Bounce rate is defined as the percentage of website visitors who view a single page on your website and leave without taking any action like entering their information, visiting another page or purchasing something.
It is calculated by dividing the number of people who visited a single page by the overall number of visitors. Bounce rate ranges between 0 to 100% with 0 being the best and 100 being the worst.
Why is Bounce Rate Important?
Bounce rate is one of the key metrics that marketers measure in analytics. They measure this for a couple of reasons. However, the main reason is to keep an eye on the effectiveness of content and overall website.
What is a Good Bounce Rate?
A lot of factors go into determining what a good bounce rate is.
Industries and websites vary. Some industries will have a higher bounce rate than others.
For example, an e-commerce website will likely have a lower bounce rate than a marketing landing page.
The reason being, a lot of people are likely to browse an e-commerce website even if they don’t plan on making a purchase. This means they’ll view more than one web page which will lower the bounce rate.
This said, a good bounce rate is relative. It’ll vary from website to website.
Marketing agency, Rocket Fuel, conducted an experiment to determine what a good bounce rate is.
According to their research, most websites had a bounce rate of between 26% and 70%.
The average bounce rate was 49%, the lowest 27.33% and the highest 90.2%.
With these figures, you can have an idea of how your website is doing.
Is a High Bounce Rate Bad for Your Website?
A high bounce rate isn’t necessarily bad for your website but, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention to high bounce rates.
For example, if a user is searching for “how to bake a cake” and lands on an article on your site with a great recipe that meets their needs, the user might not have any motivation to view other pages because they found what they needed.
Even though the visitor was satisfied, it’ll still count as a bounce.
In another scenario, it could be that users are bouncing because of a broken link.
It is important to investigate if you notice a high bounce rate in your analytics.
What causes High Bounce Rates?
High bounce rate can be caused by a couple of factors. The most common of them are:
The good news is that there are a couple of things you can do to reduce the bounce rate of your website. Doing one or a combination of these can reduce your bounce rate considerably:
Improve the UX of your website, make it easy for people to navigate your site
Spend time creating quality content that matches the searcher’s intent
Worried that the bounce rates on your site are too high? We can help you improve them - if you give us a call we can book you in for a free strategy session.
Otherwise, why not check out our training courses where you and your team can learn a variety of marketing practises that will undoubtedly help with your bounce rate and other important metrics!
