Today, we’re going to talk about a topic that you probably know about without realizing it. Well, you’re probably aware of what a bounce rate is, but you’ve never had it defined before. Regardless, this guide will teach you everything you need to know about bounce rates – including what they are and why you need to be concerned.
What is a bounce rate?
The technical definition of a bounce rate is that it is:
The percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page or triggered a single request.
This definition comes from Google themselves, so you can trust its accuracy. In simple terms, a bounce rate is when users leave your website without really doing anything. Have you ever clicked on a website, looked at the first page, then left straight away? If so, you contributed to that site’s bounce rate. If everyone did that, you’d have a bounce rate of 100% as all your visitors are leaving after viewing one page.
What is a good bounce rate?
You can think about your bounce rate as your score in a round of golf – you want it to be as low as possible. In an ideal world, your bounce rate would be 0%. Obviously, this is unrealistic as you’re bound to have people who stumble on your website by accident and leave straight away. Instead, the average bounce rate is around 41-55%, based on a study of a sample group of websites. Any lower than this and your rate is excellent.
As for a bad bounce rate, it’s generally considered that below 70% is not that awful. If your bounce rate is about this, then you need to be concerned.
How do you find your bounce rate?
You’ll be pleased to know that finding your bounce rate is as simple as creating a Google Analytics account for your website. Sign in to your account, then click on the website in question. From here, you can go to the Audience Overview section and find the bounce rate listed as one of the statistics. It gives you the rate for the entire website, and you will now know whether or not action should be taken.
Why should you be concerned about your bounce rate?
You now know what a bounce rate is, how you find yours, and how to tell if it is good or not. So, why should all of this concern you? Well, for the simple reason that it plays a direct role in your business success. If your bounce rate is alarmingly high, it means that too many people are leaving your site before doing something valuable. Consider how many leads you’re losing as a result of this!
That’s not all, think about how much money you’re potentially wasting. Lots of business owners only concern themselves with traffic figures. As long as your website ranks well and gets loads of traffic, everything is okay – right? This couldn’t be further from the truth! A steady stream of web traffic is important, but it means nothing with a terrible bounce rate. It’s like having signs pointing to your store and getting loads of people to walk into it, only to see everyone turn back around straight away. You spent a ton of money on those signs with nothing to show for it.
The same goes for the money spent on marketing your website. You’ve invested heavily in SEO, and it has provided a traffic increase. However, your ROI is still poor because your traffic isn’t converting. You’re losing potential leads because people land on your site and scarper straight away.
Granted, improving your SEO will typically mean you improve your bounce rate at the same time. It’s not impossible to see good SEO with a bad bounce rate, but it is rare. A better example is wasting money on online advertising. This is the best way of driving traffic to your site and finding a wider audience. However, if your bounce rate is awful, you’ve paid a lot of money for ads that don’t really work.
Ultimately, if you want to capture leads and get a better return on your marketing investments, you need to work on your bounce rate.
How do you improve a bounce rate?
You might think this requires lots of complicated work, but it’s actually very simple. Sure, you can do lots of little things to boost your bounce rate. However, keep one key thing in mind: it’s all about the user experience!
Providing a great user experience will keep people on your website for longer. It encourages them to stick around and see what you have to offer. Two great places to start are:
- Making your website more navigable
- Improving your loading speeds
If your website is easy to navigate, people will stick around. Again, two key concerns should be focused on. Firstly, ensure you have a good internal search engine on your site. You can install things like Site Search that let users search for specific things on your website. This is key if they’ve found your site with the intention to buy a particular product. Now, they can easily search for it and find the page. Without this function, they might be too frustrated and leave. Secondly, use a clear menu system on your site with categories for different pages. Again, this lets people find what they’re after without a second thought.
As for your website’s speed, it’s obvious why this is vital. A slow-loading website annoys the hell out of users, so they disappear before pages even load. The video below gives some great tips on how you can speed up your site for free:
Other tactics exist to help you boost the user experience and lower your bounce rate. Some of these include:
- Optimizing your call to action
- Using videos to engage the audience
- Utilizing A/B testing on landing pages
- Improve your content
- Use social proof
The best advice is to do some research on the topic to ensure you decrease your bounce rate as much as possible.
On that note, you’ve seen everything there is to know about bounce rates. This guide should teach you what they are and why you need to worry about them. Remember, a low bounce rate will translate into more success for your business.