Many times you walk into a store, turn around, and walk right back out. Probably because you realized the store doesn’t sell the merchandise you’re looking for or maybe the look of the store itself doesn’t appeal to you. Whatever the reason, you take a glance and dashed off quickly.

A similar situation occurs when people visit your website, and it is the last thing you want.

As a matter of fact, if you want to run a successful website, you need to be analyzing all the data. However, a large group of developers, marketers, and website owners overlook the important factor of bounce rate. If the majority of your users are relinquishing your website on the landing page, then you don’t stand a chance of converting them into customers or subscribers.

A high bounce rate is one of the most frequently occurring conversion killers and is attributable to a slow website, HTTPS mixed-content warnings,poor navigation on mobile, difficult usability of the website, etc.A decline in this number translates to quality traffic and optimized conversions.

Let me share with you 8 tips to reduce bounce rate of your website and build a successful site that generates search traffic consistently:

1. Make Your Content More Readable and Accessible

One of the most important part of any website’s user experience is its content readability.It is what shapes your site’s visual appeal, and it is one of the reasons why users adhere to your website.

Avoid sharing large chunks of text because they scare readers away.But don’t go overboard either – don’t include images between every single sentence as it can be exasperating. Great content with lousy formatting also results in faster exit and a higher bounce rate. So even if you have incredible content but poor formatting, readers will be scared off your posts.

Make sure your formatting is as welcoming and accessible as possible. Use subheadings to shed light on your topic and bullet points to explain points worth noting. Make keywords bold and use simple language in a conversational tone. This will allow the reader to skim and scan your content quickly to fulfill their needs. You may even take some readability tests, such as Flesch-Kincaid readability test to determine how understandable your writing is for different comprehension levels. In short, the more easily readable the content, the better the user experience.

2. Create a Compelling Call-to-Action

Once you’ve attracted your visitors to your website and kindled their interest in your content, you need to immediately describe what you’re selling and place a visible call-to-action. But you don’t want to drive them away with your weak CTA. You want every site visitor to at least think about it if not buy it.

As much as it is important to deliver content the user wants, it is also essential to galvanize your visitors to action by placing one crystal clear call-to-action. Don’t inundate your visitors with multiple CTAs. Rather keep the user intent in mind before including a relevant call-to-action to mitigate high bounce rates.

3. Improve Your Site’s Speed

Many marketers mistakenly attribute their bounce rate to their content, when in actuality, it is due to their website’s speed.

47% of users expect a website to load in 2 seconds or less and switch to their competitor’s website if it takes longer than that to load. Plus, they tend to make up their mind about a website in the first couple of seconds, but if it doesn’t even load, rest remains out of question. The slower your landing pages, the higher your bounce rate will be.Google also takes your site speed into consideration when listing your ranking. Therefore, if your site takes eons to load, the bounce rate of your site will increase.

A study conducted by Strangeloop suggested that a one-second delay can cost you 11% fewer page views, 7% of sales, and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction. Slow-loading pages are also one of the strongest reasons for shopping cart abandonment.

The key takeaway is that a slow site can ruin your business and deter potential customers from buying from you. By using tools like Google Page Speed and Pingdom, you can optimize every landing page on your site.Also, it is recommended to implement a Content Delivery Network (CDN) because it caches copies of your assets on edge servers and delivers them at the speed of lightning to the users.

4. Optimize for Relevance

Aside from the aforementioned technical considerations, one of the most significant contributing factors to an increase in bounce rates is irrelevance.

Some websites use keywords very effectively that align with the content they produce while some use downright irrelevant keywords that contradict with their content. Likewise, if the content you produce isn’t relevant to the user’s query, it is certain that the user will bounce. For instance, if you are selling electric appliances, and you write a blog post about beauty products, the user is likely to bounce as soon as your branding catches their eye. Landing pages are specially created with user intent in mind, which is why many companies that increased the number of their landing pages from 10 to 15 saw a 55% increase in leads.

So when you plan to integrate a keyword while aiming to rank for it, ensure the content you create is highly pertinent to that query.Carry out research to determine words and marketing channels that are generating low traffic. Most importantly, keep user intent into consideration when targeting keywords.

Meanwhile, try to find out the stage of funnel the user is in, and if the user is looking to buy something or learn something. Answering these questions will help you create the kind of content the user desires to see, consequently making a larger audience hang around once they’ve arrived on your site.

5. Enhance the Visual Design

A study conducted by Stanford University on 2500 web users showed that the average consumer observed the visual design of a site more than its content. Almost half (46.1%) of the participants judged a website’s credibility based on the ‘design look’. This includes the layout, the overall appeal of the visual design,typography and color schemes, especially the logo design. Therefore, it is necessary to have a professional logo design and a beautiful layout.

6. Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

Since the number of users accessing the web primarily from mobile devices is growing every year, failure in optimizing your site for mobile is tantamount to persuading them to bounce and take their business elsewhere.In spite of this fact, the number of websites that aren’t yet optimized for mobile is appalling.

It is extremely important to optimize your website for mobile because about 95% of your customers use this device. Even Google wants to rank content that displays quickly for people who use smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. Many of the businesses which previously didn’t have a responsive site optimized their pages after Google adjusted its algorithm and the rankings and traffic of many sites plummeted. In other words, no matter how extraordinary your content is, it won’t rank well in Google results pages if it is not mobile-friendly.

If you’re a WordPress user, we have a piece of good news for you: it is super easy to make your site responsive on WordPress. All you need to do is install the JetPack plugin or WPTouch plugin, activate the mobile theme and you’re good to go. If you’re a non-tech person, you may get a professional to assist you.

7. Be Careful with Ad Placements

Study shows that 70% of users find irrelevant popups annoying.Even though many popup ads grow your email list quickly, it is better to avoid them because people have developed banner blindness – a phenomenon in web usability where visitors to a website consciously or subconsciously ignore banner-like information. So this means ads are simply cluttering your site; cramming the digital margins of your content with offers, award emblems and ads is irrefutably an invitation to your visitors to bounce.

Moreover, Google has begun to penalize sites for having too many ads above the fold. So it is suggested not to place ads where people are seeking information, such as the search box or menu bar.Therefore, you should give your visitors enough time to absorb themselves in your content before smashing them with newsletter sign-up offers and other promotions. Go easy on them.

8. Add a Custom 404 Error Page

There will always be times when you’ll be left with some broken links you’ve not had time to fix yet, and this is where a 404 page comes in. A 404 error can be very disappointing for users so you should do everything to help them navigate away from it.

Most web hosts, by default, display a generic “404: the requested URL was not found on this server” error.However, by cleverly customizing your 404 page, you can prevent the visitor from bouncing from your site. Adding a bit of humor to the error page might also help.