What is Bounce Rate?

Understanding Bounce rate couldn’t be easier, its a very quick and easy metric to identify landing pages that might have issues. Looking at bounce rates 25% – 30% is usually considered good where a score of 55%+ is considered to be negative and might point towards issues with the page people are landing on.

So what does Google Analytics have to say on bounce rates? “Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page”. Meaning, in short someone, visited the site, saw one page and then “bounced” or left.

Let’s get more technical on this.

If you dive further into the subject you’ll start to realise that a bounce rate isn’t as simple as you initially first thought. A bounce isn’t actually a session on the page but is a “hit” to it. So, what are hits? and how many are there? There are various resources around the net for this information, but the vast majority say there are 5 types of engagement hits:

• Pageview hits
• Interactive event hits
• Ecommerce transaction hits
• Ecommerce transaction item hits
• Social plugin hits

All of these hits can affect the bounce rates at different levels. This means that any event, such as a share or a video play can all have an impact on the overall bounce rate.

Page Relevance to Search

A high bounce rate is usually an indication that the page being visited is returning irrelevant or incorrect information. An example of this, if someone did a search for “Women’s Trainers”, but ended up landing on a page selling men’s tops, this person clearly doesn’t want these items so would leave this page instantly.

You’ve got the wrong tracking code.

Seeing spikes in a bounce rate can sometimes highlight there might be a technical issue with the website, there are a few culprits that could be causing these issues. Common culprits include live chat pop-ups, videos and multiple analytics on the page.

User behaviour

Sometimes bounce rates can also be attributed to user behaviours. A blog is a good example of this, the user is only on the site to read one blog post. The user will enter the site, read the post and then leave, which is only natural. This will create a bounce, but don’t be deterred by it, sometimes people are just after that one bit of specific information you’ve provided.

Design and UX

Usability of a site is key to people stopping around. If you find it difficult to navigate, slow to render or hard to find products you’re going to lose that visitor. Always think about KISS when using a website. Keep things simple and related, allowing the user to flow from one product to the next. If the user can’t find the information they’re after, you’re going to get that bounce.

What else can cause high bounce rates?

There are a few reasons that a bounce rate for a website could be high, in general, they usually indicate that something might not be right with your current website. But, sometimes it can be totally unrelated issue to your site and fully out of your hands.

Finding why a bounce rate is bad isn’t the hardest task, you can do this via Google analytics by sorting through the lists and lists of

Reducing those Bounce rates.

There are lots of ways to lower the bounce rate on your page and looking there are 2 key points you can use analysis this. The first is you can look at bounces from a traffic perspective.

If you’re looking at the traffic coming to your site and notice that it has a high bounce rate you need to understand where the customer has come from and why you’re not meeting their expectations. Possibly review where the user came from, what they searched for, or what ad they clicked on. Make sure the page is logical to all of these.

If your page lives up to the expectations of your visitors, and the page still has a high bounce rate, then you have to look at the page itself. How’s the usability of the page? Is there a call-to-action above the fold on the page? Do you have internal links that point to related pages or posts? Do you have a menu that’s easy to use? Does the page invite people to look further on your site? These are all things you need to consider when optimizing your page

If your page is what your ad or link says it is and still gets that high bounce rate, then it’s time to analysis the page more. How’s the UX? Do you have a clear call to action? Is the page loading quickly enough for prospective customers? These are all things you need to consider when optimising your page for your customers.

Conclusion

Bounce rate is a metric you can use for your website to analyse how well your marketing is working. Are you offering everything your customers / visitors expect? It might be that only a few of your pages need work and attention. If you can produce the best experience for your customer, you’ll rank better for it.