What Is A High Website Bounce Rate?

Website Bounce Rate: How High Is Too High?
By Charles Ogwyn

If you've spent any time at all looking around in your website analytics, you've noticed something called the "Bounce Rate." If there is only one number that you could pay attention to, this is the one. This simple performance indicator provides powerful insight into what is and isn't working on your website. In order to receive the full insights that this measure can provide into how well your website is really working, there are a couple of things that you must know. Let's take a quick look at 3 ways to use this information to give insight into what's really happening on your website.

What is the bounce rate?

A bounce is calculated as a single-page view or single-event trigger in a session or visit.

The following situations qualify:

• A user clicks on a link deep into your site sent by a friend, reads the information on the page, and closes the browser.
• A user comes to your home page, looks around for a minute or two, and immediately leaves.
• A user comes directly to a reference page on your site from a web search, leaves the page available in the browser while completing other tasks in other browser windows and the session times out.

If you're using the old version of Google Analytics, to view the bounce rates for your website, go to the Bounce Rate report under Visitors > Visitor Trending > Bounce Rate.

If you're using the new version (version 5) of Google Analytics, to view the bounce rates for your website, go to the Bounce Rate under Standard Reporting > Content Overview.

Real Insights from Bounce Rates

For most websites in the US, the average rate is between 40% - 60% for the entire site. Looking at the site-wide average for your site is too vague to be actionable. Your primary goal in looking at website analytics information is to be able to take action - increase what is working well and decrease, or change what isn't.

Blogs

Blogs, by definition, have high bounce rates - by high I mean that among repeat visitors, yours may be 70%-90%. This is what happens when a long time visitor comes to your site to read your latest blog post and then leaves. This is not a bad thing. For new visitors to your blog, your hope is that they will stay a while and read some of your other posts. To see the extent to which this is happening and to determine if you need to make changes to encourage this behavior, view the rate for new visitors to your blog. If the new visitor value is high for your blog, you need to take action to encourage new visitors to read other blog posts. Cross linking your articles to other articles on your site is one strategy that helps new visitors spend more time on your website.

Source of Traffic

Viewing the rates for your top sources of traffic provides insight into where your high quality traffic and low quality traffic are coming from. When you see that you're receiving low bounce-rate traffic to your website, you want to figure how to increase this.

Keyword

Viewing the bounce rates for your keywords lets you know exactly which keywords you should be targeting in your marketing, your Search Engine (SEO), and your Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns. Keywords that have high rates are keywords that you shouldn't be wasting your time or money on because people searching those phrases aren't sticking around on your website.

Landing Pages

The values for the landing pages on your website let you know which of your landing pages are working well and which ones need work.

If you're using the new version of Google Analytics (version 5), you can create custom reports that display the bounce rates that we've looked at today. These reports can provide tremendous insights into how well your website is really working and help you know exactly where you need to spend some time improving things. Taking some time to study your low bounce rates will help you understand what's really working well so that you can build upon your successes.

Charles Ogwyn is passionate about helping small business owners grow through the power of the Internet. By combining his marketing background and experience building and working with websites, he delivers the missing pieces that result in a business owner's dream come true. Having worked with hundreds of websites, Charles created The Road Map to Internet Marketing Success System to quickly produce a website that consistently attracts attention and ideal clients.

Do you wish your website brought in more customers? Do you wish your website worked as hard as you do to increase your bottom line? Business doesn't have to be a struggle. Receive your complementary special report: "5 Ways to Grow Your Business Using Social Media" on my website - http://myinternetmarketingpartner.com/mimp-socialmedia/

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