How I Slashed My Website Bounce Rate by 60% and Tripled Time on Site (in Just 30 Minutes)

My website bounce rate was always high. For the last six months it hovered at 80%. Time on site was rarely more than 60 seconds. It never bothered me. I didn’t use the site. It just sat there making me a passive income from advertising. Last week though I decided to do something about it. I made a few simple changes. It took just 30 minutes.

From one day to the next average time on site doubled and the bounce rate for the website dropped by more than 60%. Yesterday the bounce rate was just 14%. Time on site was more than three minutes.

That drop in bounce rate was the result of five simple copywriting hacks. These changes took minutes to implement and require no changes to your website layout. Let me show you exactly what I did so you can reduce the bounce rate for your website.

The Best Introduction

We spend 65% of our lives reading, watching and discussing stories. Our lives revolve around them. Stories engage us. They are proven to increase time on a page by as much as 520%. The reason is simple; our imagination is based on the power of words.

Sweating. Heart rushing. Salty. Perfume. Jasmine.

Words activate our senses. Smells trigger our brain. Flavors make us salivate. We can even see the chemical effect that stories have on our brain by looking at case studies run by neuroscientists.

Take Action:

Introduce your articles with a story to reduce your bounce rate.

Every Writer Should Do It

Text. Sometimes it can get too much. Your eyes glaze over and you start to skim read. It happens with a lot of readers, but news agencies like Reuters know how to stop this.

“Cross-headings are used in all stories of 500 or more words to break the mass of copy into more digestible morsels.” Handbook of Journalism

Great cross-headings are like a good headline, they don’t tell the story they capture the readers’ attention. Your audience wants to read the article, pays attention to the story. They are more likely to click on links decreasing your bounce rate.

Take Action:

Turn your articles into easily digestible chunks using cross headings.

Because Most People Don’t Even Read Your Article

Headlines are important. They are so important that David Ogilvy, a copywriting legend, once re-wrote a headline for an advert 104 times. Maybe that’s just what he told Rolls Royce when he handed them his invoice…

There are plenty of great posts about how to write a good headline, so I won’t bore you with a 700-word article on how to write 50 characters. What I will say though is split test you headlines. This is super simple if you’re using WordPress. In fact, here’s a free plugin to help you do it.

Take Action:

Great headlines get clicks and lower your website bounce rate.

Grab A Copy of My Book (for Free)

I just finished writing my first book; How to Earn a Six-Figure Income Doing What You Love. I’m super excited about it and I want you to have it. All you need to do is…

Sorry. I lied to you.

There is no book, but if I’d given you a link I think you’d have clicked on it. If you had clicked the link it would have been because I asked you to do it and… Like the saying goes; if you don’t ask you don’t get.

Take Action:

Use a Call to Action to decrease your bounce rate.

The End

P.S. You stopped. You couldn’t help yourself. You know that a postscript is important. It has to be, otherwise why include it?

Internet marketers and copywriters take advantage of this fact. They include a postscript in articles and emails because they know it will get your attention. Just look how many times a P.S. appears in your inbox.

Take Action:

Include a P.S in your article. Combine it with a call to action to decrease your bounce rate.

Putting it Into Action

So you’ve got five copywriting hacks and a hundred articles. This is what I started with. It probably seems like you’ve got a lot more than 30 minutes work ahead of you. You don’t, I promise. You need to work smarter, not harder.

There are a lot of 80/20 rules. They are shorthand for meaningless statistics, but they’re memorable (marketing over mathematics). One of the most famous of these rules is the Pareto Principle. The basic idea is that 80% of results come from 20% of the work you do.

You can use the Pareto Principle to slash your website bounce rate and easily increase time on site. Simply choose the 10 most popular articles on your website.

Now get to work. Split test your headlines. Add a new introduction. Include cross headings. Use a call to action and add a postscript. I promise the bounce rate of your website will decrease overnight. It’s as simple as that.

P.S. If you liked this article you should visit my blog. It’s full of great content. Just look for the link in the bio.

About the Author

Nico is the founder of Start 2 Profit, and comes from the UK. He works full time with a team of freelancers and shares tips for growing a blog and making money online.

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Website Bounce Rate

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