I was speaking to a prospective client this past week and he said, “we definitely need to increase our conversions and our bounce rate is over 90%!” First reaction, YIKES! that is a really high bounce rate; no wonder they are not getting any conversions. As I started to explore and ask some questions of my expert team members, I learned a few things.
Just so we are all on the same page, Google Analytics defines Bounce Rate as 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.)
Your bounce rate is driven by so many different variables and honestly it depends on the goals and other KPI metrics that have to be considered along with what you are trying to achieve!
If your goal is to drive phone calls in a fast sales situation, the bounce rate is expected to be a lot higher. Theoretically, if we are driving traffic to the best page for the consumer and they make a decision to call from that page, that’s good. However, if we are not seeing the phone calls and there is a high bounce rate, then that is a problem.
On the other hand, having a low bounce rate in and of itself is not necessarily a good thing. A low bounce rate along with a high average time on page is an indication that people are consuming information. A low bounce rate and a low average time on site is an indication that people can’t find what they are looking for.
Kissmetrics provides this infographic on various bounce rates by industry and most important, intent of the website. There is not one simple answer.
Another important factor is to check if you have added the Google Analytics tracking code correctly to all your pages, GA implementation can definitely affect your bounce rate. If tracking is set up properly, then you need to consider redesign of entrance pages, optimizing the content of those pages to better correlate with the search terms and/or changing the ads or keywords to better reflect the page content.
You can improve your bounce rate by maintaining top rankings, providing relevant content, having easily accessible search function, speeding up page load time, reduce external linking, larger forms, fewer pop ups, large headlines…make the user experience for your targeted audience easy with a clear path to next steps.
Speaking of Google Analytics, remember what you cannot measure, you cannot improve. In order to make it easy for you to quickly review your tracked analytics information, we have Free Google Analytics Dashboard downloads for you. Just click on the link Custom DirectiveGroup Google Analytic Dashboards .
I trust you’ve learned a couple of things reading this article about “Why you should care about improving your bounce rate?”. Done well, it will improve you conversions and your business results! If you should need some help making sure your Google Analytics is set up properly on your website or have any questions about bounce rate, give us a call.
