How to display Dynamic Sidebars along with Widgets that reduce bounce rate

Jan 3, 2025
WordPress dynamic sidebar and widgets

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Today, we'll be discussing the subject of widgets and sidebars that are dynamic (those related to your content) and, more importantly, how they can reduce the bounce rates on your site and boost the probability of conversion.

What is the Bounce Rate?

The bounce rate is the proportion of users that visit and quit instead of staying on to explore other pages on your site. To decrease bounce rates, you must improve the level of engagement and this tells you a lot about your website's usability. If users find that the information interesting, they are likely to stay longer and will be eager to come back for even more useful material. This, in turn, results in a greater percent of conversion. The longer your visitors stay on your site and also the longer they remain more, the greater the likelihood to increase sign-ups, sales as well as advertising revenue.

They'll be keen to stay for longer, which is the reason you need a solution to stop them from leaving too fast -- informational material.

Utilizability is essential to reducing Bounce Rate

It isn't enough to make your site user-friendly simply by providing relevant material to site visitors. Also, you must make sure that your tools are optimized to display on each page that they can interact. Additionally, the tools you show should add value for the page content displayed on the specific website.

These widgets include the navigation bar as well as all widgetized sections on any web page, not just the sidebar. While to certain it is one of the key elements in making users feel engaged, don't ignore the significance of the widgets you have. This is especially true if you are aware of the options WordPress provides for you to manage these areas.

The sidebar is the main widget placeholder that can either determine or derail your site's accessibility. Why? It's simple to place whatever widgets you want in your sidebar and not consider the issue of whether or not these widgets relate to the main contents.

What are WordPress Dynamic (Content-Relevant) Sidebars?

These screenshots demonstrate how different the sidebar appears for MarketingProfs.com.

Podcast Page (Screenshot A)

In this blog post, MarketingProfs is showing the below widgets: ideas for subscribers, links and most popular articles.

Dynamic sidebar (Screenshot A)
Dynamic sidebar (Screenshot A)

The article's page (Screenshot B)

This blog post by MarketingProfs will show these widgets: subscription opt-in, social media widgets, and also the most seen blog articles.

Dynamic sidebar (Screenshot B)
Sidebar dynamic (Screenshot B)

What dynamic sidebars are available to aid in reducing bounce rate?

The sidebars on websites let users decide on the next action to take. In the case of the blog's website, visitors can opt to join a newsletter. If you've got a variety of newsletter categories it is possible to display a subscribe widget in the category to the post's category. Every widget is branded with the name of the section, ensuring that readers know exactly which newsletters they're registering for. See the photos below, which come of The Washington Post.

The use of content-related sidebars can aid particular marketing. Develop one designed especially designed for the users you categorize based on demographic information. For instance, you can, create sidebars to the various languages on your website and show contact information according to location. You can also show the most recent promotions of your items based on the level of your customers' interests. Additionally, you can create sidebars based on the content of blog posts.

The Washington Post has "Must Reads" as one of its sections in newsletters. This widget is found in the story titled "Salmonella-tainted chickens killed one and infected 17 during the multi-state outbreak CDC says" along with the rest of the articles belonging to the same category.

Dynamic sidebar widget A
Dynamic sidebar widget

But there is a flip side to this Tech article, "Facebook and Twitter executives are scheduled to testify in front of Congress next week" The article comes from The Washington Post has the widget "Tech news alerts via email" displayed in the left-hand column. The widget is targeted towards those who follow news stories which are related to technology.

Dynamic sidebar widget A
Dynamic sidebar widget

Incorporating relevant Widgets in the Sidebar

The first step for developing sidebars with content is to decide what's relevant and what's not. Deciding which widgets to appear on your blog or page is a deep knowledge of the goal and reason for creating your blog or webpage in the first place.

It is possible that you have designed an online product page that explains the product's characteristics, benefits and prices. It also serves in order to persuade people to buy the product, or thinking about similar products. You may also wish to present the best ratings as well as top reviews, to help them in deciding whether to purchase the product. Or, you may want to assist them in connecting with an agent to address concerns. Whichever action they choose it's crucial that they are shown on the site the way to do it. The sidebar is among the ideal places to display buttons for call-to-action. This makes the sidebar an extremely effective tool for keeping your visitors' interest your site.

For instance, the blog uses for instance, they employ different CTAs on their website based on the nature of their blog. This ensures that the content is relevant and pertinent to the content of the piece.

Sidebar widget CTA
Sidebar widget CTA

Weeding Out Unrelated Widgets

Also, deciding on what to put within the sidebar could be vital, along with deciding what widgets to place in there. The dimension of the sidebar, as well as other widgets placed on the page adds to the overall appearance and experience. The elimination of unnecessary or ineffective widgets address the issue of bounce rates. Indeed, certain websites may decide to not have a sidebar any point is the best way to move.

Perhaps you've thrown a few of widgets in your sidebar, thinking they're helpful to your customers. But, a cluttered site could turn off a potential customer. If there's too much happening on the page the visitors may forget why they visited the site initially. This might be due to the appearance of too many advertisements from outside or too many product links.

In essence, knowing which information in the sidebar is pertinent or not is crucial for boosting the level of engagement among users.

Important to emphasize important widgets

When you have decided what widgets you want to put on the sidebar you can ensure that they standout from the rest. One way to achieve this is to have the widgets appear in different areas, for example the footer. Another option is to make them appear fixed, and then floating across the page as users scroll. This allows users to instantly be capable of engaging with them without having to scroll back up or down.

Next Step: Select the Best Methods

When we've covered the importance of which widgets you use then the next task is to choose a way of developing those sidebars that are relevant to your content. There are two choices:

Option 1. Control Widgets' Accessibility by with a WordPress plugin

One of the best methods to manage widget visibility for your sidebars is making use of the WordPress plugin. An application like Widget Optionslets can control the visibility of your sidebar in two clicks. You can show or hide the content of your sidebar on each post or page using specific conditions like tags or categories, as well as page names.

Widget Options WordPress plugin
Widget Options WordPress plugin

Widget Options is a WordPress plugin. Widget Options plugin has over 70,000 registered users and an outstanding 5-star rating. Download it via the WordPress repository or look up "widget options" within your WordPress dashboard under "Plugins - - Add New." Once you've done that you click "Install Right Now" to start activating the plugin.

Install Widget Options plugin
Install the Widget Options plugin

Widgets Hidden from a Specific Webpage

Once you've had the widget Options plugin and removed, you are able to remove the widget on a particular page with just a couple of clicks. Here's an example of an coupon-related widget. In the settings for the widget, you'll find the option to show it in a way that allows you to choose between hiding or displaying the widget on particular webpages.

Hide WordPress widget on certain pages
Widget Options' Hide/Show Widgets on certain webpages

The restriction of widgets on certain posts

To find the ID of your blog post, simply search for the post and the move your mouse (don't hit) over it. There will be"Edit Post "Edit Post" option available on the WordPress Administrator toolbar. On the left side of the browser there is a possibility to find the ID number of your post.

WordPress find post ID
WordPress Find the ID of the post

If you've gotten the post ID(s) you can apply it using the conditional tags listed below.

 disable widgets in Multiple Posts:

!is_single(array('Post ID', 'Post ID'))

Hide a Widget from One Post

!is_single( 'Post ID' )

If you want to hide the widget that you'd want to conceal from your website navigate to"Logic" on the "Logic" tab after which you can enter the widget's tag in the manner shown below.

WordPress widget logic
WordPress widget logic

Additionally to that, if you need to create a proper name for widgets closely related to the heading of the post tags, it is possible to create as many copies of this widget as you need and then create distinct names for every.

Hide Widgets On Mobile Devices

You can also restrict widgets access when a page or post is viewed using a particular type of device.

Because of the smaller display, it is easy to create pages or articles that look crowded via mobile devices, like smartphones or tablets. It's crucial to ensure that every page does not look too dense both on desktops as well as mobile. Additionally, we want to profit from a larger desktop display to display relevant widgets within all widget areas that are possible.

For example, we want the opt-in form for e-mails to appear in both the sidebar and within the footer. For mobile devices and in the reverse direction, it's important to remove these widgets. Widget Options lets you hide widgets in the mobile screen.

Hide widget on mobile devices
Hide widget on mobile devices

Change Sidebar Widgets to be fixed

Another option to manage the appearance of widgets is to have their visibility set. In other words, they'll be able to follow the user's movement as they scroll up or down on a website or blog. If you ensure that you keep your sidebar tidy, or only apply this limit to a couple of widgets, you don't need to worry about making it unintentionally obtrusive. See the screenshot below. WPMU Dev has a great use of this feature on their blog.

The social sharing widgets are displayed on the webpage but don't overshadow the primary pages content. They invite users to engage anytime they're willing to do so. They don't need to go back into the sidebar every time they want to interact with these widgets.

Fixed sidebar widget
Example of a fixed sidebar widget

Widget Options gives you the option of you can make every widget fix and then follow users while they scroll. You may choose to make all the widgets in your sidebar fixable or choose the one or two you think need more exposure than the rest.

Fixed sidebar widget
Fixed sidebar widget

Option 2: Create Custom Sidebars

Another option is to create customized sidebars by hand using code. This is a little more difficult when compared with using an external plugin that allows the creation of sidebars using the use of just a few steps. However, as WordPress has a broad range of programming options, you can opt to take advantage of the option. In this way, you are able to make your website exactly as you'd like.

There are some components you can change to suit your preferences. Check out the following examples:

__( 'For Pages Only', 'your-site' ), 'id' => 'page-only-custom-sidebar', 'description' => __( 'Contents to this widget area will be displayed on pages only. ', 'your-site' ), 'before_widget' => '', 'after_widget' => "", 'before_title' => '', 'after_title' => '', ) ); add_action( 'widgets_init', 'page_only_custom_sidebar' ); ?>

What you must accomplish is to make the sidebar available on the web page. For it to functional, you have to include it in the templates file(s) of the areas they should be visible. Take a look at the code that will show the sidebar on only certain pages.

To do this, in order to accomplish this, we insert it into in the page.php file of the theme. If we were to use Twenty Seventeen, the Twenty Seventeen theme, that is the way it would look follows:

You Decide: How Can You Do to Reduce Bounce Rate?

What I've shown is just an aspect of a few ways to reduce bounce rates. Sidebars, which are among the most infrequently used areas of websites, could be effective instruments that draw visitors to explore your website, thus improving the chances of conversions. Content-related sidebars doesn't have to difficult, particularly when you have access to the numerous user-friendly plugins available from the WordPress repository.

To ensure usability, make sure you know it is content that's the most important thing. Start with helpful content followed by the right content subcategories (the widgets, the links as well as the sidebars which are related to your content) that will encourage them to visit your site.
October 1, 2018

Are you currently using dynamic WordPress sidebars or widgets for your site yet? If yes, what are the results?

Jeffrey Carandang

Jeffrey develops and produces well-cooked WordPress plugins Phpbits. Phpbits. The perfect blend of user-friendliness, creativity and performance!

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