Having a website is like having a baby. You want it to be the best of the best. You care for it and you cherish it. It's totally normal. But then you come across the term "bounce rate" and your head starts to spin. Numbers show that your beloved website is loved only by you. Why other people don't feel the same?  

First things first: what is bounce rate? 

Bounce rate is a term that is used in web traffic analysis. Bounce is a single page visit. Every user who visits your website, spends couple of minutes reading content and then exits it rather than continuing to view other pages within the same site is counted as a bounce. In other words: it's the percentage of people that leave your site without doing anything or browsing any further. How to measure it?

R_b = T_v / T_e 

where:

R_b = bounce rate

T_v = total number of visitors viewing one page only

T_e = total entries to page

Suppose your website is visited by 100 people daily and 40 of them leave your site without browsing any other pages. It means that your bounce rate is 40%.

Why are visitors bouncing from a website?

There are several reasons why some users leave your site without going to other pages. Maybe the problem lays in your site's code or content? Or maybe it's because your website load too long?

These are the most common bouncing-off routes visitors take:

• they read the complete page and don't perform any other activity,
• they stay idle, causing session time out,
• they click on some link on your website which takes them to another site,
• they simply close the browser,
• they click on the back pointer/arrow which returns them to previous website.

When bounce rate is good?

 

What plugins are going to help?

​ If you want to increase your site's search performance, you should get a closer look at your bounce rate. If it's high it could means couple of things, such as poor user experience, bad-organized landing page or website loading time is too long. There are couple of things you could do to decrease bounce rate.

1. Hello Bar 

People will spend more time on your website if you engage them in a right way. Great idea is to create a simple pop-up in a form of hello bar, modal, slider, alert bell or page takeover. You decide! In just 5 minutes you will have a custom pop-up ready to go straight on your site. Thanks to this plugin you will grow your email list, generate new leads, reduce cart abandonment and, more importantly, convert your visitors into customers!

Learn more: https://wordpress.org/plugins/hellobar/

 2. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)

 A related post plugin will help you reduce your bounce rate by encouraging visitors to click on other interesting content on your website. The ideas here is a user who is engaged in your content will readily jump into another post. Widget with related posts will help him to do it and additionally will serve as ads for other content on your website. It's so simple!

Learn more: https://wordpress.org/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/

 3. Redirection

There's nothing worse than seeing a 404 page. Plugin Redirection will help you avoid these kind of situations. By installing it, you will easily manage 301 redirections and keep track of 404 errors. This plugin will also help you tidy up all loose ends your website has. Forget about broken links and improve your site ranking!

Learn more: https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/

4. The Events Calendar 

 If you want to inform your visitors about interesting events, gatherings or conferences related to you business, there's nothing better than event calendar. It's easy in use and completely customizable which means that you can add your personal touch to it.

Learn more: www.wordpress.org/plugins/the-events-calendar/

Befriend bounce rate