Bounce Rates – Why Are They Important & What Can You Do?

Bounce rate (sometimes confused with exit rate)[1] is a term used in website traffic analysis. It essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who “bounce” away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site.

The formula used to calculate bounce rate is: Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visits Viewing One Page ÷ Total Number of Visits

Your website is at the very least an intelligent interactive brochure for your business, and at best, the center of your business development strategy. So your bounce rate is a very important statistic. We will explain.

Google Analytics is an effective tool to learn what’s happening with your website and gaining access to it is simple and easy. We are always amazed how many new clients are not even aware it exists. Good data allows for good decisions and a business lives or dies based on the decisions we make every day. Google Analytics removes the guesswork -with no cost!

Now let’s examine why they bounce.

• Is your site content what they were looking for? Google looks for relevance so is your site relevant to the visitor?
• Have you performed proper Search Engine Optimization? Are your keywords, Titles, meta tags & descriptions worded correctly? Do they represent the content of the page?
• Is the page well designed by a professional art director who understands how to guide a visitor through the page and communicate your message?
• Do your keywords and phrases match exactly with your Adwords ads? The phrasing and words you use are extremely important. You have to accurately represent the content of the landing page (the page you link your Adwords to) in just 95 characters. The keyword or phrase you are targeting must be in the headline of the ad.
• Is the quality of the content valuable and insightful? If the wisdom or message is weak, your bounce rate will be high. Visitors value their own time and they will not waste time reading stuff that makes no difference or that they can find a host of different sites they have already been to. Quality content is critical. No blah, blah, blah. People tune it out – aka bounce.

Google Analytics does not use the length of time spent on the site to determine bounce rates. So, if a visitor stays on your Home page for 5 minutes and does not go to any other part of the site, Google considers that a bounce. Someone that might have come in and stayed on that page for 10 seconds and went to another page will not be categorized as a bounce.

You must closely examine why a bounce occurs, and evaluate it for every page based on every keyword and phrases used. That is a lot of combinations, but it is important. If a visitor arrived at your home page, you must entice them inside the site using links, sidebar titles or an incentive to click on another page. The other option is not to land them on your home page. Land them on the page where all the relevant content is. If they like that page, chances are good you can attract them to other pages within the site. Remember, they must visit more than 1 page on your site in order for Google to count them as not bounced.

At Raven5, one of our clients at the Digital Agency, we have weekly analytic meetings with every one of our clients. It provides our “marching orders” for future actions and helps us stay focused on the original campaign objectives. After all, you cannot manage what you cannot measure.

Michael Bickerton, Raven5, 2010

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