12 reasons people leave your blog and never come back

Tips on how to reduce your bounce rate.

If you want to grow your blog, it’s important to know what people do when they get to your site. A way to monitor this is by installing Google Analytics and keeping an eye on your bounce rate.

Your blog’s bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who navigate away from your site after viewing only one page.

This means you want your bounce rate number to be as low as possible.

Let’s have a look at how to reduce bounce rate by analysing why people leave your blog.

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1. YOUR SITE TAKES TOO LONG TO LOAD

Have you checked how long it takes for your site to load?

Web visitors are extremely impatient and if your site takes longer than 3 seconds to load some of them will already have dropped off before they even got to your site.

To avoid this, check out your site loading time with the web page test and spend some time improving your blog’s loading time.

2. YOUR BLOG DESIGN IS FUGLY

Ouch did I just say that? Yes I did.

Blog visitors are quick to judge and unfortunately will leave your blog if your site looks outdated, too busy or has a colour template that hurts the eyeballs.

No one wants to spend a lot of time on a site that is not visually appealing, so make an effort to brand your blog and keep the look of your site calm and simple.

Some examples of bad design:

• Too much going on
• No white space
• No consistent branding
• Colours that clash
• Out of date
• Unprofessional photos

Read this post to help you DIY your blog design:

How to design a kick-ass brand for your blog

3. YOUR CONTENT HAS NO VALUE

Do you provide value to your readers?

Do you share useful information or teach them how to do something? Do you know what your target audience is struggling with?

No one is going to stay on your blog long if there isn’t something of value in it for them.

Before writing a blog post make sure to research the popularity of your post topic. You can do this with helpful tools like Ubersuggest and BuzzSumo. Simply type in a key phrase and see how many people search for this each month. You want to aim for at least 100 searches per month.

related reading:

What should I blog about?

4. YOUR NAVIGATION IS CONFUSING

To help your audience find what they are looking for, you need to make it easy for them. Does your blog have a clear menu bar at the top of each page? Does this menu bar link to all the most important pages on your site?

Always make sure your visitors can navigate to your most important content in one click or less.

Another way you can help people navigate your site is by adding a footer menu. This is a great place to repeat your main menu and add any other pages not included in your main menu like your privacy policy, disclaimer and terms & conditions.

5. YOUR CONTENT IS HARD TO READ

Tiny fonts, walls of text or bad grammar all make me leave a site pretty quickly.

There’s nothing worse than straining your eyes on a screen for extended periods of time so please ditch the tiny fonts! Increase your font size to a minimum of 16 pixels. (I’ve set mine to 18 pixels.)  When increasing your font size, make sure to increase your line-height as well. If your theme has an area where you can add some CSS code, this code should do the trick:

p {
line-height:220% !important;
}

Another thing you need to do is break up walls of text. It is harder to read on a screen than on paper, so make it easier by formatting your posts.

Break your text up with:

• Headings and sub headings
• Short paragraphs (1-4 sentences)
• Images
• Pinterest pins
• Screenshots
• Quotes
• Bullet lists

If you’re struggling to make your writing clear, effective and free of mistakes, install the free grammar checker tool Grammarly.

6. YOUR CONTENT DOESN’T DELIVER WHAT THE TITLE PROMISED

Have you ever seen the most enticing Pinterest pin with such a juicy headline, you just had to click it? But when you started reading the post it was either about a totally different topic or the post just didn’t deliver what it was promising? When this happens to me, I click the back button pretty quickly so your site visitors will most likely too.

Avoid this by always making sure the right pin links to the right blog post and always give your blog post a clear descriptive title and make sure it delivers what it’s promising.

7. YOUR EXTERNAL LINKS DON’T OPEN IN A NEW TAB

Adding relevant external links adds value to your blog. But do you want your site visitors to click on an external link and leave your site for good?
No! Of course you don’t.

To avoid this happening you need to make sure your external link opens in a new browser tab.
If it would open in the same tab, someone would have to click on the browser back button to get back to your site. Most people won’t do that, meaning they will lose your tab for good and forget all about your blog.

To make your external links open in a new tab you have to add this code in your text or html editor:
target=”_blank”

If this is your link:

Change it to this:

Or if you’re using a good WordPress theme it might offer this option in your link settings like this:

8. YOUR SITE IS NOT MOBILE FRIENDLY

More than 50% of Google searches are done on mobile, plus most people browse Facebook and Pinterest on mobile phones. If any of these searches end up on your site and your site is not optimised for mobile viewing, this traffic will most likely leave very quickly.

That is a lot of traffic you would miss out on.

Not all free themes are mobile friendly. Check if your site is mobile friendly here:

https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

If you want to upgrade to a mobile friendly theme, check out these premium themes:

Divi

Divi is a great theme for beginners. Super easy to use with its drag and drop website builder. No coding needed, just front-end bliss. It comes with more than 20 pre-made layouts, making it easy for you to create the look you want.

For $89 you get a year access to all themes and plugins on the Elegant Themes site. They offer a 30-day-money-back guarantee, so it’s risk free!

Check out Divi here.

Enfold

This theme was recommended to me, and I absolutely love it! Enfold is the best rated top selling theme on Theme Forest (over 9000 users have rated this theme 4.82 stars!)

It is easy-to-use and comes with 38 demo sites that you can import and replace the content of. Or you can start building from scratch with the (back-end) drag-and-drop layout builder. The best thing about this theme is their dedicated support staff, no question is too big or small they always help you out.

You can buy Enfold for $59.

Check out Enfold here.

Bluchic Themes

If you are not much of a designer and you would like a gorgeous feminine design for your blog, you have to check out Bluchic Themes. They have a huge selection of beautifully designed themes that literally will allow you to just replace their content with your own.

They also have design templates for landing page, sales pages and freebie opt-in lead magnet pages.

Most Bluchic Themes are available for $79.

Check out Bluchic Themes here.

9. YOU HAVE TOO MANY ADDS ON YOUR SITE

There’s two ways ads make people leave your blog:

1. No one likes ads, let’s face it. They’re annoying, they slow down your site and they’re disruptive. If too many ads get in the way of me reading a post, I will leave the site as soon as I found what I came for.
2. When clicked, ads take your hard earned visitors away from you blog and they might never return. And all that for a measly 36 cents or however much you get paid per click.

So unless your blog has tons of traffic and your ads are making you a good deal of money, do your visitors a favour and get rid of them.

10. YOU’RE USING TOO MANY POP-UPS

I had to leave a site once because there were so many pop-ups that I couldn’t read the content. Make sure to test out your pop-ups on a mobile screen because one pop-up can overlap another pop-up and if your reader can’t close them, all they can do is click the back button and leave your site.

Minimise the use of pop-ups and always test your site on a mobile screen.

11. YOU PARTICIPATE IN TOO MANY FACEBOOK THREADS

A lot of us bloggers love the Facebook threads where you get to promote your blog post. These threads can bring you some traffic but for new bloggers with no organic traffic they can also really increase your bounce rate. Think about it, these people will go to your blog, pin your pin or leave a comment and then leave. Not many of them will spend more than 20 seconds on your blog and then bounce without visiting another page.

Use these threads less often and you will reduce your bounce rate.

12. YOU HAVE NO CALL TO ACTION

Your ideal reader has just found your post, read every word of it, absolutely loved it… but then left your site and forgot all about you.
WHY?
Because you didn’t tell them what to do next.

Readers need to be told what to do.
So when they finish reading your post make sure to add a call to action.
Examples of these are:

• An email sign up form offering an opt-in freebie
• A special offer
• A ‘BUY NOW’ button
• An invite to your facebook page or group
• Links to other posts your audience might be interested in

You don’t have to wait till the end of the post, you can add multiple calls to action throughout your post.

These are the 12 things you need to look at when you want to reduce your bounce rate

I hope you’ve found this post helpful and you now know how to reduce your bounce rate. Let me know what you think in the comments below and if you’re new to blogging, make sure to grab my free blog planner workbook below.