How To Inprove Bounce Rates

I have recently upgraded a few Joomla websites to version 1.7 and found some interesting results related to how it affects bounce rate.

Faster Loading Times With Caching

The first and foremost thing I've learnt is that enabling caching lets pages load faster and when pages load faster the visitor is happier. After one particular website upgrade I checked Google analytics and was amazed to see the bounce rate had dropped from 85% down to 15% and less. Before the migration I had tried all sorts of things to try and lower the bounce rate but nothing ever worked. So why the sudden improvement? The only thing I could put it down to is that Joomla 1.7 has caching enabled by default. Everything else on the site is exactly the same layout. 

Have No Side Bars

Joomla users will be familiar with how modules are assigned to menu items. So if a page is clicked from a menu item, you can choose which modules are displayed alongside the article. By accident a particlualr website was upgraded to Joomla 1.7 and the sidebar modules were not showing. This was an error caused by the SEO friendly url software called sh404. From this I realised the real reason the bounce rate had dropped. Having a full width page article with no modules down the sides was decreasing bounce rate. For some reason when people come across a full width article they were more likely to click the menu across the top of the page to find more information.

If you want to captivate visitors and get them clicking around, then less is more. Get rid of all the busy user options and go minimalistic. Remove all your side banners, side menus and popular article links. Just have a full width page layout with a clear menu structure at the top. This will get you around a 50% bounce rate and that equates to more page views.