As funny an image as the word “bounce” conjures, it really isn’t amusing or the kind of humor that you should appreciate if you happen to be a webmaster that actually cares about the performance of your website.

If you are serious about your site, you will want as many visitors to come and see what you have to offer. What you would also like is if all of those visitors were to spend some money on whatever goods or services you may have to offer, or at the very least, a decent amount of time going through what you have to say. If they don’t – that is, if they just leave as soon as they have arrived on your site – then you can say that your visitors just “bounced.”

Bounces can occur on any of your site’s pages. It could be the first page that your visitors arrive on or it could be a page buried deep in your domain, which they somehow navigate to and then simply leave from.  Now, it might not all seem like a big issue; after all, there are billions of people on the planet. Why should a webmaster be worried about a measly few hundred of them? Why should you go out of your comfort zone for the sake of a few uninterested people? Well, one reason could be that the purpose of a website is that it should provide a service or add value to a visitor’s life, and if you are not providing it, you just might as well close shop (as you would probably do if you had a regular, brick-and-mortar store that people just walked in and then straight out of) and call it a day.

Your visitors leave your page in a variety of ways: by clicking on a link that leads them away, by clicking on the “back” button, by typing in a URL or by closing the browser or window.

Timing out (becoming inactive for a long time) can also be considered to be a bounce, even if it’s not your fault at all. Kinda lame, I know. That being said, there are many reasons for bounces. If you have a one-page site, you are obviously going to have a high bounce rate – after all, where else would you expect your visitors to go?

But, if you have many pages and, especially, if your visitors leave instead of clicking through to that final page with the “BUY NOW” button on it, then you have something that is turning people away. You can safely assume that you, the webmaster, are to blame.

Let’s look at some of the more common reasons for bounces:

–          It’s Shocking/Disgusting/Irrelevant: If your visitors just can’t stand what you have to offer, or find that it has nothing to do with what they are looking for, they will make an about-turn and head out.

–          Your Content is as flat as a Pancake: If what you find on a website has no taste, isn’t written well, doesn’t make a point or is absolutely useless, would you hang around? So, why expect anything different from your visitors?

–          Buggy, Tasteless Pages: Your visitors wouldn’t want to be on a site that has broken links, apps that don’t work or even colors that clash and make them nauseous. Web designing plays an integral role in retaining visitors.

Now that we’ve seen the reasons, let’s see how you can keep visitors on your site.

–          Find the Leak: Use tools (like Google Analytics) to see which pages on your site have the most bounce rates. These are the ones that you need to focus on.

–          Plug the Leak: Once you know which pages are bleeding visitors, it’s time to plug the leak.

• First of all, make sure your site looks pleasant and everything works as well as it should. Make sure you don’t have dead or misleading links. Look into your fonts and formatting. Don’t go too overboard with decoration; some of the most popular sites on the internet have simple, clean-cut designs.

• Make sure that you are attracting the right kind of visitors. Your SEO and SEM (search engine optimization and search engine marketing) campaigns should be built around tight, and detailed, long-tail keywords. If you used the keyword “cap” in your campaign, for example, and your store specializes in the type that you wear on your head, those looking for hub caps will all be flocking to your site… and then leaving. But, if you use “NY Yankees baseball caps” you will pull in the right crowd.

• See if there are too many ads on the page. There is nothing more annoying than being interrupted by those ads that popup in the middle of the page and you have to close to access the content. If the ads are on the page itself, make sure that they do not interfere with the viewing of your content. Make sure the content flows.

• Make it load fast. In this age of broadband connections, a page that loads slowly really tests visitors’ patience. Get rid of cumbersome images, videos and any links to off-page content that might be slowing your page from loading as quickly as it should.

• The number of people accessing the internet on mobile devices is now in the majority. Make sure that your site’s design allows for viewing on these devices.

• If you have links that take people off of your site, make them open in new windows instead of leading your visitors straight away from your site.

• Improve your sales pitch. Once you have the visitors on your site, give them what they want – if not, make them want what you have to offer.

• If the page that is bouncing the most traffic is one of the sales process pages (the one that you go through to make your final purchases) you will never make a sale, no matter how good a pitch you may have. Test all your flows and processes from start to finish.

The points made above are meant to start you off on reducing bounce rates on your site. Internet traffic is as versatile as the people behind each click. Trends change as people’s habits change. You, therefore, need to keep an ear to the ground to find out what you need to do to cater to these changing needs and then quickly adapt your site to meet the demands.

Remember: it is a non-stop process.