Bounce Rate Explained: Everything You Need to Know

A Bounce rate is the duration of time which is used to calculate in percentage, all single page-visits. In other words, these are people who leave your website without visiting the second page. Principally, Google Analytics won't receive any trigger if the visitor doesn't go beyond the home page.

Needless to say, the ultimate goal is to always reduce the number of bounce rates so as to optimize your website's conversion rates. Typically, a bounce rate is used to measure the overall visits where an individual leaves your site from the landing page without any further engagement.

Such information is used as a metric to give you insights on the kind of audience your site attracts. In furtherance of that, it enlightens you on which web pages, to be precise, you ought to revamp.

Why is it necessary to measure the bounce rate?

Notably, running a successful online business goes beyond merely having a website on board. You need to make sharp adjustments via the use of accurate data from powerful tools such as Google Analytics. To begin with, you need to look at your conversion rates. If they're low, that would definitely be a red flag.

It's pretty much obvious that low conversion rates indicate that visitors leave your site without taking any action. For instance, they don't make any purchase at all. Arguably, this should raise an alarm. Maybe the checkout process is complicated or the pages are slow-moving. At the same time, high bounce rates could be the reason why you be frustrated with low sales volume.

And that's not all.

High bounce rates could be a sign that your pages are of low quality. If a visitor finds nothing alluring, you don't expect them to stick around. On top of that, there could be a possibility that the kind of audience you site attracts, doesn't match up to the contents in your webpages. Customarily, your website needs to be user-friendly, to say the least.

So here's how to calculate a bounce rate.

For illustration purposes, let's use Google Analytics to get a clear depiction of how to narrow down to accurate figures. From this end, a bounce rate is calculated by the total number of single-page visits divided by the total number of sessions in your site. Keep in mind, the Analytics tool captures all triggers.

That is to say, it records all sessions where a visitor only clicked on the landing page and divides it over the total number of entries to your website. As simple as it sounds.

Interpreting a bounce rate metric

It's worth noting that a bounce rate can be misguiding if one doesnt know how to interpret it. To throw light on this action, you need to understand that not all high bounce rates are unpleasant. Here's a common scenario. A comprehensive blog site with very long posts might experience high bounce rates. More often than not, a visitor will read the first paragraph, and leave the site.

Ordinarily, low-intent pages will have high bounce rates, however, they end up having outstanding conversion leads. On the flipside, if your business goals rely on visitors who execute an action or view more than one page, then a high bounce rate could be so detrimental to your success prospects. For instance, an e-commerce merchant needs to optimize the site to boost sales by an impressive margin.

Depending on the kind of traffic you're counting on, you need to put the users' behavior into the equation. It's certainly a significant strategy to interpret the bounce rate.

That aside, the kind of website you have in place, could possibly influence a visitor's behavior. What do I mean? Suppose it's a single page site, the bounce rate can be much higher. And the opposite is actually true.

Alternatively, you can keep a close track on the landing page to have a better apprehension of the bounce rate. You need to make a couple of tweaks so to suit the visitors' needs. Sometimes it's quite annoying to see a site full of ads and one which has low-quality images. Also, if your site lacks an elaborate ‘call- to- action' to entice your target audience, be ready to get hit by exceedingly high bounce rates. What seems to work well, is adding a Subscription button to your website. It tremendously lowers the bounce rates.

Talking of the target audience, it's so imperative to ascertain that your traffic channels are headed in the right direction. Getting hold of the wrong audience is such a deal breaker to the extent of not realizing your business goals.

Bounce rate vs Conversions

So let's set the record straight.

From the onset, these metrics seem to appear like two variables which lead to opposite directions simultaneously, as in, they're inversely proportional. But here's what more important to any layman. Think of a bounce rate as a proxy which indicates whether your business objectives are going to materialize or not.

Technically, if you make a few changes in a bid to reduce the bounce rate, the most expected result is to see an increase in the conversion leads. Here's a sharp-witted pointer.

It's prudent to make comparisons between pages which have a low bounce rate to those which have a high bounce rate. As a matter of fact, you'll grasp a few tips from the pages with low bounce rates.

Moreover, you need to look at your traffic sources. Drawing a line between those which escalate the bounce rates and those which don't, is an ideal starter pack to enhance your conversions.

How to reduce the bounce rates

Most importantly, you need to deal with accurate figures by calculating the average time spent by visitors on your site. Basically, there are certain dynamics you need to know before making any modifications to the bounce rates. If it seems like your landing page gets most conversions than your blog page, that's a sign which indicates, it's time to enhance the quality of the content in your website.

As discussed earlier, a blog site which attracts visitors whose only intention is to get information shows a 100% bounce rate on Google Analytics. This isn't necessarily a bad bounce rate, owing to the fact that most of the sessions are usually single page visits.

For this reason, we wouldn't term it as a bounce per se, notwithstanding the fact that it's a single page visit since the primary goal is focused on conversions and not reducing the bounce rates.

Here's an example.

You may be wondering. How will I get hold of the right audience? Well, you can make the most out of Google Trends, a tool which helps a user to know the most popular searched keywords. For that reason, you need to optimize your content so as to rank up high on Google. From an SEO point of view, it's worthwhile to make a few changes on your backlinks and marketing strategies.

For instance, you ought to be keen on whether your email marketing campaign, brings on board appropriate traffic for your site. In a sufficient way, you must set goals which are practical and can ultimately be achieved. While making attempts to observe your perfomance, you need to incorporate your historical data so as to make realistic and sensible expectations.

As you may know, having several landing pages, each with captivating content, is sometimes a unique approach to reduce the bounce rates. Moreover, you must have a landing page which displays a call to action(CTA) so as to make the visitors stick around your site much longer. Once done, you need to come up with a very distinctive meta description for users who constantly use the search engine.

In the best possible way, SEO content should be well-organized. Use bullets and include headlines in a methodical manner. Having headings and sub-headings makes it way easier for visitors to navigate through your website. To put an end to the guessing games, you need to come up with a beautifully designed layout.

Why does this matter?

It's worth noting that a website should have a high responsive capacity and it's pages need to load quite fast by use of self-loading multimedia content.

What is Bounce Rate: Conclusion

To sum it up, it's important to interpret the bounce rates in an intuitive manner. Over and above that, it's worthwhile to distinguish between a good and a bad bounce rate. In a bid to make accurate calculations, it's always in the best practice to keep a track of all actions taking place in your site behind the scenes.

Fortunately, there's Google Analytics which is competent enough to help you get the average bounce rate. Also, you're able to monitor the marketing channels which, in particular, bring in the right traffic on your site. In the long run, you get to filter all techniques which result in higher conversion rates.

It's quite obvious that in most scenarios, a high bounce rate can act as a stumbling block which impedes the achievement of your business' goals, save for blog sites. In the general run of things, you should bear in mind that bounce rates tend to measure the profitability status of the pages on a website.