10 Ways to Reduce Bounce-Rate in WordPress
If you are having a WordPress site, what do you need to do to make the users visit your site again and again? This can be done by reducing the bounce rate.
Bounce rate is a measure used by Google to get a hint about the quality of your website. The more your bounce rate will be, the less likely it will be found in the search.
Hence, you should try to reduce your bounce rate to make it visible in the search.
10 Ways to Reduce Website Bounce Rate in WordPress
If we do not reduce the bounce rate of our website, then we will not get any visitors. So, lets see what are the ways by which we can reduce our bounce rate:
1. Make Long Posts Shorter
Make all of your long posts smaller and divide them among other pages. Many well known sites like Forbes and NY Times use this strategy.
Since the visitors will move from one page to another, you have to make the articles relevant to each other. This will maintain the interest of the users to move to the next page.
This will help you to reduce bounce rate in WordPress.
2. Don’t Use Pop-Ups and Splash Pages
Many people use pop-ups to improve their subscription numbers. However, there are also many people who find the pop-ups very disturbing and unimportant.
The case is the same with splash pages. In splash paes, the users need to click through many steps of authentication before they are able to access the site.
However, before riding your site off these two, you need to check how they are affecting your bounce rate. Then you can remove or apply them accordingly.
3. Make your Navigation Better
Your website’s user experience is very much affected by the navigation of your website. The navigation determines how your users move around in your website.
In your website, if you use a huge number of buttons, it will end up confusing the users. However, if you use very less buttons, it will end up making the users frustrated. Hence when you are selecting your WordPress site, you have to select by keeping in mind what is important for your users.
The purpose of your site will also help you to determine the priority of your users and what to keep in front of the user when they enter your site.
4. Always Use Relevant Posts on your Site
When the users are on your site, they are looking for a particular topic and they may be looking for more information on the same topic.
You cannot assume that they will search for it on their own. Hence, you need to provide them with related posts at the bottom of your posts. This is important because they may not know that there is more information available on the same topic.
By doing this you will definitely reduce your bounce rate.
5. Personalize your 404 Error Page
The 404 error page shows up when some pages on your site are not yet been created. Maximum users leave the site after coming across a 404 error page. However, you can personalize it, and tell the users what to do next. You can use texts like, “contact us” link on the page, so that they can contact you regarding this matter.
When the users are looking for some information and comes across 404 error message, they will follow your suggestions if they trust you that you will provide exactly what they need.
6. Use More In-Content Links
If you have a WordPress site with the purpose dedicated towards a specific subject, then you become a pool of knowledge for those who are searching about the same topic.
Then you can add links in your article that leads the users to various other information about the topic or something related to it. This will not allow your users to leave your site as they are getting all the information they need from your site only.
Although these links are useful to you and your users, make sure not to stuff your page with links. Overuse of links will affect the ranking of your page. Hence, you should use the relevant links only.
7. Make Use of The White Space
In the world of web design, less is more. This is the reason why the WordPress themes are not very busy as they were before. A website which is crowded makes the user very confused which in turn can increase your bounce rate.
Make use of the white space means that you have a white background, which will hold nothing. This will allow the users to rest their eyes on this white space while going through the article. Besides, it also makes it easy to understand where to start the navigation.
Famous companies like Google has benefited from this idea. Google uses this strategy on their search page.
8. Make your Site Mobile-friendly
You should make your website mobile-friendly. But, if your site is not mobile-friendly, your bounce rate will increase.
In recent times, people do most of their search on their mobiles. Hence, by creating a site which is mobile-friendly you can reach to a wide range of audience.
Being a mobile-friendly site, your site will see a huge improvement in its ranking with the search engines.
9. Use a Side-Bar which is Interactive
A side-bar is the most used part of a website. This is located at the side of a website. It helps the users to move on to their next search, when they are finished with their current work.
In the side-bar you can give options for searches using the current information of the user. This will give the user more information about their previous search or other interesting topics they might be interested in.
This will make them stay on your site for longer, and hence decreasing your bounce rate.
10. Make your SEO Better
Right SEO will help to bring more traffic to your website. If you provide the right material in your website, the people who are interested in that subject will never leave your site. SEO also helps you to make your content more polished and increase its quality.
For setting up the right SEO, you can hire a company which will carry out a SEO research for your website. Hiring a company will require you to invest your money, or you can invest your time and carry out the research yourself.
The result will be worth the effort as it will help you to decrease your bounce rate.
Using SEO keywords will also help you to improve your user experience for your website. Therefore, a site which is optimized by SEO, will see huge traffic and a reduction in the bounce rate.
Conclusion
Bounce rate affects your website negatively. Increase in your bounce rate is bad, hence you should always try to keep it low.
Therefore, by following the above mentioned steps, you can keep your bounce rate low. These steps will allow you to make your website more attractive and user friendly so that users will stay on your site for a long time.