Realized my blog's bounce rate was killing my strategy after one bad test

I was running A/B tests on my homepage for 3 months, trying to improve conversions. Then I checked Google Analytics and saw the bounce rate on my new version was 78%. I was at my kitchen table in Nashville when the numbers hit me. I rolled back the change and went back to the old layout that had a 45% bounce rate. Has anyone else had a redesign that looked good but failed hard in the data?

2 comments

2 Comments

ivan_perez5d ago

Tossed a simple CTA button above the fold and added one line of supporting text underneath it. That single change dropped the bounce rate from 72% to 49% in a week.

dixon.willow5d ago

yeah that happened to me last year with a landing page redesign. we spent weeks on it, new hero image, cleaner layout, better copy. looked amazing on desktop and mobile. launched it and watched the bounce rate jump almost 30 points overnight. the issue was we made the page too minimal. visitors had no clue what to do next. the old cluttered layout actually guided people better even if it was ugly. sometimes what looks like an improvement is really just making things harder for your users.