How to Reduce Bounce Rate on a WP Site

bounce,rate,wp,reduce

[Vantelli]

Hi,

I'm searching for a solution to reduce bounce rate on my sites. All I can find are advice like "write engaging content" blah blah. I'm not eager to write "engaging content" because it's too slow way to build sites.

What I'm looking for are some technical solutions. Maybe exit popups which will ask a visitor to click and read one more article or anything like that.

Do you have any idea how I can persuade visitors to browse more than one post on my sites? What plugins/tricks I can use?

[keyplyr]

You were given good advice. Sorry, no shorcut to hard work.

[Vantelli]

I'm just looking for a plugin or similar solution which can reduce bounce rate, nothing shady or spammy. I'm sure that contextual links and navigation aren't the only places where visitor can click, there must be some ways to encourage them to stay on the site for longer and browse a few more pages.

[martinibuster]

The best way to get people to browse more is to give them more of what they want so be absolutely positive you have widgets on the right hand side and embedded within the content, as well as the bottom of the article to encourage them to click through and read another article.

To reduce the amount of people who bounce away without staying long make sure your images are all optimized. There's a bulk image optimizer plugin for that.

Unless the site is really bad, most improvements are marginally incremental. But put together it all adds up.

[Vantelli]

Images on my sites are super optimized. I reduce their size with offline tools, then upload them and some plugins optimize their size once again. Also I'm using so called "lazy load" plugins, so images are loaded only when a visitor scroll down where images are.

Bounce rate is approximately 80%

I think that most visitors find what they're looking for. For example my posts are ranked for Product name + price or product name + specs. When they land on my site they can find all they're looking for in one post. That's perhaps why they left the site instead to open more posts.

[martinibuster]

Google doesn't penalize sites for high bounce rates, you know. There's a misunderstanding about that going on.

It's what users do when they bounce away from a site that tells Google their algorithm's broken. For example, if a clicks on a link then returns to Google and reformulates their search query, that's a signal that they were not happy with the SERPs.

If site visitors are finding what they want on your site then they will not return to Google and reformulate their search query. Do you see how that bounce rate signal is not important by itself?

[DavidWP]

Speed is the number one way you can reduce bouncerate short of changing your copy to be super compelling.

- This tool will give you some WP specific speed tips [wpengine.com...]

- This will help you analyze page load in general [webpagetest.org...]

- Try using a managed host with special WP caching, NGINX rules, etc. (e.g. WP Engine, Pantheon, Page.ly). They often run on platforms like AWS / Google Cloud and can give you a speed boost above just using those platforms directly.

- I also love this plugin for page load improvement [wp-rocket.me...] (this one is good too [wordpress.org...]

- As for exit intent popups, this is far and away the most respected plugin in that space (http://optinmonster.com/). The plugin developer is super professional and *really* understands online marketing.

Good luck!
-D

[ambt]

I suppose having good site navigation can reduce bounce rate. If the content is easy to reach from any place, visitors may be more likely to explore the site.
I try to give the visitors plenty "opportunities to click". Main navigation in the header. Several smaller thematic menus in the sidebars. And when they scroll down to the bottom of the page, there is a tag cloud in the footer. It is also good when some posts are interlinked, when possible and when it makes sense.