After your website becomes live, it’s just a matter of time that you will start thinking about the number of bounces that analytics shows. Initially, your sole purpose would be to look at the number of visits and customer engagements. But as the number increases, you realize that there are a lot of other things you need to consider and among them, bounce rate is an important matter.
What is Bounce Rate?
As Google States “Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page)”. In other words, it is the percentage of users that clicks through a website only to leave the site without interacting with the page (clicking through to other pages).
What Actually the Google Analytics Bounce Rate Tells?
There are several facts that come into the spotlight with your website’s bounce rate analysis. Let’s have a look at them.
What Are the Reasons behind a High Bounce Rate?
If you have a website, it will definitely have a bounce rate. There are basically two reasons that make a visitor leave a website. First, the website is not helpful at all or its looks and feels are not that much appealing. Second, the visitor might have got all necessary information on the landing page and therefore, he doesn’t feel the need to visit any other page. You should also check whether:
Do You Really Need to Care about a High Bounce Rate?
It certainly is a factor that you need to care about. But in some cases you can’t help it as some pages like blog, contact us and about us pages will automatically have high bounce rates. But, you have to keep in mind that it might be a problem if your key pages have high bounce rates. To resolve these issues ensure:
What Is a Good Bounce Rate?
Ultimately, this is what people want to know. While there are many suggestions explaining that it is problematic to have a bounce rate of 70% but 40% is okay, there is no concrete interpretation as it varies depending on the category of the website. Therefore, there’s no point of getting disheartened if you find your website has a high bounce rate.
For instance, if you have an eCommerce site with a bounce rate of 90%, you have to take the matter seriously as it signifies that people are not taking the time to browse through the products or to make a purchase. But the same percentage on a lead generation site having several testimonial videos, social sharing buttons, live chat option, Google Maps and PDF download option is beneficial. It may happen that the customer gets all the information from the landing page and he doesn’t need to browse through other pages of your site. This definitely is a positive sign symbolizing that all your integrations have worked perfectly.
Therefore, it isn’t always harmful to your site as people like it the way it is. Don’t forget that your ultimate aim is to earn more customers and thereby more business. Besides, the ranking doesn’t solely depend on the number of users bouncing away from a single page. Visits made by the customers, total time spent on your site and most importantly, your conversions eventually count.