What is a bounce rate? A bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors to a website, specifically one page of the website, and then leave or “bounce.” A visitor may leave on their own after visiting just the one page or their session on the page may time out causing the bounce.
How is bounce rate determined? There is software that keeps track of users that visit a website and will calculate how many visits result in bounces. Once they have their bounce rate numbers, they will want to understand what they mean. A bounce rate of 80% of higher is not ideal and the website owner will want to take a look at issues that may be causing this. Causes of this high bounce rate may include a webpage that loads too slowly or not completely, content that isn’t up to par or runs too long, a webpage that is not mobile-friendly, or images that don’t make sense to the content.
A bounce rate of 50%-70% is better, but also not ideal. With some work, that bounce rate can also be improved. Think about designing a website that can be used both on a PC and on a mobile-device as both are used by people searching the internet for information, products, or services. Remove irrelevant images and make sure there aren’t too many taking up valuable space on the webpage.
A bounce rate of 30%-50% is where a website owner wants to be. This will signal that the majority of people who visit a webpage are not only enjoy its content, but looking around the rest of the website as well.
How does bounce rate information benefit website owners? By knowing bounce rates, a website owner can determine if the page visitors are seeing is doing its job to keep them on the website and exploring different pages. If visitors seem to land on one page and are always bouncing more often than on other pages, the website owner can explore issues that one page may be having. Sometimes, a high bounce rate for one page is not a bad thing. For example, if a visitor was searching for information on a specific topic and landed on one of your web pages to read about it and then left, this was a useful visit for them. If visitors seem to bounce straight from the home page, this could be a bigger problem as they are not even spending time to explore what you have to offer as a company or brand.
Evaluating why a bounce rate on a home page is high can help a website owner to improve the user experience. One question they may ask themselves includes if the page is easy to navigate. A visitor to a website doesn’t want to spend too much time searching for what they are looking for. Categories to different subjects on a website should be visible to the user. If they find the navigation of a site frustrating, they will likely bounce and move on to another website.
