Normally, it takes a person more than one web page to buy a product, requests a quote, or sign up for a blog. That is why when your website analytics shows that a certain rate of visitors never goes further than just one page, it seems alarming. But is it?

High Bounce Rate alone often means that something about the page visitors land at is immediately driving them away – that may be the design, the content, annoying ads or pop-ups, and many other things. But if you look at another indicator, Visit Duration, you will see it’s not always so. If the visitor didn’t proceed to the rest of the website but spent enough time on your page to read its content, it may mean that they were searching for certain information, read your blog post, and continued their way. That scenario is a typical picture for blogs because of their nature, but not that common for ecommerce stores or corporate websites.

So what is an acceptable bounce rate for different kinds of websites?

According to Google Analytics, the general bounce rate average is 40%, but the figures differ for various types of websites:

  • Blogs – 70-98%
  • Landing Pages – 70-90%
  • Content Websites – 40-60%
  • Lead Generation Websites – 30-50%
  • E-commerce Stores – 20-40%
  • Service Websites – 10-30%

Even if your website’s bounce rate doesn’t exceed the average, you should still find out why visitors leave your pages right away and try to reduce that rate. Here are several tips on improving your website’s performance in that regard:

Cross-Link Your Content

This works especially well for blogs: when you add a new post, insert a few links to the previous ones into the content (just make sure they are relevant and the anchor text is appropriate). That will encourage the visitors to read more of your content, and also improve your search engine rankings.

Get Rid of Pop-Ups

Most people are annoyed by them, and close them without even reading what the offer is. This frustration often causes your impatient visitors to leave the website.

Make Sure the Website is Fast

Once again, your visitors are busy and impatient – if a page loads too slowly, they will just close it. So make sure your pages load fast and nice.

Be Careful with Ads

Website ads can be distracting and frustrating, especially if they interfere with viewing the page. Even more, they make your website look less trustworthy – and all these factors combined may cause the visitor to leave your website and go elsewhere.

No matter what kind of web page you own, your goal is to engage the visitor and make them want to do business with you – or, at least, read more of your content. So try to look at your website with a fresh eye and improve the things that are driving your traffic away.

Now, is your website’s bounce rate too high? What do you think maybe the reason? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.