What is the Bounce Rate?
I’ve heard alot of people obsessing over this web metric recently. So just to clarify a few things on what it is and isn’t. The bounce rate is the amount of people who leave your site immediately on first arrival. A high bounce rate can be indicative of a number of things, but can also be influenced by a number of things.
Here’s a brief break down of a few of those:
1) Your content isn’t what they expected
So you turn up on a search for “bananas” when you are selling “apples”. Nothing much you can do about that, but don’t expect visitors to wait around. You may want to perhaps start growing a potential banana business by providing a page on your site about where they can find them.
2) Your site design isn’t professional
We make judgement calls on people’s appearances within 30 seconds of seeing someone. Unfortunately the same is true online. If we are in “buyer mode” then it is all the more important to make first impressions count. A poorly thought out navigation system, or an ugly site banner, could be enough to put people off.
Personally speaking I’ve been to sites which try to highlight the words that I typed into Google. (a crazy idea from the people behind BlogEngine.NET) – which can sometimes result in the page being a decorative blue underline city. Especially if the query on Google is quite a long string of words.
3) Where you’ve been linked from
If you have been linked to from a highly trusted resource, the chances are your visitors will stay longer than if you get a link from say comments in a blog.
Think of it this way.
If you are stumbling on the web, and are in what I call the “bored browser” mindset, you will be fickle. If you have ever used StumbleUpon – you’ll know what I mean by this. If however you are in the “ready to learn” mindset you examine web pages more carefully, you read around the subject you are researching.
Your browing habits slow down.
4) The speed of your site
If you are running on a slow server, people aren’t going to stick around. Better to invest in a lightning quick hosting package than to have visitors leave because they are waiting for pages to load. You can find a few ways to speed up a slow site here.
5) How your site looks in other browsers
Have you checked your stats to see what section of your visitors are most at ease with your site? Perhaps a rendering bug in Internet Explorer is making people think your site looks unprofessional. It’s always a good idea to check your design across multiple browsers using something like Browsershots.org
6) Audience profile
Lets say for the sake of argument you are a retailer selling shoes. If your traffic is coming from young and hip social networks such as Bebo or Myspace or Facebook – you need to analyse how many of these people are bouncing. Adding additional tracking metrics can help you determine if your online stock is appealing to younger audiences, and can actually help shape your buying decisions. Remember that age can influence how fickle an audience potentially is.
posted:November 28, 2008 2:50 am
Very clear explanation, now I’m beginning to understand my site’s traffic. Thanks!
Real Estate Investor
posted:December 10, 2008 7:31 pm
In numerical terms, what is a “high” bounce rate?
Scott Nachatilo
posted:December 11, 2008 6:35 pm
Hi Scott. Its difficult to say. An e-commerce site will have a lower bounce than a content site. Generally, I’d say anything over 50% was unacceptable.
Paul Anthony
posted:May 25, 2009 2:33 pm
Thanks for the explanation.
Does my bounce rate stadistics include people who click in a link within my website linked to other other site?
For example, a landing page to distrubute traffic by geographica area.
Many thanks
Angel
posted:May 25, 2009 2:38 pm
Hi Anglea,
A landing page which is linked to another web page (specific geo region) on the same website / domain will NOT be counted as a bounce.
A landing page which is linked to another website entirely will be counted as a bounce.
Hope that helps,
Paul
Paul Anthony
posted:January 27, 2010 12:28 am
my sight has links to other sights if thay are clicked within 10-20 seconds dose that show as a bounce?
Thanks
Jim
Jim
posted:January 28, 2010 8:34 pm
Hi Jim – if no other pages on your site are clicked first then yes. No necessarily a bad thing – in essence you are providing folks with a resource they need. (via the third party site)
Paul Anthony
posted:February 13, 2010 5:58 am
so my website has a rather high bounce rate but all the content I want them to see is right on the first page auto loading and playing (it’s demo stuff for animation) is there a time limit or is it just if they don’t click on any other pages on my site?
David
posted:February 14, 2010 8:57 pm
Hi David,
I’m guessing your content (animation) is flash. There is no way for your analytics program to track clicks within flash, and thats probably why your bounce rate is so high. The time limit is only as long as a session on your site, (typically 20 minutes). So I’d look at the length of stay in this case, rather than the bounce rate to determine if your content is being interacted with.
HTH,
Paul
Paul Anthony