How to Reduce the Bounce Rate in Your Blog
If you take a closer statistic by randomly visiting a few websites, for some, you will possibly find some very appealing information to navigate through. However, others may turn you off within a few minutes. The difference between the sites is attributed to their bounce rate from various factors. Bounce rate can be defined as the number of visitors who land on your landing page and gets turned off easily without taking any action or visiting more pages. Factors like excessive ads, slow loading pages, and even wrong landing pages can cause higher levels of bounce rate. Now let’s take a quick digression on how we can reduce the bounce rate in your blog and attract more visitors to take action.
Revisit your page load time
Page load time is the time taken for your pages to display when being navigated through. If your page load time is high, it can cause a high bounce rate. This could largely be caused by the improper implementation of javascript and jquery plugins, too many large files of flash content, no implementation of caching, large files that are not zipped, and too many unoptimized images. Correction of these abnormalities can reduce your page load time, hence reduce your blog bounce rate. A good SEO agency will be able to assist you with this by first running a health check on your site.
Good and easy navigation
Have you ever visited a website with the inscription “Page not Found?” Your navigation system should be like a map to help visitors go through your website. This Page navigation system and links are so important to help visitors take action. When pages are created, links should be made to soothe each landing page. Most sites create shortcuts in footer areas to help visitors navigate through every page of their site, hence reduce their bounce rate.
Make your site readable
Not every site being navigated through has a high readability rating. Most site owners pay less attention to their font style and size because they feel great content phrasing is the only way to attract visitors to take action. Some blogs also use a default typeface to improve the legibility of their content making it user-friendly against their blog’s background. This primarily attracts visitors to take action and can even make your blog more readable even at 29inches from the screen.
Be compelling in your call-to-action
There is nothing like having a good conversion rate. Call to actions should be catchy and very attractive to compel visitors on what they are to get at the other side after clicking. Blogs that offer a free trial on their products and also free products or vouchers have been able to make visitors navigate through their site and even take more actions to reduce their bounce rate and increase conversions.
Be consistent in your blog posting
Staying up to date in your blog session is a sure way to attract visitors and make them stay longer on your website to take other actions. Statistics have proven that blogs that have fresh blog content are more likely to increase visitors hence make them want to stay longer and navigate through the blog. Today, different WordPress themes have made blogging a lot easier, as they reduce the necessity of coding or backend updating. So, by consistently updating your content, you can help build long-lasting trust from visitors and hence reduce the bounce rate on your blog.
Go for the right audience
A high bounce rate happens most times when blogs get to the wrong audience. Specifically targeting your ads to the right audience can do all the magic your blog needs. Having great content isn’t just enough to reduce bounce rate but also getting the right audience. The use of different social media platforms as an avenue to attract the right audience has made things easier. The building of a personal brand and building communities through great content can help to attract visitors from your social media handles to your website to reduce the site’s bounce rate.
Make external links open in a new window
The main aim of any blog owner is to retain visitors and reduce the bounce rate in their landing pages. Enabling external links to open in new windows can make your blog still remain in their browsing sessions. A plugin that opens external links in a new window is very important tool designed specifically for WordPress sites.
Make your blog design unique
People on the web are constantly looking for great blog content and how this can continuously wow their interest. Blog designers employ different strategies like incorporating custom sidebar designs and attractive background images as a way to make their blog unique for visitors. The use of different post dividers could add a special appearance to enhance the attraction to visitors. Blogs created with the help of WordPress have been greatly enhanced with many custom post plugins that could reduce bounce rate hence make visitors want to perform more actions.
Make your blog mobile-friendly
The growth of using mobiles has been increased spontaneously since late 2015. Currently, over 54% of people browse the internet from smartphones, which surpasses any other devices. This statistic means blog owners should seek a more mobile-friendly approach to create a user-better experience to all visitors. When creating blogs, testing the various responsiveness on mobile phones could help you know how to improve on your blog navigations and appearance in order to reduce bounce rate on mobile phone users.
Reduce the amount of video autoplay
Adding videos to your blog is essential to attract visitors. However, when using videos, bear in mind that visitors can quickly get turned off when they keep witnessing a large number of video autoplay recurrently at different pages. When it becomes too much, it may act as a means of distraction to their interest in your blog hence lead to a high bounce rate and reduced actions from visitors.