Bounce rate is a metric used to describe the percentage of people that visit your website but do not go beyond viewing the first page that they landed on. If this situation occurs, it is said that the visitor “bounced”.
Bounce rate is when only a single interaction is made with a website before the user leaves.
Is a high bounce rate on my website a bad thing?
Generally speaking, a website having a high bounce rate is a bad thing. However, bounce rate should always be looked at in context. For example, if someone looking to get in touch with your business comes to your website via the contact us page, acquires your phone number, and then calls you; this is not a negative situation.
What has happened, is that the user has been delivered what they needed straight away, which is a positive experience. Another really good example of the value of understanding the context of the visit is with blog based content.
In 90% of the cases, a visitor coming directly to a blog post is interested in finding specific information.
The likelihood that once they gain this information they will continue to do what they are doing is far far greater.
Considering these user needs and content types, when looking at the bounce rate of your website, it is important to view the bounce rate of particular areas of the site rather than just the site as a whole.
What should a good bounce rate be?
Bounce rates are always subjective, however a general average bounce rate for a business website is between 25-65%.
Is there danger of a business owner obsessing over bounce rate?
Yes. Bounce rate is an important metric for any business to measure; however, it is far more important to focus attention towards specific goals and events that directly affect the bottom line. The following tips are good principles to use in understanding your bounce rate and improving your website.
Tips on how should to measure bounce rate?
The following tips will help you better understand the bounce rate of your website and when or where action may be required: Monitor trends over time and look for positive/negative changes.
Segment your data by looking into the bounce rate of specific areas (for example, product pages, service pages, homepage etc) Filter out pages that have content that you would expect to have high bounce rates (for example, contact us pages, the blog etc).
