What is Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who navigate away from your website after only visiting one page. In most cases, the page visited will be to your main page, but that isn’t always the case. Bounce rate is calculated by the number of single-page sessions where a user has visited your site and has not made any further requests of your server. Google Analytics and other analytic systems will log this session as lasting 0 seconds, as there are no further actions that could be used to calculate time spent.
What is a Good Bounce Rate?
A high percentage indicates that a large volume of users are visiting your page and then leaving. In some cases, this isn’t a bad thing. Bounce rate is calculated by taking every single-page session that occurs on your website, regardless of where that session occurred.
Types of Bounce Rate
To fully understand what issues your website has and what you need to do to improve your website’s success, you need to further understand your bounce rate. There are different perspectives, then, that you need to study:
- The Audience Overview shows the overall bounce rate.
- The Channels Report shows the bounce rate from different channel groupings, like advertising vs. organic clicks.
- The All Traffic Report shows the bounce rate from each source.
- The All Pages Report shows you the bounce rate for individual pages. A high bounce rate on an article page, for instance, might not be a problem if the reason is that your article is on the first page of the search engine result pages (SERPs). Though you could look at how you can improve the click-friendliness of that page, to encourage readers to see what else you have to offer.
Each report, compiled by Google, gives you a different look at what is affecting your bounce rate. Examine each one, so that you can make smart, informed decisions towards the betterment of your website.
Bettering Your Bounce Rate
There are two main methods that you need to take in order to improve your bounce rate. First, you must look at the site design and user-friendliness of your site, both on desktop and on mobile, and make improvements from there. A full website overhaul, including an SEO audit, should be your first move. Don’t be satisfied until your website is:
- Beautifully designed.
- User-friendly (desktop and mobile).
- In working order (no broken or outdated linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages.).
- SEO friendly.
You should also have a strong content marketing strategy – great content, after all, encourages users to save, subscribe, and read more or buy more from your site. You have to provide your users and customers value at every turn.
Your next move should then be to improve your digital marketing strategy. This will include key strategies like email marketing and social media marketing, to ensure that you get the most organic trafficOrganic search traffic (sometimes called natural or unpaid search) is the traffic that's driven to a website because of unpaid placement on a search engine results page.:
- Send bespoke emails to your subscribers, offering them VIP deals, customised suggestions based on their preferences, and reminders that are unique to them, like whether the product they loved on your site is now on sale.
- Create real relationships online with your followers, and send organic traffic to your site where your goal is the soft sale, or to get them to subscribe so that you can continue to grow your relationship with them.
- Ensure all advertisements you pay for are hyper-relevant. If you don’t, you risk turning away interested parties with your content.
Bounce rate is a great way to measure your website’s success and to target areas that need improvement. While it may not always mean there is an issue with your site, a bounce rate can help you deduce that there is something amiss with your business.
