Web Analytics Tips- What is a bounce rate and how should I use it?
August 31, 2010
Web analytics programs provide a LOT of data, which can be an overwhelming experience. It’s good to know which metrics are relevant to your site and what they mean so that you can act on the information you get. One of the most frequently useful metrics for marketing analytics is the bounce rate. The idea behind this is that a “bounce” visitor is one who comes to your site and leaves right away without really taking anything in.
A bounce visit is defined in one of two ways:
1) A visitor who spends 5 seconds or less on your site
2) A visitor who only looks at one page before leaving
Both of these definitions have their pros and cons, but most analytics programs use the 2nd definition by default.
How to use it:
Your site’s overall bounce rate is a quick way to see how relevant visitors find your content and how compelling your landing pages are, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Try looking at the bounce rates of traffic from your targeted keywords as well. A keyword with a consistently high bounce rate is not brining relevant traffic to your site. It’s time to look for better ones. Also look at the bounce rates from individual traffic sources as well, particularly if you have or are considering a paid ad campaign on one of those sources.
It’s also a good idea to look at the bounce rate of your site’s pages. If one or more pages has a very high bounce rate, you can check it for errors and see where improvements can be made. Remember there are exceptions here, especially if your site has a blog. A successful blog has regular readers that visit to catch up on the latest post and then leave. These register as “bounce visits” because they only view the main blog page for a short period of time before moving directly to a specific post. This is also frequently a problem for news sites, whose current info is often all in one place on the front page. Checking the time on page in situations like this can help you get a more complete picture.
