When checking your website’s analytics, you may notice that your site’s bounce rate may seem a little high. Your bounce rate is measured as the percentage of one-page visits to your site, where the user did not navigate to additional content. There are several factors that can lead to a higher bounce rate, from user experience to your site’s navigation. If you are looking to decrease your bounce rate and have users stay on your site for more extended periods of time, take a look at some of these factors to increase your user’s experience.
Easy-to-Navigate Site Search
Does your site have a search function? The ability to easily navigate through your site in order to find relevant information can make a huge difference in whether a user stays on your website or continues searching for information on competing sites. If they think they will have to navigate through each page manually and what they’re looking for is not immediately available, the user is likely to leave the site without viewing more than just the entry page and not return to your site. Make sure your site is easy to read and navigate on both desktop and mobile devices in order to encourage visitors to stay on the site.
Concise, Digestible Content
Your pages and blogs should be formatted in a way that is easy to read and understand for the reader. If the page appears to be solely text, it can be overwhelming to the visitor and cause them to leave immediately. Break up paragraphs into blocks separated by properly formatted H-tags titled with keywords relevant to the text. You can also use bulleted lists for shorter segments to quickly make your point. Each paragraph should have enough information for the reader to find what they are looking for, but be short enough that they can skim it to see if their question is answered.
Content Variety
An additional strategy to keep your readers interested is to use different types of mediums for your content. Visual content can encourage a user to stay on your site longer, whether they are reading through an infographic or watching a video embedded into a blog post. The ability to play a video can make reading a post more enjoyable and easier to process. While writing and tagging your content, make sure to use relevant keywords in order to increase your user’s experience while on the site.