What is it? Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who bounce away from your website after arriving without ever clicking a link to other pages on your site. It is calculate by the following formula:
What does it mean? If your bounce rate is high, visitors are not engaging with your content, not able to use your navigation, or going elsewhere to find content because it either isn’t on your page or isn’t easy to find.
What’s considered a good bounce rate? There’s no real answer to this question as there are just too many variables. Generally 20% is considered really good. Over 35% means there’s room for improvement. Anything over 50% quite often means your site has serious problems.
How do I improve bounce rate? Ah, the million dollar question. Here are few tips that can help, plus the real answer at the bottom.
Make sure your site is accessible and meets web standards. This is where hiring a professional web developer who understands everything going on behind the visitor experience and who has an appreciation for standards is key. But also, keep your audience in mind — if you’re selling widgets to a primarily male audience, make sure your site can be viewed by the 7% to 10% of men who are red-green colorblind.
- Clear calls to action. Let visitors know where they can click, where you’d like them to click, and how to find your most popular information such as how to contact you.
- Update your site frequently, and make sure the new content is noted on the most popular entry pages. If visitors don’t see any changes in the page they usually come to visit, it’s unlikely they’ll click through to other pages.
- Use your other analytics to guide you. This is where understanding all of your site’s data can really help. Use the search terms people are finding you using, and the most popular information to guide your site navigation and calls to action. Another example, if you discover through your analytics that most of your visitors are using a mobile device or browser, make sure your page renders quickly on mobile devices and beware of the limitations of those browsers. For instance, the iPhone can’t display Adobe Flash graphics or animations.
The best way to improve your bounce rate, and really all web key performance indicators, is to perform the following steps:
- Test
- Adapt.
- Rinse, lather, repeat.
It is only by trying different permutations of your website that you can get a handle on what works for your audience, and what sends them off to Google to search out your competitors. Try 1 call to action for a few days, make note of how many people followed through with a click, and then try something different until you get a bounce rate you can accept.
If you’d like more information on understanding or improving your website, contact me.
