What Is Bounce Rate? Everything You Need to Know
What is the bounce rate?
In Google Analytics, the bounce rate is a rate of users who leave your website without taking any action. The bounce rate is a good indicator for the webmaster or SEO to check the success of individual pages in the web project. This also happens in the area of other marketing channels such as SEA , e-mail or display ads. Through targeted conversion optimization , the landing pages can be adjusted in such a way that they correspond more to the search intention and satisfy the user. Also for the correct selection of booked or optimized keywords, advertising channels, the bounce rate is an important indicator that contributes to the success of the marketing measure. The bounce rate is not to be confused with the exit rate!
How is the bounce rate measured?
The start of a session and no further interaction is counted as a bounce, one also speaks of users who bounce. Using Google as an example:
Monday: visit page A → B → C
Tuesday: visit site B → A → C
Wednesday: visit side A → exit
Page A's bounce rate is 50%, since Google Analytics only counts Monday and Wednesday as entry on page A, and only on Wednesday no other page of the domain was accessed. Two entries on page A and one exit = 50% bounce rate for page A.
How is bounce rate calculated?
Total one-page visitors divided by total website visitors.
The website has a total of 10,000 visitors per month, 5,000 of whom leave your website without further interaction = bounce rate 50%
Interpret the bounce rate correctly
The metric is influenced by numerous factors, among which a direct comparison is not always advisable as bounce rates can differ from topic to topic and industry to industry. The goal your landing page or landing page is pursuing must also be considered! An article by Yehoshua Coren shows the possibility of expanding the bounce rate to include visitors who only performed one interaction. These can be:
- Pageview hits: Visitors who viewed a page without interacting.
- Event hits: An event can represent a click on a button.
- E-Commerce transaction hits: Here, the purchase is taken into account as a KPI.
- Ecommerce trasaction item hits: Products added to cart.
- Social plugin hits: Facebook likes directly on the website.
It is therefore advisable to store corresponding goals for important subpages in Google Analytics.
What is a good bounce rate?
There is no such thing as good or bad, and it is also not possible to directly compare the bounce rate with other sites. It is important to understand the goal of your own subpage, the landing page. Someone who googles your contact address, telephone number or opening hours and bounces again after calling up your "contact page" does not have to be considered a bad signal, since the user may have reached his goal by calling up your website.
HubSpot has put together a rough benchmark that you're welcome to use as a rough guide for evaluating your pages:
- Content sites: 40-60%
- Lead Generation Pages: 30-50%
- Blogging: 70-98%
- Retail/ecommerce sites: 10-30%
- Service sites: 10-30%
- Landing Pages: 70-90%
It is therefore advisable to compare the "type of page" on your own website, e.g. compare all blog articles with each other.
Reasons for a high bounce rate
There are numerous factors that can affect the bounce rate, such as:
- Poor layout or design of your site
- Poor UX, user guidance, site structure
- Wrong traffic source or irrelevant visitors
- no clear call to action
- Inappropriate landing page and its content
- Retrieval on the user's device is not possible (e.g. mobile device)
- Long loading times
- Distracted by advertising
improve bounce rate
First of all: It is important to check carefully whether the tracking of the analysis software is correctly integrated, otherwise you are optimizing for incorrect figures!
- Compare the type of pages, e.g. blog articles, and pick out the articles that have a high bounce rate
- Check the incoming traffic channel and segment it into referrers ( links ), SEO (organic), ads (ADs)
- Now check the relevant keywords for incoming traffic or the linked website
- Is the ad designed appropriately and does it lead to the correct landing page?
- Does your landing page answer the user's search intent?
- Is the content of your site unique, does it add value and is it clearly structured?
- Do you have a clear call to action, a stimulus to look more on your site, or to make an inquiry?
Basically, the above procedure is a way to improve the bounce rate. Technical things such as the loading time, but also optical factors such as design, usability and user experience form the basis of optimization here.
Bounce Rate and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
In connection with the bounce rate, the negative signal to Google is often seen, which can lead to a deterioration in your rankings. The so-called return-to- serp rate are the users who can definitely trigger such a signal:
- User enters a search query, comes to your website, leaves it and searches again to find a solution on other websites
- User makes a search query, comes to your website, leaves it and makes more precise search queries than before to get suitable information
- User is looking for something else after leaving your website
In the cases mentioned, especially points 1 + 2, it can be assumed, even if not officially confirmed, that search engines will recognize here that you have not satisfied the user with your site. These factors influence both your ranking and click prices in Google ADs. It is therefore important in SEO but also in SEA to check these values and optimize them if necessary.
Conclusion
The bounce rate is an important KPI for checking the quality of your website and content. However, it is important to understand the numbers and the goal of your site. A bad bounce rate does not necessarily have to be related to your website and can also be generated by incorrect traffic. Therefore, set specific goals, do not compare apples with oranges and also check the length of stay and, importantly, the incoming traffic!