Mobile bounce rate through the roof

bernard

bernard

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Bounce rates for my sites on mobile (excl. tablets) :

Site 1 (hobby oriented): 70%

Site 2 (health condition): 78%

Site 3 (home product): 83%

Mobile make up about 50% of all my visitors, so I really can't continue sending them away. It is straight up absurd. Some posts get like an almost 100% bounce rate.

I've tried fiddling with some gimmicks, as I think some issues are my text heavy articles, which convert well for tablet and pc, but not on mobile. I am working on adding more images, using a plugin to only show them to mobile. I also move offer boxes to the very top. I don't seem to have a lot of success using either.

Maybe it's the demographics? More women on site 3?

In any case, in an increasingly mobile internet (half of all visitors!), I really can't afford to have such abysmal bounce rates. Any suggestions on where to begin?
 
Do you have internal links, especially in the last paragraph?
 
Is your bounce rate lower on desktop? It also depends what the goal is that you want your visitors to do. One of my sites has a 90% bounce rate, but it’s ranking fine and earning good money.

User come to my page from the serp, read the reviews and then click onto the affiliate offer. This is exactly what I want them to do so I don’t see any need to get a lower bounce rate.
 
Check and see what your time-on-site is for mobile. If it's high, then it may be that you're satisfying their search queries and they're done.

A high bounce rate can be great too if your goal is to get them to click a display ad or affiliate link.

But in general, I agree with Calamari about having some compelling links in your conclusions, related posts widgets, and having an interesting sidebar. You can also put some high-visibility internal links throughout the article like you see news sites do, where it looks something like:
  • READ MORE: Is Your Mobile Bounce Rate Too High? Fix it With These 3 Steps
You also have to remember, you're talking about mobile (not tablets and desktop). The user psychology at the time is usually "I have a few minutes to suck down as much entertainment or info as possible."
 
I do those links already Ryu, but I don't think they are quite effective enough. I want a plugin made to add a small thumbnail and colorbox around the link. It already exists as a paid wordpress plugin, but it is random and can't be manually added.

You're right about bounce rate vs goals. CTR is about half on mobile, but I don't know conversion rate.

For some reason, my related posts plugin is only "sometimes" working, will need to hire someone to get that fixed.
 
ragnar said:
I do those links already Ryu, but I don't think they are quite effective enough. I want a plugin made to add a small thumbnail and colorbox around the link.
Click to expand...

Visual tricks and images won't help as much as having compelling anchor text that make your visitor want to click to learn more.
 
Cash Builder said:
User come to my page from the serp, read the reviews and then click onto the affiliate offer. This is exactly what I want them to do so I don’t see any need to get a lower bounce rate.
Click to expand...

Might be worth considering implementing Google Analytics event tracking. Firing events on the right actions can help eliminate some of those "bounces", so your data makes more sense.

Let's say you have a list post about third party services or products. Obviously we're going after those affiliate clicks on links. In that case, that's the primary goal on page. So I'd create an event listening for those clicks, and firing a "pageview" in Google Analytics.

User clicks, it's no longer a bounce, plus now you can see those events in GA and do other cool stuff with them. Stuff like having event labels of the anchors for the clicked links. Or those values could be the urls themselves. Then you can hone in on what's most popular.

Here's a jQuery example of what I'm talking about. Keep in mind, this may or may not work for you. With JS, and especially jQuery, depending on your GA / Google Tag Manager implementation, you might have to do something totally different to fire the events:

JavaScript: 
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
  
  jQuery('.message-actionBar a').click(function() {
    
    ga('send', 'event', 'Links', 'Clicked', jQuery(this).text());

  });

}

Then you could just add that to a JS file on your site, or embed it within a <script> tag, or insert it directly in to Google Tag Manager (if you use it).
↑​

In that example, say BuSo is getting good user feedback on posts (Likes, Quotes, Replies), but some threads have high bounce. That page element is called the "Action Bar" in the context of this site.
  1. We grab the class of the parent element (.message-actionBar).
  2. Then we look for any <a> tags within it.
  3. When those <a> tags are clicked, an event is fired with
    • eventCategory of "Links"
    • eventAction of "Clicked"
    • eventLabel of the anchor text
Then, as long as the user interacts at least once, they would no longer be a bounce even if they left. In some cases, when I've had sites where maybe a significant amount of content was "list posts" and stuff primarily linking to other sites, I might even go crazy and just track all <a> tag clicks anywhere within the body.
 
ragnar said:
I do those links already Ryu, but I don't think they are quite effective enough. I want a plugin made to add a small thumbnail and colorbox around the link. It already exists as a paid wordpress plugin, but it is random and can't be manually added.

You're right about bounce rate vs goals. CTR is about half on mobile, but I don't know conversion rate.

For some reason, my related posts plugin is only "sometimes" working, will need to hire someone to get that fixed.
Click to expand...

You can do that with the Thrive Themes (probably others too). Create your own saved snippet with the thumbnail. Then you manually add it where you want and add the image in the placeholder. Of course, that means spending a bunch of time getting used to a whole new theme but it is an option if you feel you must have the related links the way you describe.
 
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