Simple Tweak To Reduce Bounce Rate by Over 50%

Hi everybody, so what am I upto today ?? Well today I will sharing a simple tweak by which you can lower your Bounce Rate upto 70%. But before reaching there I will be sharing some simple methods to improve your bounce rate and a cool infographic from one of my favourite blogs followed by the secret tweak.

Simple Tweak To Reduce Bounce Rate by Over 50%

What is Bounce Rate ?

There are a lot of bloggers who are still not clear about what Bounce rate actually is, so let me tell you. "Bounce rate is Percentage of visitors who arrives on your blog/website and closes it without opeing any other page." or in Google's words it is "The % of single page sessions on your site."

To know more about bounce rate: Click here

So it's quite understandable that a lower bounce rate is not good for us. A bounce rate below 50% is very much acceptable and you don't have to worry about it but if you have a bounce rate above 50% then you must carry on with this post and apply the simple adjustement given below. 

Common Methods to Decrease Bounce Rate (BR)

• Avoid PopUps: Popups are very annonying to many visitors and they close your site once they get a popup message from your blog.

• Internal Linking: It is indeed a great way to encourage your readers to open further links and ultimately lower your BR. Try to do interlink atleast 3 of your links in every post. 

• Responsive Theme/Template: Use responsive templates that works well on all platforms and resolutions. 

• Use Related Posts Widget/Plugin: Use such widgets to further encourage your readers to read more of your posts. We use LinkWithin blogger widget in our blogs

• Write Short Paragraphs: We are not saying to write less number of words but yes do write small paragraphs as many a times viewers feel lazy after seeing a long para and thus leave your blog which again lowers your BR.

• Improve Loading Time: This again is an important factor responsible for your high bounce rates. Increase your page load time by removing unnecessary third party widgets or plugins.

• Color and Font properties: Improve your site's look by using attractive colors that would not look dizzy. Change your font size and style such that your content looks more readable and attractive. You can change your blogger font properties using this method.

• Search Box: Offer a search box to your readers that will again help them to find more content on your blog. 

• Relevant Content: Always post relevant content on your blog. Off-topic posts will easily lead to increase in bounce rate. 

• Show Popular posts: Make use of your sidebar effectively by showing a list of popular posts from your blog, research shows that every blog visitors looks for the most popular posts of a blog. 

Still not satisfied !!! reader satisfaction is our main aim, I have embedded an infographic from QuickSprout which will surely help you further in improving your bounce rate. 

There is a special tweak for you that will lower your BR by 70% after this infographic. 

Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

Tweak to Lower Bounce Rate upto 60%

Let me tell you that this tweak was released by an Analytics insights team member officially so there is nothing to be afraid of. 

How does it Actually works ?

Before trying anything related to codes it's very important to know what will be the code doing. So let me explain you in short. 

Do you feel that the system or algorithm of Bounce rate is somewhat unfair ? I mean if someone is looking for a particular thing on google and he finds your post, read it and solve his problem, then its quite natural that he will close your blog coz his work/problem etc is solved. But What !!! Google will count it as a Bounce and add it to your Bounce Rate. 

What should actually be the criteria for Bounce Calculation according to me ?

Well Its simple, I would like to consider a visit as a bounce only if the visitor closes the site after some period of time say 10 seconds or so, that would mean that the visitor doesn't like your content or he fails to find what he was looking for. Don't you think it will be fair ?? I would appreciate comments on this issue. 

So this trick/tweak does the same, it will make the visit a bounce only if your site get closed within 10 seconds (you can easily change the time as per your wish). One more thing this code does is, it will discard the visit as bounce once a viewer scrolls the page. 

Google's team and others call it as "Adjusted Bounce Rate"

How to implement it on YOUR BLOG ?

This is how the original analytics code looks like: 

<script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
  (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
  m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
  })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');

  ga('create', 'UA-XXXXXXXX-1', 'iftiseo.com');
  ga('send', 'pageview');
// ]]></script>

1. Replace the above code with this code or the one given below

<script type="text/javascript">

  var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXX-1']);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

  setTimeout(function() {
    window.onscroll = function() {
      window.onscroll = null; // Only track the event once
      _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'scroll', 'read']);
    }
  }, 10000);

  (function() {
    var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
    ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
  })();

</script>

2. Or replace it with this code

<script type="text/javascript">

  var _gaq = _gaq || [];

  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXX-1']);

  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

  setTimeout("_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', '15_seconds', 'read'])",10000);

  (function() {

    var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;

    ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';

    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);

  })();

</script>

CODE 1: It will count a visit as a bounce only if the site is closed under 10 seconds. It will disregard a visit as a bounce if the user scrolls the page. It means if the visitor scrolls your post but closes it under 10 seconds it will still NOT be treated as Bounce

CODE 2: This code will behave as the above code but without the scroll option.

Just Replace the XXXXXX with your analytics ID and save the changes. Our code will count the visits as bounce only if the visitor closes the site under 10 seconds. You can change the time as well by changing the value of "10000" to your required choice. 

Note: 1000 = 1 Second

We recommend to set it at 15 seconds.

Sources: AlltechBuzz and Analytics.blogspot.com

Final Words

I have tried these codes on my own blog and the results I've got are really amazing. My blog's bounce rate came from 65% to 20%  just after implementing the code. I would recommend you all to try the code and share the results with me. 

Change seen after applying the tweak.

Old Bounce Rate

New Bounce Rate

So the changes to my bounce rate can be seen clearly, You can see a huge drop in the second pic, it was due to the fact I changed the time from 15 to 10 seconds. I got a bounce rate of 4.26% on that day. 

So it's upto you How you use the code, but one thing is sure after reading this post and trying the tips and methods your bounce rate will drop surely. I hope you liked this post, since this tweak is still not known by many bloggers and webmasters I want you to spread the word by sharing the post using our social sharing buttons below. Your's thoughts in comments are always appreciated. 

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