In Google Analytics, what does ‘bounce rate’ mean?

Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to your site that land on one page, then leave without looking at any other pages. So they “bounce” off the page, without clicking to any other pages. That’s all it is.

Why is bounce rate important to know?

If someone bounces from your site, then that’s a good indicator that they arrived at your site and didn’t find what they were looking for. For some reason, they didn’t stay around.

It’s important to know this number, because if people aren’t staying on your site for very long, then it’s a good idea to try to figure out why.

Reasons why someone may be bouncing from your site:

1. You have audio or video that starts automatically.
   It’s fine to have both of these things, but let your user decide to press play. It can be startling to land on a site that suddenly starts talking to you. These days, people are multitasking, and they may already be listening to music or have other videos playing in the background too.
2. Your design is too cluttered.
   Make your navigation simple so users can find what they are looking for.
3. Your site is broken.
   If your site doesn’t work, people won’t stick around.
4. You are getting the wrong kind of traffic. 
   There’s no use in getting “more” traffic if none of that traffic is looking for what you offer. If you sell shoes, and 1000 visitors are looking for socks, and you don’t carry socks, then what’s the point of that 1000 visitors? There is no point.
5. Your page takes too long to load.
   Nobody is going to stick around if your site takes forever to load. Speed it up.
6. Your site isn’t mobile-friendly.
   If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, then you lose most of your mobile visitors, which can be as high as 30%. That number is only going to get higher too.

How do I keep users on my site?

First, look at your site as your customer would look at it, not as yourself. People often get caught up in what they like, instead of focusing on the needs of their customer. It doesn’t matter what you like, because you aren’t your customer.

Do you have customers that you are friendly with? Ask them to look at your site and give an honest opinion – and don’t get mad if they are truly honest! The truth hurts sometimes, but it’ll help you address the needs of your client.

Have a Call-to-Action. What do you want people to do on your site? ASK THEM TO DO IT, and don’t be subtle about it. When you land on our site, there’s a big button right away that says largely “GET A QUOTE.” There’s a reason that’s there, because that’s what we want people to do. So we’ve asked them to do it.

When is it okay to have a high bounce rate?

If you run an active blog, your bounce rate is going to be higher than a non-blog website. Why? Because your content will come up for searches in various forms. Say you run a food website, and someone is searching for information on how to hard boil eggs. If one of your blog posts is about how to boil eggs, they will land on that post, read it, and then navigate away. They found what they were looking for, and they left.

We have a very active blog, and we get a lot of traffic to it. Sometimes those visitors just need the information in that one blog post, so they don’t venture on. And that’s okay.

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