discreet pop-up to collect emails or leads, but don’t overdo it. You can trigger pop-ups after the user spends some time on your site or exit-intent. I wouldn’t trigger the pop-up as soon as the user reaches the site. This can make the user leave the site before ever seeing the content.
Conclusions on High Bounce Rate
If you have issues with visitors leaving your website too soon or if your bounce rate is over 70%, you should see if you are doing something wrong. A bounce rate that is over 55% should make you wonder if you can improve something on your website or make things differently. Of course, this is an exception if you own a blog or a news website, where higher bounce rates are totally acceptable.
You can check out what Google has to say about the bounce rate factor here. They explain in detail what it is and how to assess it.
Do you know someone struggling to understand or keep the bounce rate under control? Please share this article with them; it might save them time and money.
