Do your web pages stink?
One of the best web metrics that I get asked about the least by clients is the Bounce Rate. Yet, it can be a great way to determine which web pages stink, from the visitor’s perspective. There are exceptions, but for most websites the Bounce Rate helps you understand a little more about visitor’s behavior.
So what is Bounce Rate? Bounce rate is the percentage of people who came to your site, landed on this specific page and immediately left. They never clicked on any other internal page links. They came, they saw, they left! Just one pageview and they said good bye! Nothing compelled the visitor to look further into your website.
Bounce Rate
A lot of web metrics are very inaccurate, such as time on page or time on site, and are difficult to really measure. Bounce rate is pretty easy to measure with analytic tools (such as: Google Analytics) and should be easy for website owners to understand.
If a web page has a high Bounce Rates (over 50%) and the web page was meant to get them to click on links going to other pages in your website then you can definitely conclude the page is getting a failing grade. The page content and links need to be re-vamped. For example: maybe the keywords used on the page are causing you to get the wrong search engine traffic. so by adjusting the keyword phrases throughout the page and keywords used to link to this page will achieve a more targeted audience and a lower Bounce Rate.
There are times that a high bounce rate may not be avoided. For example: a new blog post may get you a lot of readers who just want to read this blog entry and then leave right away.
The bottom line is, you need to regularly monitor the Bounce Rate through your website analytic tools and take it seriously. Your visitors are telling you something, so don’t ignore it.
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