Why Does Your Site Have a High Bounce Rate?

Why Does Your Site Have A High Bounce Rate?

Are you in panic mode after seeing a high bounce rate in your website analytics? Don’t be! A high bounce rate isn’t necessarily bad for your website. Yes, you heard that right. But haven’t we been telling you that a high bounce rate is bad for your website? That is right too. If we have managed to confuse you enough, sit back and keep reading this article for more enlightenment on page bounce rates.

Much of the confusion is because it’s not a yes or no question. Does your website have a high bounce rate? It’s not that important. Why does your website have a high bounce rate? It is very important to find the answers to this. Let us explain; but before that –

What is Bounce Rate?

According to Google, bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that bounce off your website after visiting a single page on your website. “Bounce” refers to a single-page session. Bounce rate is independent of the ‘dwell time’ – even if a user scrolls through a page for 20 minutes, they will contribute to the bounce rate (BR) if they do not interact further with the content or follow a link to another page on your website.

Did the air clear up a bit? Whether a high bounce rate is good or bad depends on your business goals and the website type. If the intent was purely to provide information, a high BR isn’t bad. But if the intent was conversions, then you have a problem. Because whether intended or not, a high bounce rate means low conversion – the user is not interacting further with your site, at least not on this visit. The desired bounce rate for a website is in the 26%-40% range. Anything lower than that might mean something is broken, and the visitor is following a link out of the page. While bounce rates between 41%-70% are average or slightly above average, 70% and higher means the website is not doing well.

Why does your site have a high bounce rate?

Sometimes a high bounce rate is good. For example, if you are an affiliate, you want visitors to follow out to the merchant site quickly.

Here we address reasons for a high bounce rate that are a cause for concern.

1. Misleading titles, meta descriptions and ads

Click-baits are a significant reason for high bounce rates. If your content is advertised as one thing, and the page does not match it, you are asking for a high BR. The wrong audience gets directed to your page. The discontented visitor will bounce back into the SERP as no one wants to spend time on pages that don’t offer them what they searched for. So, when you create a snippet or ad, make sure it is a simple summarisation of the landing page.

2. Long loading time

Site speed is one of the most important ranking factors. Like all search engines, Google wants its users to have a positive experience with each recommendation they offer them. One crucial constituent of user experience is the time the webpage takes to load. No one wants to wait 5 minutes to read a 3-minute article. If the loading time for your page is more than a few seconds, most visitors will go back to search results for a better alternative. So, slow loading could be a reason why your website has a high bounce rate.

3. Unoptimised or Low-Quality Content

Quality of content matters. While it can be hard to accept, the reason why visitors are bouncing from your site could be because the content you post is not useful. The content on your page should match the quality of the page snippet in the SERPs. If you fail to meet the expectations of a user who clicks on your link, they will leave in the blink of an eye.

Another possible reason is that your content isn’t optimised enough. Remember to keyword-optimise your content by using the keywords in titles, headings, alt texts, and write-ups. You do not want visitors with wrong search intent coming to your site, only to leave it in a jiffy. Try to keep the sentences short. Use images to break up long pieces of content. Adapt a good internal linking structure. For more tips read our blog on how to improve website content.

4. Technical issues

Do the analytics show people spend less than a few seconds on your page? The chances are that your page is experiencing some technical errors. Exceptionally high bounce rates coupled with low dwell times are often a product of blank pages, 404 errors or loading issues. Try to view the page from the customer’s perspective. You could attempt using the most popular browser among the audience and see if the page is functioning as it should. You can also try loading the page using your audience’s device configurations or check in the Search Console to understand Google’s perspective on the page.

5. Page isn’t mobile-friendly

It’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t use a mobile phone regularly. Most people tend to check web pages and read content through their mobile phones. If your page isn’t mobile-friendly, don’t be surprised to see a high bounce rate. The issues with a web page not being accustoming to mobile devices include:

• Page loads very slowly
• Text is too small or too big
• Content that doesn’t fit the screen in normal or modified view
• Content is too compact

Put in the effort to make your web pages and the content inside them easy to read and navigate on all devices. Google has already made its index mobile-first, so if your site is not mobile-friendly yet, now is the time to act. If you are not sure how to proceed, contact us right away to speak to a Computing Australia Group consultant.

6. UX is bad

While it is incredibly tempting to squeeze in as many ads as possible, your site visitors won’t appreciate being bombarded with them every other second. Ads, surveys, subscription buttons, and other CTA features are good, but too many of them will distract a reader from the content and actual conversion. If your webpage is confusing to navigate or the design doesn’t help the users have a good experience, visitors will leave even quicker than they came. So, ensure your review the website and it appeals to a regular reader before going live.

Many web page analytics need to be high, but bounce rate isn’t one among them. At least not all the time and not in all the scenarios. Bounce rates are a good measure of how well your site is appealing to visitors. However, without context, they can be misleading. How many bounces a page gets depends on its type, the business goals, the design and much more. Even the best-presented websites can have high bounce rates. Unless you’re sure the bounces prevent users from ever interacting with your site again, or it’s harming your lead conversion, you can let them be. If you want a specialist to look at why your site has a high bounce rate, you can contact us or email us at sales@computingaustralia.group. We offer strategic marketing and web development solutions to all businesses in Western Australia.

Jargon Busters

Meta description: A meta description is an HTML tag displayed on the search engine result pages that summarises the contents of your page.
404: A “404” or “404 not found” error means that the page or website you were trying to access couldn’t be located on the server.
UX: User experience (UX) describes the interactions a user has with a product or service.
Dwell time: It is the duration between when a user lands on a page from search results and leaves the page, or in simple terms, it is the time a user spends on a page.