Understanding Engagement through Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is a meaningful way to measure the quality of traffic coming to your website and is almost instantly accessible in any web analytics tool.

In a nutshell, bounce rate is the percentage of site visitors who leave after visiting the first page they visit. Bounce Rate was designed to tell you if you have the right audience coming to your pages and if you are meeting their expectations. 

To understand bounce rate, it is important to understand the difference between bounce rate and exit rate. Exit rate is a way to identify where people are exiting mid-stream from your conversion funnel (Kaushik, 2014) - are they leaving at shipping charges page or the billing confirmation page?

Thought about from a customer perspective rather than I came, I saw, I conquered, the action is I came, I saw, Yuck, I am out of here (Kaushik, 2013).  However, it can also mean I came to your website, quickly realized that you open at 9:00 am and I’m on my way, so be mindful of the entry and content possibilities.

To be clear on what identifies a bounce rate from your site, these four visitor actions will be identified as a bounce from your site and typically signal that the visitor’s expectations were unmet (Kelly, 2012).

1.         Clicks the back button (most common)

2.         Closes the browser (window/tab)

3.         Types a new URL

4.         Does nothing (session times out after 30min)

A high bounce rate is acceptable for pages like Contact Us, Checkout and Customer Support Pages.  In these scenarios, a marketer can embrace a high bounce rate knowing they came, found what they wanted quickly and left.

In the below scenario the bounce rate is 63%, but only 13% of visits exit on this page.  Considering that this page is not a primary entry point and is a supporting tertiary shopping funnel page, we are more concerned with people exiting at this point versus bouncing.  And approximately 1 out of 10 people exiting, is actually great on this high commitment page (Kelly, 2012)

Courtesy of Blast Analytics Marketing

In order to reduce bounce rate, it’s important to set up user expectations through the content. A few basic web design best practices to lower your bounce rate include:

• Avoid pop-up ads, animation or anything to interrupt a users clear path to find the information they need.        

• Make sure your message is clear and your site is easy to navigate, so visitors can find the information they need quickly.

• Optimize your site content and images so information loads fast. If your visitors have to wait even seconds too long they will look elsewhere for their information.

• If people are entering your site with tablets and smart phones, ensure you invest in responsive design, so the site is easy to navigate using devices.

An average bounce rate is about 40 percent to 50 percent (Google Analytics, 2014), but this percentage range is meaningless because what constitutes a good bounce rate varies by brand, industry, type of site, segment, customer lifecycle and user intent (Hartwig, 2013).

Morra Aarons-Mele, founder of the digital cause marketing agency reminds us that consumers live in their feeds, and that is a golden opportunity for brands. "Use social media content to engage people, and keep them informed and entertained. But when you really need to reach them — use email and social media. This way, you can get your content out to people without having to rely on them coming to your site of their own volition, and probably 'bouncing' off” (Hartwig, 2012).