What is a Bounce Rate and Why Should You Care?

Image: Mr. Men series by Roger Hargreaves

If you watch the analytics of your website, you have likely seen a metric called “Bounce Rate”. What does it mean? Why is it important? According to Google Analytics, “Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page)” (Google Analytics Help, 2015).

Basically, a low bounce rate means that your site is retaining visitors. They are clicking through to at least one additional page when they enter the site. This is a good sign for most site managers and marketers, as it indicates engagement.

A high bounce rate, on the other hand, is an indicator that your website has a problem retaining visitors. They are either finding what they want on that first page and then don’t have any reason to click deeper into the site or they are not finding what they want at all (Hines, 2011).

The Good, The Bad, The SMART and The DUMB

So what makes a “good” bounce rate and what makes a “bad” bounce rate? That all depends on the website and its goals. Like just about every other marketing tactic, it’s important to begin with a goal. There are SMART goals, that is those that are Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely (Lemire, 2014). Then there are goals that are DUMB, which means they are, according to Kaushik, Doable, Understandable, Manageable, and Beneficial (Kaushik, 2010).

Regardless of whether your goals are SMART, DUMB or otherwise, it’s important that you have a clear understanding of the objectives of your site pages and what you want visitors to do when they arrive at your site.

If your business goal is to build your list of blog subscribers, for example, you may have a “Subscribe Now” conversion opportunity on every blog post. If this is the case, individuals might come to each post, read it and either leave the site or convert and meet your goal of subscribing to your blog.

In this example, a high bounce rate may not be such a bad thing. ...as long as people are subscribing to your blog.

In contrast, if your business goal is to generate leads, you may need your site to draw people in with great content and then engage them enough that they will stay a while. It’s likely in this situation that you would want individuals to click through to read information about your products and services, perhaps your pricing, before submitting a form requesting a quote or more information.

In this case, of course, a high bounce rate wouldn’t be good. It would be a clear indication that your site was not helping you meet your business goals.

How to Better Your Bounce

Once you have a clear understanding of your goals, you’ll be able to improve your bounce rates accordingly. If, like many business websites, your goals involve lead generation, you’ll probably hope for a rather low bounce rate.

To lower your bounce rate, Google suggests the following tactics:
Analyze specific data. Review the bounce rate for specific pages, traffic sources, medium, campaign, landing page, to evaluate your bounce rate. In contrast to analyzing your site’s bounce rate as a whole, these more specific snippets of data help reveal areas where real improvements can be made.

Evaluate and adjust factors that could be contributing to a high bounce rate. For example, the site’s layout could hinder people from seeing opportunities to dig deeper into your content, or the navigation may not be very user friendly. Or perhaps you need to improve the calls-to-action on pages with high bounce rates so people click through to other pages instead of exiting the site.
Use only your site’s historical performances as a guide. Don’t compare your site data and bounce rate to other sites, as each site and its visitors are unique. Simply work to improve your bounce rate over time.

Remember that it takes time. Don’t expect changes over night. Provide enough time between site modifications to collect significant data to evaluate the impact the changes you make and how they could be impacting site visitors and their behaviors.

Regardless of your site’s bounce rate, remember to think through your business goals before analyzing or attempting to adjust your site to improve it. There’s always room for improvement, yes, but you’ve got to know why you’re lowering your bounce rate in order to define the success you’re trying to achieve.

Resources
Google Analytics Help. (2015). “Bounce Rate. Learn what bounce rate is and how to improve it”. Google Analytics. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009409?hl=en

Kaushik, A. (2010, April 19). Web analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, metrics, KPIs, dimensions, targets. Occam’s Razor Blog. Retrieved on March 25, 2012 from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/web-analytics-101-definitions-goals-metrics-kpis-dimensions-targets/

Lemire, M. (November 26, 2014). “How to Set SMART Marketing Goals”. HubSpot Blog. Retrieved from http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33898/How-to-Set-SMART-Marketing-Goals-for-2013-TEMPLATE.aspx