Its Not You Its Me: How To Increase Enagagement And Reduce Your Bounce Rate

I recall being told the story of a lady whose husband of five years opted to buy her a BMW for their anniversary. She was elated with the gift and she drove it pretty much everywhere she went. On one particular morning, the car wouldn’t start, she reported it to her husband who later took it to the mechanic. The mechanic reported that upon inspection, when he opened the bonnet what beheld him was a very ill shaped engine. The likely cause, no oil in the vehicle resulting in friction and metal rubbing against metal. When metal gets hot it gets deformed, hence the ill shaped appearance. The man later questioned his wife as to whether she usually puts oil in the vehicle, to which she responded, " I didn’t know it needed oil, I usually just gas it up and go". It’s the same with your website, stop ignoring the warning signs, they could be detrimental, pay attention to your bounce rate. 

According to Google, "Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page)." Simply put, persons are visiting your website but not engaging with your website beyond that page. This is often likely due to the fact that the page isn't user friendly or the user finds it challenging to find what they are looking for. Ideally you want to have a low bounce rate as this would indicate that persons are interacting with the website, and there is the increased likelihood of a person purchasing from your website  or following through with  a particular call to action. Depending on the type of website you have, you may not need to worry too much.

For example, if you run a blog,  the high bounce rate may just be indicative of a person visiting your website to read your latest post. According to Hubspot, the average industry bounce rate averages are as follows: 

• Content Websites: 40-60% 
• Lead Generation: 30-50% 
• Blogs: 70-98% 
• Retail Sites:  20-40% 
• Service Sites: 10-30% 
• Landing Pages: 70-90

Source: Blastam.com

There is a popular saying that there is proof in the pudding. Let's explore first hand a real world example. TIME is a popular news based magazine published in the United States. They managed to get their bounce rate down by fifteen percent and desktop visitors who went on to visit another page rose by twenty-one percent.  According to Sam at Poynter," as readers increasingly enter sites from "side doors" or article pages, media organizations are trying to figure out how to get them to stick around. Pew recently found that visitors from Facebook are far less engaged than direct visitors. What did TIME do differently? They redesigned their website, incorporating a continuous scroll design. This allowed for a continuous path for readers to access stories. TIME also queued up top stories on its website instead of related stories, as they found that persons visiting their website was more interested in top stories than related stories. 

As you can see, bounce rate is an important metric to track to improve the engagement levels on your website.Now, that we have learnt the importance of tracking bounce rates and seen how impactful they can be, here are some tips on how you can reduce your bounce rate. 

• Include a related stories, top posts, recommended products etc. pages on your website. This provides viewers with additional content that may peak their interest and get them to further navigate through your website. 
• Add internal links to blog post, if you are operating a content website. This bring them further to your website and brings traffic to your older blog posts. For external links, you may want to set this up to open in a new tab, so persons still have access to your website to be able to browse for additional content. 
• Use correct keywords, if you use keywords that are not relevant to your content, readers are likely to bounce. 

 What are some ways you reduce bounce rates on your website? If you are new to Web Metrics and SEO, you want to be sure to check out to ensure to check out "How Tracking Your Sources Can Enhance Your Marketing Campaign", to learn more about tracking your traffic sources.