If you have preconceived notions about a much prevalent term in Google Analytics-Bounce rate, let us get them sorted once and for all.
To begin with, understanding what a BOUNCE RATE(BR) is, we can easily comprehend its meaning as per various definitions like:
- Percentage of a single pageview visit to a website (Google definition).
- It can be more elaborately understood with the percentage of single interaction visits to a website.
- In simpler terms, the percentage of visitors who visit your website and uninterestingly leave your website without further exploring it.
- Bounce rate plays a crucial role in measuring visitor engagement, confirming the standards a user expects.
From the above definitions, it can be easily deduced that a Bounce rate is related to the clarity and relevance of the content available on the website.
The Bounce rate of each page will notify you of the percentage of visitors that landed on that page and bounced off. The bounce rate of each device will let you know the percentage of people using mobiles, tablets, and desktops bouncing off.
According to Google Analytics, a low bounce rate (26-40%) is an excellent indicator of a website’s visitor engagement, where ratings above 70% are highly disappointing. Getting a Bounce rate under 20% is rare and a bit abnormal also(reason discussed below).
Giving the percentage brackets of Bounce rates does not indicate how constructively it is affecting the website. So we will study in-depth bad, average, and good bounce rates.
Worrisome (bad) Bounce rate:
A bounce rate below 20% is indicative of bad analytic set up while above 90% is suggestive of poor design and browser compatibility issues.
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A bounce rate under 20% might also be because of incorrectly implemented event tracking, or the third-party add-on (Live Chat).
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A single-page website without any content, links, or virtual page reviews can result in showing high bounce rates.
Average Bounce Rate:
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The bounce rate of a mediocre website manages to keep itself on the borderline ranging from 40-55%. The ratings in this range are roughly average. It is although not a serious cause for concern but it indicates that problem areas can be identified and a few minor improvements in user segments can drag you in a superior lot.
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Most of the websites see bounce rates lying within the range of 26-70%, which is fairly average.
Good Bounce rate:
If the Bounce rate ranges from 25-30% or more considerably it sustains to be under 40%, you can be assured that your website is managing to draw the required level of engagement. A professionally well-designed website easily captures a visitor’s interest and thus sweeps into the safe zone.
You might have clearly understood that to get a good BR it is important to retain the visitors to your website. So to secure an acceptable BR you must follow a few pointers such as:
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Highly engaging content which is relevant to the need of the user is an important checkpoint for the user to stay on the page for more time. Identify and work on the pages which received the most page views in the last 30 days with the help of Google Analytics.
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Google Analytics also helps you figure out the best traffic sources for your website. It is an important factor that affects the Bounce rates. What draws the maximum traffic to your website, say, Google or Facebook…?
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The Bounce rates may vary for an e-commerce website in comparison to some other ‘XYZ’ websites. In an online shopping store, the visitor might wander around for a bit more time which eventually leads to lower bounce rates however, any other website might be visited by the user just for information gathering. A visitor might pick the relevant data and bounce it off. So the above situation is a realistic one and Bounce rates become incomparable but equally good for both websites.
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Mobile Bounce Rates: Users of mobile give a whole new dimension to this game of ratings. They generally tend to bounce off more quickly (10-20% higher) than desktop users. Any website with a large amount of traffic from mobile users will thus experience reasonably good bounce rates.
TAKEAWAY:
You must strive to ensure that the visitor lands on a page of your website and continues to visit even more pages throughout the website. Clarity of content, appropriate design, and layout of your website, mobile friendly and smooth navigation can help your website enjoy low bouncing off and thus relish more visitor engagement.
