Do you honestly track traffic statistics for your website?
Then you may be interested in the Bounce Rate indicator.
What does this indicator actually mean and how to understand it?
Does a high value for this indicator mean poor site quality?
A user who comes from an internet (for example from a search engine) to a subpage of your website and then leaves it is counted as a so-called “bounce”. For example, he clicks the “back” button in the browser, or immediately closes the browser window.
It does not matter what time you spend on this page. Respectively, it matters, but the time that is considered a “bounce” is so long that the user must leave the page open and leave the computer. The usual length of stay on the page to count “bounce” is 30 minutes.
“Bounce” means that the visitor has not taken any further action on your site. He did not continue browsing any other pages.
Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors to your site who leave your site without further interactivity.
Does a high Bounce Rate mean that your site is useless?
No.
First you need to understand the meaning of Bounce Rate and look at it a little optimistically .
Take, for example, this website www.seojoule.com. They contain a lot of articles that bring high information value (at least I’m convinced of that).
Due to the large number of articles, these websites rank in search engines for a large number of queries. If a user is looking for information on a certain issue and the search engine offers him this website, the visitor will come to this website and read the information he was looking for. He is not interested in any further information at this time… He found what he needed and leaves the site. Bounce!
The content on this site could give him exactly what he needed and the visitor is satisfied, but leaves the site and the Bounce Rate increases immediately.
The website served him and that ended it…
The Bounce Rate indicator must therefore be seen in a broader context.
Bounce Rate and average time spent on the page
It is very important to monitor the Bounce Rate in conjunction with the average time spent on the website.
For example, pages that have the highest Bounce Rate on this site often have an average time spent on that page of more than 5 (often 10) minutes.
So does this mean failure and reprehensibility of the site? Certainly not…
Bounce Rate and articles
The principle of the website www.seojoule.com is to publish new and new articles. A new article is published almost every.
Visitors who visit this website have already read most of the articles and come for the sole purpose of reading the latest article.
If they come via any RSS reader, are informed via e-mail about a newly published article, or come from Facebook, for example, the vast majority will again be a “bounce”.
So the visitor comes to the page with the latest post, reads it and closes the page, because he has already read other articles.
Again, the value of the Bounce Rate has increased without the visitor being dissatisfied.
Bounce Rate and advertise on less relevant websites
Again, it is necessary to look at the issue with a view and perceive all the context.
Imagine a situation where you sell only one product – women’s T-shirts.
You place your ad on websites that publish articles mostly for women and have 10,000 visitors a day.
Even if the bounce rate is 99%, if you sell 100 tricks a day, Bounce Rate probably won’t bother you…
The example is, of course, illustrative only. I’m trying to show you that Bounce Rate needs to be looked at in conjunction with other data.
How Bounce Rate can show us the weaknesses of our site
And now let’s look at the other side of the coin.
In certain situations, Bounce Rate can really show you what’s wrong with your site and what it needs to be improved or fixed.
Different types of browsers
You can use analytics tools to monitor the Bounce Rate in different browsers.
If you notice a high pointer relative to others, try viewing the webpage in the problem browser.
For example, your browser may not display your page properly, and visitors may be repulsed and leave your website.
This technical issue will not be difficult to fix, so you will not lose visitors just because they have chosen Internet Explorer, for example.
An individual view of important subpages of your website
The Bounce Rate indicator has the most important informational value for you in conjunction with your site’s conversion pages.
These are the sites whose job it is to sell. It can be a page with information about a product, a presentation of services and the like.
For such sites, we need to closely monitor the value of Bounce Rate and constantly strive to improve their content so that the value of Bounce Rate is as low as possible and, conversely, our percentage of conversions has risen.
Bounce Rate a landing pages
If you’ve ever used a PPC (“pay per click“) ad, you know that you direct visitors coming through those ads to appropriate landing pages that are perfectly optimized for those visitors.
For these specific sites, the Bounce Rate information is worth its weight in gold.
This site must be able to attract visitors. If he is not interested, he needs to work on it.
But it’s not just about PPC advertising.
You can forward visitors from Facebook, Twitter and other websites to a specific optimized page.
In any case, the value of Bounce Rate is very important here, it is necessary to pay attention to it and on the basis of the obtained data also act and make the necessary adjustments.
What is your experience with the Bounce Rate indicator? In a study, I read that keeping the Bounce Rate below 20% is very difficult, up to 35% is optimal, above 35% is not bad and above 60% something should be done about it. At the same time, I read that the Bounce Rate of 80-90% is no exception for blogs. What do you think about it?
