What is bounce rate?
Bounce rate is one of those metrics that you see as soon as you log into your Google Analytics account. It appears on both the Home screen you see when you log into the system and the Audience Overview report. It’s also one of those metrics where it isn’t immediately apparent what bounce rate is actually measuring.
It can be a useful metric, but only once you fully understand it.
Google Analytics defines bounce rate as the following:
“A bounce is a single-page session on your site. In Analytics, a bounce is calculated specifically as a session that triggers only a single request to the Analytics server, such as when a user opens a single page on your site and then exits without triggering any other requests to the Analytics server during that session.
“Bounce rate is single-page sessions divided by all sessions, or the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server.”
Trying to determine an acceptable bounce rate for your site is challenging. Generally, most websites will see bounce rates fall somewhere between 26% and 70%. If you suddenly notice an increase or decrease in bounce rate, it needs some investigation.
What does a high bounce rate mean?
What a bounce rate means depends entirely on the page you’re looking at. For example, a contact page where a user may visit from Google, get your postcode and then leave, will naturally have a high bounce rate. Conversely, if your homepage has a high bounce rate, it could be a cause for concern as the aim of a homepage is usually to direct users elsewhere on a website.
What can cause a low bounce rate?
In some cases, you can genuinely have a low bounce rate. However, if it suddenly drops or is around 1%, it’s worth checking how your Google Analytics tracking code is set-up. For example, duplicated tracking code on your website can cause Google Analytics to falsely report a 1% bounce rate.
When should you worry?
It should concern you when a high bounce rate appears for either one section of your website or for a certain marketing channel.
If a page or section of your website has a consistently high bounce rate, then we recommend looking at the user journey for these pages. Take the time to analyse how a user navigates these pages and look for points where a visitor could become frustrated and leave. By removing these friction points, you should see a reduction in the number of users bouncing from your site before converting.
When the cause of a high bounce rate is related to one marketing channel, this marketing activity needs to be reviewed. Are you sending users to the best place on your website? Is the ad driving customers to your website misleading? By making changes to your marketing campaigns, you can hopefully reduce your bounce rate, and as a side effect, improve the return on your campaigns.
For a one-page website, we advocate setting up events to count user interactions. This will help demonstrate to Google Analytics how users are interacting with your site and give you a much better understanding of how your site is actually performing.
For more information and advice on how to improve your site, contact the DigitalKOG team.
