Why it’s Important to Watch your Bounce Rate

The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who come to a site and leave within a few seconds. A high bounce rate can show that visitors didn’t like what they saw or didn’t find what they were looking for (“What’s more important:,” 2012). KissMetrics developed the infographic shown below to “demystify” the bounce rate. Visitors can bounce from a site for a number of reasons such as clicking on a link to a page on a different website, clicking the back button, or typing a new URL. As shown below, the average bounce rate is 40.5% with simple landing pages with one call to action having the highest bounce rate of 70-90% (“Bounce rate demystified,” 2010).

            Bounce rate was designed to tell sites if they have the right audience coming to their page and if they are meeting visitor’s expectations. In order to understand bounce rate it’s important to understand the difference between bounce rate and exit rate. Bounce rate applies to a visit entry/landing page and exit rate applies to the page a visit exits/leaves on. Exit rate applies to where people are exiting mid-stream from a site’s conversion funnel (Kelly, 2012).

            There are two common tracking issues that inflate bounce rate that sites have to be aware of to make sure their data is more reliable. Sometimes users can click an external link that isn’t necessarily negative. For example, during a visit a user clicks on a link that brings them to an external site such as an account login that requires secure authentication. To combat this, Google Analytics, allows users to have an outbound link that is tracked as an interaction or non-interaction event to determine if the click effects bounce rate.  Another tracking issue is if a site is improperly tagged with tracking code. For example if landing page X has different tracking code settings than page Y and a visitor moves from X to Y, the result will be that page X will have an inaccurate bounce rate (Kelly, 2012).

            There are many factors that affect bounce rate such as the industry, brand credibility, type of site, and the stage of the customer lifecycle. A high bounce rate can be acceptable when the visitor has a positive experience. There are many visitor interactions that are undervalued and ultimately lead to desired conversions in either the short or long-term. For example, “Contact us” is a common and accepted page with a high bounce rate because the visitor just wants basic information about the business. Another example is blog articles, where on a high traffic blog that uses CPM Ad Monetization to make money with a high returning visitor rate, a bounce rate of 89% of higher is acceptable. Blogs offer interesting articles and the visitor leaves after getting value from the article (Kelly, 2012). 

            Segmenting data can help determine a page’s actual bounce rate. In aggregate the bounce rate could look good or bad but not segmenting the data can hide substantial problems. One way to better evaluate a site is segmenting data based on location. For example, if a company is a local business in San Francisco, they should expect a high bounce rate from outside of California. Segmenting the traffic will allow the business to see how traffic is performing in a local area and avoid being skewed by irrelevant visits. Another segment is new vs. returning customers. A returning visitor has different intent than a new visitor. It’s common for new visitors to have a higher bounce rate than returning visitors since they are less familiar with the brand (Kelly, 2012).

            Reducing the bounce rate on pages that have the highest volume of traffic from the highest converting sources means more engaged visitors and a greater change of conversion. There are a few things to consider in reducing a sites bounce rate. The first is avoiding pop-ups because they annoy people and usually disrupt the user experience. Also don’t upset visitors by not providing them with clear and obvious paths to get the content they are looking for. Poor design can also play a part in a high bounce rate. Users are becoming less tolerable of unattractive websites and the content presented needs to be attractive in terms of graphics and readability. Speed is an important factor as well with it not only impacting bounce rate but also causes follower reach to stall, negatively impact search rankings, and destroys the conversion rate. Lastly a site needs to be mobile friendly. With the rise of mobile, the language on these sites need to be simple and clear enough for people on the go to find the information they are looking for (Eubanks, 2013).

References:

(2010). Bounce Rate Demystified [Print Photo]. Retrieved from

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/bounce-rate/

Eubanks, N. (2013, December 27). Reduce bounce rate: 20 things to consider. Retrieved from

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2237250/Reduce-Bounce-Rate-20-Things-to-Consider

Kelly, K. (2012, February 15). What is bounce rate? avoid common pitfalls. Retrieved from

http://www.blastam.com/blog/index.php/2012/02/what-is-bounce-rate/

What's more important: Page views or unique visitors. (2012, July 18). Retrieved from

http://blog.agilitycms.com/whats-more-important-page-views-or-unique-visitors