What Does Your Bounce Rate Say About Your Website?

Google analytics and similar software can be a confusing mess to the untrained eye. It supplies so much information about your website’s traffic that it can be difficult to prioritize what to focus on. Being able to understand and apply this data is a must so your business knows what is working and what isn’t.

The first metric everybody talks about is your general traffic. How many visits does your site get? More visitors means the website is growing and doing it’s job. People are finding your site in the distraction filled, over saturated internet. But that is only the first step on a grand journey to a successful business. This data is important to understand where to go next.

 The next step is to look at your website’s bounce rate to know if your traffic means anything.

 Why is Bounce Rate Important?

For the unaware, when a visitors comes to your site and leaves after only visiting one page, they have “bounced” away from your website. Bounce rate is how much of your visitors bounced from your site after a single page view, and typically after a few seconds. So let’s say your site has over 50,000 visitors every month. Pretty impressive traffic for a business website. Now let’s say you have a 60% bounce rate, which is pretty average. That means 30,000 visitors hit a single page on your site and promptly left.

So let’s say your site has over 50,000 visitors every month. Pretty impressive traffic for a business website. Now let’s say you have a 60% bounce rate, which is pretty average. That means 30,000 visitors hit a single page on your site and promptly left.  That leaves only 20,000 visitors who stayed on your site. Now you need to figure out what is driving those 30,000 potential customers away, and find a way to keep them. That leaves only 20,000 visitors who stayed on your site. Now you need to figure out what is driving those 30,000 potential customers away, and find a way to keep them.

Analyzing Your Homepage

So what is making people leave? The page that gets the most traffic is probably your homepage, and it most likely has a high bounce rate. Some of this traffic is probably return visitors looking to see if you’ve updated your site, but most is first time visitors. So why are people leaving what should be your most engaging page?

 A few common reasons are:

• The home page doesn’t easily explain what your business is or does

• It’s overly self promotional

• The website is unattractive to the eye

• Pop-ups or ads annoy visitors

• Lack of, or an ineffective, call to action

• No relevant or interesting content

• Different content than what was promised

Attracting the Wrong Market

A high bounce rate can signify that your content is pulling in the wrong audience, which is a big problem.  You are making the effort to create great content, but that effort is wasted if it’s pulling in people who won’t become customers.

Look at where your traffic is coming from. Usually, a large chunk of traffic comes from Google, so what about your search result made them want to click? Google has crawled your site multiple times, trying to determine what you do. Has it labeled your pages under the wrong keywords? Does the description of your site properly represent it?

Look at individual pages and see if there is a pattern to which has high traffic and high bounce rates. Is there a specific topic you blog about that has these symptoms? That’s a great way to identify content that is not helping your business as much as it should. Is there different pages with low bounce rates? Those pages may contain topics and keywords you’ll want to pursue.

Your Content is Unappealing

Another reason your site has a high bounce rate is because your content is boring. You could be providing the most important information ever to your consumers, but if your readers can’t quickly see the value in it, or are turned off by something on the site, it’s just wasted space.  Boring content can be pretty easy to identify. Just ask a few people to look at it, and see what they think. Asking for advice on how to improve it. Even if you think your industry is boring, it’s still possible to make exciting content.

There is No Call To Action

A strong call to action will help retain visitors on your site and allow you to guide them to your end goal. Without a call to action, your visitor will consume your content, see nothing else that interests them, and abandon your site. Depending on your business and content, a good call to action  can be anything from giving suggestions for other articles, download a free trial, or purchasing a product. This gives visitors a next step and another reason to stay on your site. More time on your site means less time on a competitor. Every web page without a call to action is an invitation for a visitor to leave.

 Your Site Is Ugly

First impressions of a website are important. If a consumer sees a page filled with annoying ads, hard to read text, or is simply outdated, they’ll leave the site without a second thought. Make sure your site looks modern, clean, and respectable. After all, you are a business and this is your shop. Check to make sure your site looks go on a mobile device, especially if you are doing business internationally. Smartphone usage is already high in the U.S. but other countries are quickly adopting smartphones. A high correlation between high mobile traffic and a high bounce rate might mean your site looks bad

When Is a High Bounce Rate Acceptable?

There are some rare instances in which a high bounce rate is ok. While you always want visitors to roam your site, having a visitor hit a specific page and than leave can be beneficial. To know if it’s working does require additional metrics.

 Some examples of this are:

• Customers using a Contact page to call or email you

• Making a purchase on a product page

• Filling out a form that doesn’t direct to a second page

• Going from a webpage to a social media account

Make A Plan to Lower Your Rate

So you have a high bounce rate and now you think you know why. What’s next?

Well, you need to make a solid plan with measurable actions and results. Simply hoping for the best isn’t going to cut it. If your content is boring, make plans to create more engaging content. Try new things and hopefully it will decrease the bounce rate. If you don’t see a difference in bounce rates, than that probably isn’t your issue. Continue pursuing different solutions until you find one that works and then optimize it as best as you can.

You goal should be the lowest bounce rate possible, but know that you can’t eliminate it completely. An awesome bounce rate is around 20%, and the average is about 40-50%. Keep trying to retain your visitors, and that will lead to increased sales and more.

Written by Ben Allen,

Find Ben on Twitter: @allen24ben.