By Neal - 7/25/2021
From past experience, we knew that bounce rate could always be improved. While we’ve had a good bounce rate of around 22%, we were confident we could improve it. Ultimately, through a series of tests, we reduced it over 18%. Here are some learnings.
One of the ways to reduce bounce rates overall is to check out how your site is doing on various browsers, including Edge, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. We found that our FreeCell game did well in Chrome, but had a high bounce rate in Safari. When we investigated, we found there were errors in Safari, and fixing them improved our bounce rate.
Look at your site and how it works on mobile. View your platform and check the display. Is it easy to read and to navigate? If there are issues, they need to be fixed. By implementing better mobile design for your site, you will reduce your bounce rate. In our case, our horizontal orientation was cut off, and after fixing it, we saw our mobile bounce rate improve.
You can get feedback about your site's design by running a survey to see how people like your platform's layout. Using the survey results to improve your site will typically lead to lower bounce rate averages.
In our case, we ran a survey and found that users overwhelmingly wanted an undo button. When we added the feature, we saw bounce rate improve.
Our users also told us they wanted a hint feature. Adding this further reduced our bounce rate.
By listening to your users, you can build a user experience that caters to their needs and reduce your bounce rate.
We originally used a very basic design for our cards. When a friend told us the design wasn’t appealing, it got us wondering how a new card design could impact user experience and bounce rate. We had a designer come up with a new traditional design for the card. Low and behold, we found that users stuck around more, likely because they instantly found the site appealing.
When you focus on your site's design and navigability, you will find that bounce rate will start to decline. Think objectively. What would you like to see improved if you were using the platform? Is the display clear and simple to decipher? Make your site universally accessible to all ages and abilities.
To enhance your site, include a video tutorial. If a new user visits your site, a video, when well-presented, can give them the motivation they need to stay on the platform. Videos increase engagement and allow visitors to use your site with more confidence.
We created a video on how to play Spider Solitaire and saw game play increase and bounce rate reduce. It turns out a lot of our users didn’t fully understand how to play the game, and the video tutorial was critical in teaching them.
If you want to improve the looks and functionality of your website, start by examining the bounce rate. Test ideas from user experience and browser compatibility and you’ll find that you can improve your user experience like we did.