What Does ‘Bounce Rate’ Mean?

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Those of you who use Google Analytics are probably familiar with the term ‘bounce rate‘ as it’s one of the stats you’ll see when you login to your account to view traffic to your site as in the image below (which you can click on if you want to see it a bit bigger).

But what does it actually mean?

Bounce rate is the percentage of one page visits to a site, when a visitor arrives and then literally ‘bounces away’, I.e probably clicks on the back button to go back to where they came from. The visitor will view the page and will not stay on the site to browse around. The bounce rate can help determine how effective a website’s content is, measuring whether visitors browse more deeply into a site. Generally, the lower the percentage, the better.

However, this isn’t as straightforward as it sounds and the actual percentage will vary depending on what kind of site you have.

Avinash Kaushik, a Google Analytics specialist, has stated  “It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying. I stress that this is my personal analysis.”

This percentage needs to considered in relation to the objectives of your website. For example, for an online shop, the bounce rate is a very useful measurement of the effectiveness of the site and the marketing around it, e.g SEO, pay per click, social media marketing. Information sites which drive potential customers to contact them via email or phone may see much higher bounce rates. Blog sites are the same as often visitors will read a post and then surf away again. Visitors to Savvy Marketers often read our latest posts and then leave the site without looking further. Our bounce rate is therefore quite high. Typically information sites (such as B2B services) have higher bounce rates than e-commerce sites.

E-commerce sites I work with often have much lower bounce rates than the information/ service sites I work with and if they were over 35%, I would be worried! That would mean that their online marketing isn’t working and the pages themselves aren’t compelling to visitors. One of my client’s bounce rate averages at around 25% for her e-commerce site.

It’s well worth keeping an eye on your bounce rate stats and if the figure is high, working out which pages may be causing the high bounce rates and reviewing the content on them or perhaps their optimisation.

We’d love to know any tips you have for lowering your bounce rates, or if you have any questions on your web stats.

About Sam

Sam McArthur is an internet marketing consultant with 12 years in the industry. She helps professional service businesses with their internet marketing strategy, helping them to see significant results from their online marketing activities, particularly within the search engines. She also consults on the latest internet tools, technology and best practice techniques.