You've probably heard about bounce rates, but do you know how they affect the success of your brand online?
Bounce rates measure the percentage of people who hit your site, view a single page, and then leave. In other words, if you have a high bounce rate, it means the majority of your visitors don't stick around to see what else is on your site. In general, this means that something could have been done better--you do want visitors to stick around, right? For this reason, your bounce rate is often used as a metric for the success of your site.
However, in certain instances, a high bounce rate could indicate that the information a visitor was seeking was quickly found--ideal, especially because it indicates a measure of user-friendliness. This is why you shouldn't take the number at face-value: a lower bounce rate doesn't always imply a more successful site. So how do you use this metric?
Use Visitor Sources
If a large category of your visitors are coming to your website to grab your contact information, it's not a bad thing if they bounce right away. Run a check on your visitor sources by pulling up the page in question in Google Analytics and cross-checking it with their sources and keywords. If the majority are searching, for example, "Radii contact" or "Radii phone number," then you have your answer. Likewise, if the query was completely irrelevent, the visitor probably wasn't going to be interested in your site no matter what was changed.
If you can determine that your visitors are simply finding their information quickly, then a high bounce rate is nothing to worry about: even Google doesn't consider bounce rates when it comes to definining spam. Likewise, if you've run an AdWords campaign, a high bounce rate can signal that your visitors landed on exactly the page they were looking for and therefore didn't need to travel through your site. All of this should be easily determinable through your visitor sources.
Check Your Other Sites and Pages
Blogs are notorious for high bounce rates, but that's okay. Most people will come only to read your most recent post and then leave. Instead, they may travel to your social media pages or decide to check out other websites you may own. In other words, context matters. These are likely marked as "returning visitors."
Nevertheless, your bounce rate can still be useful as a comparison metric. Compare similar pages on your site or the same page before and after changes have been made. If you see an increase in bounces after a page has been changed, it could be negatively affecting your site.
Measure Quality of Time
If your bounce rate is high from multiple queries across multiple pages, it's possible that your content simply is of low quality and most visitors either find it troublesome to read (white typefaces on yellow backgrounds) or not worth their time.
In Google Analytics, you'll want to look at the data both in terms of conversions (has your Page Value increased?) and in terms of your bounce rate. This is the number you really want to consider. If, from your visitor sources, you can determine a percentage of accidental hits to the site or bounces due to returning visitors, you can deduct this amount from your total, leaving you with a more accurate measure of the quality of time spent on your site. Of course, it's a good idea to deal with a margin of error in this and to track your quality of time as your site progresses.
How do you use your bounce rate? Have you used it as a measure of quality on your site?
