Google Analytics Bounce Rate

What is Bounce Rate?

Bounce Rate is where a visitor to your website exits after visiting the landing page, and going no further (if a visitor has gone to another page, then leaves your site, this is known as the "Exit Rate", a different thing entirely).

So if 100 visitors come to your site, and 30 then go to another page, while the remaining 70 leave, you will have a 70% Bounce Rate.

Is There A 'Good' Bounce Rate?

Not really........  bounce rates depend on many different things, including the type of site you have, and can often be very misleading.

For example, Site 'A' might have a bounce rate of 90%, while site 'B' has one of 10%.......   on first impression, Site 'B' is the better one, BUT.......

• Site 'A' might be a blog, or information site, where the information people are loooking for is right there on the page they first visited......   they get the information they want, and then 90% of them leave.
• You may still be getting good traffic to this site, and it may be performing better than you hoped
• Site 'B' might be an eCommerce site, where visitors go through a few pages to see what is for sale......  then don't end up buying anything......... 
• In this case, site 'B' is really NOT performing

So, dont get too hung up on Bounce Rate!

Is There An 'Average' Bounce Rate?

Not really, for the reasons described above

If I were to take a stab.......  anything between 60% and 80% is OK.......... 

Unless you have a blog, or a one-page site, anything over 80% is not too good at all.

It is better to look at 'Average Time On Page'.

Even if you have a high bounce rate, look at average time on page. A reasonably large figure here indicates that your visitors are getting a lot from the one page they did visit. 

If the average time on page is low, and the bounce rate is high, then maybe your visitors cant see anything of interest on the page they visited, then they leave.

So Were Does All This Leave Us?

Well, there is no single, definitive answer to that one, but dont get too hung up on all these figures.

A more productive use of your time, and a less stressful activity than worrying about apparent bounce rates, would simply to keep focused on your content.

You have heard the phrase "Content is King"....  it is.

Focus on:

• Providing good and useful information
• Updating your site content OFTEN!Put lots of links into your website to high quality external sitesTry to get other sites to link to yours
  • eg you may contribute to a newsfeed, or an industry site.....  if you write a note or article for this, then in your article, include a link back to your website
  • Use Social Media...... put links to your website in there.... spread the love
• Always think about re-design.....  things move on fast in this website world
• Analyse the pages that AREN'T being looked at and ask yourself why
• Be careful of things which will slow your website down, and avoid them
  • Images are the biggest culprit here.... I have seen clients take a beautiful picture with their fantastic digital camera and put it on the wbsite....what they dont consider is that the image is maybe 3 MB.....  wayyyyyyyyyy  to large for any normal website
  • remember... it has to actually be downloaded to the visitors computer when they land on the page
  • too big, and it will take ages to download....  visitors wont stay on a slow site
• Think about maybe starting a paid advertising campaign like Google Adwords, or PPC (Pay Per Click) ------
• be careful though, and do your homework... these can end up being quite costly

and then of course.... there is always our friend Google.....  investigate other ways to enhance your website and increase visits