Bounce Rate

Simply defined, bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who navigate to your website and then navigate away from it after only viewing one page; they don’t peruse your website. They either close out of your website entirely or they type a new web address into the search bar. This is defined as a single-page visit. The takeaway: they didn’t interact with your website, and that’s typically the opposite of what you want. Measuring your bounce rate can help give you an idea of the quality of your website content and if it is doing what it should be doing (whether that is encouraging visitors to travel to another page or to get visitors to click a button to contact you).

Tracking Events

However, it all gets a bit more complicated than that. Technically speaking, if you have a slider on your homepage or a video, and an individual watches it, they have interacted with your website. If they leave after watching the video or viewing the slider, they’ve still interacted with the site. You can set up an event in Google Analytics to track this behavior in order to understand what people are doing on your website.

Low Bounce Rates and High Bounce Rates

You’ll want to look at the bounce rates on each of your website pages to see how well each individual page is performing. If you have a high bounce rate, you may have low-quality content, users can’t engage with the page, or they’ve misunderstood the purpose of the page. The catch: this might also mean that the page has done its job and users have found the information they were seeking. Think about the purpose of the page. Is it designed to inform your audience, or is it designed to get your audience to engage and interact? Maybe you’re even using your bounce rate to help measure successful conversions. Keep this in mind when you are reviewing your analytics and seeing high and low bounce rates on the pages. It will mean different things for each page of your website.

Are you confused yet? Understanding your bounce rates can be tricky, but we’re happy to help you navigate the process! Contact us with any questions you may have.