Why is my bounce rate so high?
In this blog I will look to explain why your blog or website bounce rate may be high and why that might not be a bad thing.
Your bounce rate is quite a simple thing really, it is the percentage of people that visit your site or blog and then leave without visiting any more pages. It does mean that they didn't read the content although that maybe the case for some visitors, but that is not what your bounce rate is measuring.
A high bounce rate is not always a bad thing. If you have a blog and you have shared your posts over social media as I do then I would expect quite a high bounce rate. The reason is this, the goal for the blogger is to get interested people to read their content right? The expectation from the visitor is simple your post sounds interesting and they will check it out. That is as far as the promise goes. They may sign up for your newsletter if the content is really valuable. But our hope is that they read it and their promise is to at least check it out by clicking. In most cases they will leave after that one page and that is ok. In an ideal world they might read more than one post but how easy  do you make it for the visitor to find new content or take the the next step on your website.
This is something I will be looking to add to my own blog very soon, the ability to choose another blog post to read.
In the case of a website a high bounce rate is a little more of an issue if you are trying to build trust and rapport. E-commerce not so much. In general E-commerce comes with buying intent so providing they know your brand and trust it one page view might be enough to complete the transaction. In a B2B (business to business) siltation there is likely going to be need a journey to take place and much more convincing.
The way to do this is create user journeys and make it really easy for the visitor to find the information they want and in the order they want. One big mistake I see on websites is dead ends. These are when you get to the bottom of a page and there is no clear call to action or options to click anywhere else. Even by offering a menu in the footer will make it easier for people to continue the journey or complete a call to action. For me that is to get people to sign up to my email list. I therefore put this call to action in my page footer as well as a menu and contact form.
This should be the minimum and ideally there should be other relevant and useful options on the page itself.
Take a look though your site or blog and see if there are any dead ends. Make it simple and easy for someone to click to another page and then you will see your bounce rate improve but also understand if that is really an issue if you are getting the results you want with a high bounce rate it is not an issue.
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Author- Speaker - Consultant. Passionate about all things digital.