While getting traffic to one’s site is an everlasting challenge, that’s just the beginning of the whole conversion / monetization process. You also want to keep those visitors on site, and eventually to convert them (as many as possible). One of the most important indicators of a site’s performance is its bounce rates. If a website visitor doesn’t visit any of the site’s sub-pages that’s not a good sign.

High bounce rates are also one of the SE ranking factors that will definitely put one’s site lower. If the user experience, or false targeting is so bad, that it causes a high bounce rate, it will not only have effect on the conversion rates, but also on any potential organic traffic. A perfect downward spiral.

The first step to mitigate high bounce rates should be to analyze what may be the reason for the them in the first place. Among the causes may be unclear or unrecognizable navigation, an off putting design, unrelated or off putting content, too many ads, auto-play audio or video included, and so on.

You can use all sorts of behavior tracking tools / analytics etc. But as a rule of a thumb – what always helps is to get an outsider look, be it your colleague, or someone unrelated. In fact those that know nothing about the site may be your best advice. Changes on the site have an immediate effect and one can find out right away whether the yesterday’s change helped.

If the website visitors stay longer, and browse around, you have a far better chance to persuade them to sign up. Not only that, you’re likely to get some bonus organic traffic as well, since you’ll perform better in search engines.