Date Published: 4-Feb-2014 | By: Shane K Morgan

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who exit a website after viewing only one web page of the website. There are various reasons that cause high bounce rate. In this article, we discuss various categories of factors that cause high bounce rate.

Reasons for high bounce rate
The reasons for high bounce rate can be broadly classified into four categories. They are single page website, internal factors, external factors and marketing factors.

1. Single page website: We have mentioned in our previous article that the bounce rate is determined by page views. When a website contains only one webpage, then there is no second page for a visitor to visit and therefore no second page view. In such a case, no matter how long a visitor stays on one webpage, it is considered a bounce because there is no second pageview.

2. Internal factors

• Poor website design: If a website is filled with harsh colours, flashy images and animations, it hurts visitors eyes and obstructs visitor from reading the content on the webpage. Visitors then generally tend to exit from the website. Therefore, harsh colours and flashy images result in high bounce rate.

• Content on the website: Content is another factor on the website that determines bounce rate. If content on the landing page is not relevant to what user is searching for, then they exit from the website. Content on landing page should also be engaging, otherwise visitors do not get interest to visit other pages of the website and exit from the site contributing to high bounce rate.

• Poor navigation: In order to keep visitors engaging and make them visit other pages of the website, there must be proper navigational design. If the user lands on a page and if the navigation is not proper, then the user does not have proper guidance to visit other pages. They then exit the website without viewing second page, which, increases the bounce rate.

3. External factors:

• Improper external links: Generally, other websites give links to your website using anchor texts. Anchor text is the word or phrase with hyperlinks that connect other locations. If the anchor text is not chosen properly, non-targeted traffic is generated and they bounce off the website.

4. Marketing factors

• Choosing Wrong keywords: Keywords are the base of search marketing. It is very important that you choose the correct keywords. Optimizing your website with wrong keywords displays your website for wrong keywords in search engines’ pages. Wrong keywords generate non targeted traffic to your website, who are looking for something different and obviously finds your website non-relevant and bounce back immediately.

• Ads: Ad copies represent the website. If the presentation is not proper and not aligned with what the website actually offers, traffic to the website through the ads will turn away resulting in high bounce rate. Therefore, Ads should represent the website and the content on it properly.

• Meta description and title of the page: Search engines display the organic results with title tag and meta description. If title and meta description are not in line with the content of the website, that is, visitors expect something and your webpage contains something. This again results in high bounce rate.

These are the reasons that lead to high bounce rate and you need to work on it to reduce it.

You may also like to read:
Knowing Bounce Rate and It’s Different Scenarios