Regardless of whether you’re running a blog or an online store, user retention rate – among other factors – is a key determinant to website success.
You’re probably not doing a good job if a majority of your traffic leaves immediately after visiting your website, or if they don’t ever come back after checking it out for once.
User retention rate is also known to have an impact on SERPs ranking, so improving the retention rate should be a priority from an SEO point of view as well.
This article will guide you through some simple tricks that you can easily apply on your site to maintain a low bounce rate.
Provide valuable content
If you want your website visitors to stick around, then publishing well-researched, informational content has to be a priority.
The topic of the articles should always be relevant to your niche, and you should refrain from using click-bait headlines.
For instance, check out this helpful how-to article from travel blog Week99er: https://week99er.com/new/how-to-start-prepping-for-the-holiday-season/
Improve page load time
Page load time is yet another major factor that has the potential to impact the user retention rate of a website.
Remember, you’re just one among the deluge of sources on a search engine providing information about a user query. And if your site is taking a long time to present that info before the user, they are probably going to hit that back button and move on to a different website.
Fortunately, improving load speeds isn’t all that complicated, especially if you’re on WordPress — in which case, it is only a matter of installing some plugins.
If you upload a lot of pictures of your websites, then we recommend installing the Smush plugin, developed by WPMU DEV, which can compress and optimize images as well as enable lazy load feature.
Insert call-to-action buttons
Make it easier for the users to reach out to you by adding an interactive call-to-action button right towards the end of the article and at the top of the header menu.
For reference, check out the header menu of this Canada-based business that provides temporary access solutions – Northernmat.ca.
If you’re on WordPress, then you can insert beautiful CTA buttons with the help of plugins such as Thrive Ultimatum and Elementor Pro.
Link internally
Give users the opportunity to read more of your content by linking to articles related to the one they’re currently reading.
This small change can significantly increase the amount of time an average user spends on your website, ultimately contributing to higher page views.
Besides that, internal linking also has great SEO benefits as they can be of great help to search engines in understanding the structure of your website.
Newsletter subscription
Towards the end of every awesome blog post you publish, ask users if they would like to be notified whenever you publish a new one.
Insert a subscription box next to the article so that a user can enter their email address to receive your newsletter.
For reference, check out this neat subscription form on Naked Winery:
Keep in mind that sending too many emails might make them want to unsubscribe, and so we recommend sending no more than one email a week.
Also, providing exclusive content or discounts on your products is a great way to make sure your subscribers remain loyal.
Go mobile-friendly
More than 50 percent of Google searches happen on mobile devices, according to official reports. And if you don’t want to miss out on that massive audience, you need to make sure your website works great on phones.
If you have a WordPress site, there are two things you can do to make it mobile-friendly.
First, install a mobile-friendly WordPress theme if your current one doesn’t look great on mobile phones.
Second, enable AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) support for your website, which makes it load a lot faster on smartphones and tablets.
These said changes, albeit small, are a must if you would like to improve the retention rate among smartphone users.
