Bounce Rate: The Good and the Bad
By Peter Boyd on May 25, 2009 in Web Design
The bounce rate is the rate at which someone hits your site and leaves without clicking on the page.If you have 100 visitors to your site and 80 leave without clicking on another page, then you have an 80% bounce rate.
Google.com analytics specialist Avinash Kaushik has stated:”It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying.”
With that in mind, let’s take a look at two examples of worrying and non-worrying bounce rates (i.e. higher than 50%):
1.High Bounce Rate, but Still a Good Page
With a good article, tech support or contact page, your bounce rate can and probably should be high.Your page provided so much information that the person did not need to go anywhere else.In this scenario, the user found your site from a search query and went to the specific page.
A good tech support page, a good article, or contact page can achieve a high bounce rate and still be a successful page.Basically, you answered what the person needed and they just left. Congrats for making a useful page with easy-to-find info.
For example, we have a ridiculously high 89.31% bounce rate for our article on how to remove Ask.com toolbar/configuration from your computer.Does this article suck?No.The article helps and there is no need to visit any other PaperStreet page.This shows as we have an exit rate on that page of 88.31% too, which just about matches the bounce rate.Anyway, I am not worried, as I know that article is helpful and is to the point.
So if you have solid contact pages, support pages, and articles with specific advice, then you can expect to have a high bounce rate.
2.High Bounce Rate, but Bad a Page (or site)
This is the bounce rate area where you need to worry that the page sucked so much, the person just gave up and left your site.Google calls it coming, puking and leaving.If your home page and key pages on the web site have high bounce rates, then it’s usually time to reorganize and redesign.
As a good example, our portfolio page for legal sites has a low bounce rate of 33.82% and an exit rate of 8.14%.Not bad.That is probably because our portfolio rocks and is fairly well organized.Better yet, our blog has a 28.07% bounce rate to its home page and a 15.52% exit rate.Also pretty snazzy.
Conversely, a page we need to redesign is our testimonials, which has an 86.67% bounce rate and 50% exit rate!Ouch!Hopefully our soon to be released page layouts will take care of that.
So, in short, check your bounce rate.In this case, you need to work on your page and site by providing more information to the web site visitor.For more information on this, read these posts:
- Stop Bouncing:tips for website success
- Five Tips for Effective Web Headlines
- 7 ways to Lower Bounce Rate
