So, you have started your own WordPress website or blog, and you have finally started to get a few people to your site. However, there is one thing which worries you more than anything – your visitor bounce rate is huge!
Does this sound familiar? If so, then you need to take steps to lower it. Every single person who ‘bounces’ from your website or landing page is a potential customer, client, or reader lost. This means loss in revenue, less people reading or watching your content, and basically, a less successful website.
Luckily for you, there are a lot of things that you can do to improve your bounce rate – to lower it – and most of these are simple and free. Some of the best places to start include:
Improving your content:
If a visitor arrives at your website and sees a whole chunk of boring, poorly written text without visual content, then they are going to leave – it’s as simple as that! If you really want to reduce your bounce rate, you need to improve your content.
- Use big, bold headlines to draw people in. Use catchy words, and don’t be afraid to put big headers throughout your content.
- Use visuals! People don’t have the time to sit down and read long, wordy articles any more. If you want to increase visitor engagement, use pictures, videos, and infographics as much as you can.
- Only use a couple of sentences per paragraph. Any more, and people will find it hard to concentrate, and will probably leave your site to find something more friendly.
Don’t use too many ads:
I’m sure that you will agree with me on this one – if a website is packed with ads and popups everywhere there is a spare piece of space, then you won’t be very attracted to it. If there is too much advertising, a visitor will simply leave your site and move onto the next. Instead of packing your WordPress pages with ads, focus on including a couple of high-quality ads in inconspicuous places – doing so will definitely reduce your bounce rate!
Keep your blog fresh and don’t use misleading titles:
If you really want to keep people on your website, then you have to do something to encourage them to stay. Provide high quality, informative content, update your pages regularly, and don’t use misleading, clickbaity titles.
Make your website fast:
When it comes to WordPress made websites made by amateur web designers, load speed is usually a major problem. If your website takes too long to load, visitors are not going to hang around. There are plenty of plugins that you can use to reduce your page load speed if you are using WordPress, and some of the best ones are free.
If you are trying to increase visitor engagement and reduce your website bounce rate, there are a few simple things that you can do. Spend a bit of time, spruce up your site, and watch the results flow in!