How to improve your website's bounce rate

Analysing your traffic has to be one of the central parts of any online strategy. It tells you how long people stay and whether they find the content interesting. One of the indicators that shows whether your content strategy is working, and whether the shop was well designed, is the bounce rate: the proportion of people who arrive and then leave without going any further.

If visitors leave in under thirty seconds, it usually means they did not find what they were looking for, or the page was not easy to use.

1. Be realistic about the number

Your bounce rate may not be as bad as you think, and you may be setting yourself an unreachable target. Rough averages by type of site:

• Content sites and blogs: 40–60% is normal, and often higher. Someone who reads the article and leaves satisfied still counts as a bounce.
• Online shops: 20–40%.
• Lead generation pages: 30–50%.
• Single-page landing pages: 70–90%, by design.

2. Make the page load faster

A large share of bounces happen before the page even finishes rendering. Speed is the cheapest improvement available to most sites.

3. Match the page to the promise

If the search result or the ad promised one thing and the page delivers another, people leave immediately. This is the most common cause and the easiest to fix.

4. Give them somewhere to go next

Related articles, a clear next step, internal links inside the text. A visitor who finishes reading and sees nothing else of interest will leave, however good the article was.

5. Check it on a phone

Bounce rates on mobile are almost always worse, and almost always for fixable reasons: text too small, buttons too close together, pop-ups covering the content.