Increase Pageviews By Lowering Your Bounce Rate

I’ve talked about bounce rate before when I released my Attention Span plugin for Mint. Bounce rate is one of the best ways to gauge the effectiveness of your site. In one month I’ve improved the bounce rate on MacTips from 37% to 26%–let me explain how.

What is Bounce Rate?

Bounce Rate: The percentage of users who visited only 1 page on your site and then left.

This is the most basic definition of bounce rate. So if your bounce rate is 30%, 30% of your visitors left without visiting any other pages.

The other 70% visited 2 or more pages. The lower your bounce rate the better.

I know you’re begging for an analogy, so here’s one. Imagine a cup with a hole in the bottom. Our goal is to fill the cup with water as quickly as possible.

In this scenario, the cup is your website, the water your visitors and the hole your bounce rate.

There is always going to be a hole in the cup, it’s the nature of this cup (some users will always leave after only 1 visit). However, the smaller the hole (lower bounce rate), the quicker our cup fills and the faster we reach our goal.

Ignoring your bounce rate is like trying to fill a cup with no bottom. No matter how many visitors you pour into your website, none stick around. You have a tough time building a following of any measurable size. There is an easier way.

Why is a Low Bounce Rate Important?

A low bounce rate can:

• Increase ad revenue, more page views usually means more $$$ (not always)
• Increase return visits, when a user begins surfing your site they remember you and are more likely to revisit
• Increased attention, attention is our ultimate goal building a website. Bounce rate is a shortcut to retaining that attention
• Momentum, user activity breeds more activity. Users don’t like contributing to a ghost-town Web site. The quicker you build users, the more momentum you gain
• Increase subscriptions to RSS and E-mail, A user who navigates multiple pages is more likely to want more information in the form of subscriptions

How Do I Lower My Bounce Rate?

Many individual factors contribute to a poor bounce rate. Overall, I’d say 50% is content and 50% is page design. I’ve tweaked both heavily and both have a huge impact. Let’s break down some factors:

Remove Ads: Crazy right? Let me explain. Users don’t like ads, they tolerate them. Overload your users and they’ll flee. Don’t remove all ads, but the low-paying ones you crammed in for an extra penny at your users expense–consider ditching those.

Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS): Simple beats trendy any day of the week. Your users will thank you with their attention. Adding superfluous effects, transitions and moving objects will confuse your users and make them give up. You don’t want them to give up, you want them to dig in and get their feet wet. Keep it as simple and intuitive as possible.

Clutter is another problem. Don’t try to cram as much information as possible into one area. Whitespace can be visually appealing. Keep the important stuff and move everything else out of the way.

Accessibility: Is your website accessible? This touches on keeping things simple as mentioned above. An accessible website works on all browsers (mobile too). It can be used by people with disabilities and non-savvy Internet users. Also, for goodness sake leave your damn links underlined.

Relevant Links: This was the single most important factor while improving the bounce rate on MacTips. Relevant links to similar or popular content are fine. But cross-linking inside content will do more for your bounce rate than many of the previous techniques combined.

Consider cross-linking like this: Quality content is important when building your Web site, but its also important to have a plan for success.

Linking to previous (relevant!) content will send users deep into the nooks and crannies of your site and help new users catch up on content they missed.

When I started doing this on MacTips, the bounce rate plummeted. This makes sense because your users eyes are fixated on your content. Not your sidebar, footer or header (though the header holds a lot of attention)–the vast majority if your users are focusing on your content.

By putting relevant links in front of their eyes, you grab and hold their attention. This is the way to build readership.

In Conclusion

Bounce rate is not a cure-all solution to building a successful Web site. However, by paying attention to it–you can test different versions of your site and measure the effect on your users.

This enables you to create a following much easier than just hoping users liked the one article they happened to stumble across.