To every blogger, this is their worst nightmare. Anyone who blogs would dream of a 0% bounce rate, but that will never happen. The bounce rate is the percentage of people that click onto your website and straight back off which is where it get’s the name ‘bounce’ as the readers are bouncing off your blog. However, there is a extremely is way to decrease your bounce rate by more than 20%.
Before I start, there is another method to decrease your bounce rate and increase conversions by simply make the text on your page bigger. Many people get put off with websites that have text too small and leave because of it. Also, check out another article I did on bounce rate including analysing bounce rate on Google Anayltics.
Back to the point, there’s no point in decreasing the bounce rate first if you don’t know why you have a high bounce rate. You may have a high bounce rate because:
- Your landing pages are unattractive.
- Takes a long time to load your blog pages.
- Content isn’t relevant to user who ‘Googled’ it.
- Text is too small.
- Content is too long (meaning whole page of writing that could be summed up in a bullet point).
- Overcrowded with outgoing links such as adverts.
With each point, you can immediately find the solution like for example the content is too long, then sum it up and use bullet points. However, the main point I am going to focus on is the first one.
Landing Pages are Unattractive
This is one of the top reasons why many blogger’s blogs have such a high bounce rate. The landing page is basically the page people land on to get to your website. So, why are some blog’s landing pages poor and unattractive?
- Have too many contrasting colours or blending colours – you have to get the right balance in colours.
- Header is too big – don’t make the reader have to scroll to find the title of the post he searched for.
- Layout is wrong – have a look on other blogs to see how they layout they websites.
- Over crowded – readers will find it difficult locating the article.
- Under crowded – this is just as bad as it makes the article too exposed and doesn’t encourage inbound links.
By stopping you blog from becoming any one of the above will help you decrease your bounce rate by more than 20%. Remember, the first thing a new visitor sees on your blog is the landing page, so pretend your going to a party where no-one knows you, dress to impress! Dress your blog to impress it as your blog is being approached by new visitors every day! (Hope that makes sense).
