Website Design

5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Ignore Your Website’s Bounce Rate

Written by Dana Flannery

You’ve had a quick look around your Google Analytics. A figure keeps jumping out at you and you’re not sure if you should do anything about it. Bounce rate. It’s sitting at 60% but what does that mean? Is that good or bad? Where many people tend to ignore the bounce rate, there’s quite a lot it can tell you about your website and whether or not you need to make changes.

What is your bounce rate?

According to Google:

Bounce rate is single-page sessions divided by all sessions or the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server.

What is a good bounce rate?

It depends. Where some webmasters feel their 75% bounce rate is fantastic, others may want to get it down. It depends on your website and industry.

According to GoRocketFuel.com, the average bounce rate is between 41-51%. A 70% bounce rate is unacceptable unless you run a blog, news, or events website.

It’s normal for blogs to have a higher bounce rate because people may visit the website for one specific article, or the blog may be a one-page website. Again, you may have a high bounce rate if your website has been built as a point of contact for customers. They may visit your website to get your address or phone number.

Why you shouldn’t ignore your bounce rate

Don’t jump to conclusions.. Just remember:

  •       Different websites will have different ideal bounce rates. Blogs and eCommerce stores will have different bounce rates.
  •       The bounce rate provided in your audience overview will be an average from all of your pages
  •       Take a look at your landing pages with high bounce rates and consider variables including demographics, channels, time on page, affinity etc.

Here are five reasons why your bounce rate may be too high:

  1.       Content Quality

Visitors may be unhappy with the quality of your content. This could include grammatical errors, off-topic or boring content. If site visitors spend 20 seconds on a page that is a three-minute read, consider getting some professional content writing.

  1.       SEO Relevancy

Avoid using keywords just because they have a high volume. High volume keywords may not be appropriate. When people Google this keyword and land on your content, they’re quick to bounce if your content is irrelevant. Analyse keywords on your pages that have high bounce rates. Are the keywords relevant to your content?

  1.       Campaign Optimisation

Your bounce rate can be a critical factor in determining the success of a campaign.  If conversions are low and people are not signing up to a mailing list, you might need to revise your headline or call to action. If you do have a landing page that’s working well, compare the two and make the necessary changes. If you don’t have anything to compare to, make small changes and monitor your bounce rate and conversions over time until you hit the sweet spot.

  1.       Site Speed

Did you know that 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less., 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. A slow website will drive up your bounce rate.

  1.       Site Navigation

Your site navigation has to make sense to the user otherwise they will get frustrated and exit. Site navigation should be simple. Keep your menu logical, tell the user where to click and make navigation enjoyable whether it takes someone five clicks or ten clicks to get to the content they’re after.

Bounce rate has been that elusive percentage staring at you on the overview page of your Google Analytics but now you can see it’s a window into so many ways you can make your website better and get the outcomes you desire. It may take some time to delve into each page, piece of content and group of keywords but a high bounce rate is usually a good indicator that something can be improved.

“The opinions expressed by BizWitty Contributors are their own, not those of BizCover and should not be relied upon in place of appropriate professional advice. Please read our full disclaimer."

About the author

Dana Flannery

Dana Flannery is the Owner, Creative Director and Digital Strategist at TAC Digital, a Digital Marketing Agency in Brisbane dedicated to helping businesses increase website traffic and conversions.