Closely monitoring this indicator is essential to understand your page’s performance and boost your results. After all, it also helps you understand what should be optimized to improve audience responses.

In this article, you’ll find out what bounce rate is and how important this metric is for your website. Continue reading and understand!

WHAT IS BOUNCE RATE?

Bounce rate, also known as bounce rate, is a metric that indicates the percentage of users who access a website and then abandon it. Thus, they do not interact, do not click on a link and are not interested in any other page of the company.

This rejection can happen in several ways, for example, when visitors:

  • closed the page or browser tab;
  • clicked on the “Back” button;
  • if they were interested in a link from another page, within their own website;
  • typed a new website into the address bar;
  • were inactive for some time.

Google Analytics provides a general report with the site’s bounce rate. It is also possible to view metrics for a specific page or section of your website. In this tool, the calculation is done by dividing single page sessions by all sessions.

Thus, the bounce rate is provided as a percentage of all website sessions in which Internet users viewed only one page and sent only one command to the Google Analytics server.

It is worth mentioning that there is another concept that can be confused with the bounce rate. This is the exit rate, which indicates how many users left a given page, regardless of whether or not it was the first session visited on the site.

In this way, the bounce rate is related to the entry session, while the exit rate is related to the page where the visitor leaves the site.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO CAREFULLY EVALUATE BOUNCE RATE?

Companies build their sites and pages with specific objectives, such as enabling the download of material, passing on information or allowing the user to request a quote. Typically, to achieve this goal, the user must perform at least one click.

Therefore, when the bounce rate is high, it means that the website failed to direct the visitor to the main objective. Therefore, by monitoring this metric, the company has access to important information about the efficiency of calls to action, for example.

Thus, it is possible to think of optimizations and improvement plans to reduce rejection and, possibly, increase conversion. In the case of traffic coming from advertising services, it is even more important to evaluate the bounce rate.

That’s because a high percentage means higher spending per campaign click and increased cost per lead. Also, some services consider the bounce rate when calculating the ad quality score, in the case of paid strategies.

HOW MUCH IS A GOOD BOUNCE RATE?

After understanding what bounce rate is and how important it is, you might be wondering what a good percentage would be for the metric. In practice, several variables determine an appropriate bounce rate.

Factors such as type of business, country and age influence what a good average would be for your site. Also, it’s worth knowing that a high bounce rate isn’t always a bad thing. A high percentage can be considered normal if you have a single page website.

However, if your site’s success depends on users viewing more than one page , a high average could be detrimental to your strategy. To understand better, imagine that your homepage is the gateway to other sections of the site, such as product pages.

In this case, if a high percentage of Internet users only view the initial layout, a high bounce rate will be undesirable.

HOW TO REDUCE THIS BOUNCE RATE?

As you’ve seen, the bounce rate can be calculated by Google Analytics. The tool allows you to create different types of segments to better analyze your metrics. You can even create custom variables.

Among the segmentations that can be created to facilitate the analysis are:

  • age range;
  • gender;
  • affinity;
  • location;
  • new visitors;
  • device;
  • browser.

Each segment provides a very useful drill-down report. In the case of the browser, for example, you can analyze whether there is a technical problem that causes your visitors to leave. It is also essential to assess whether the site is mobile responsive.

HOW TO REDUCE BOUNCE RATE?

If you identify that your website bounce rate is high, you need to do a more detailed investigation to see if this result is uniform or if it is caused by a specific page.

If the problem is caused by a specific page, it is worth analyzing whether its content is aligned with the marketing used to attract visitors. It’s also interesting to see if the page has clear instructions for the next steps you expect users to take.

If the high bounce rate is related to a specific channel, evaluate the marketing strategies used. If visitors coming from the Display Network — where ads appear — experience high bounce rates, make sure your campaigns are relevant to your site’s content .

In a blog, it is worth analyzing whether the contents are really relevant. It is essential to work with materials that arouse the interest of the public, are relevant and deliver what they promise. By having a quality blog that generates authority for the brand, for example, there are chances of reducing this rate.

On the other hand, if the issue is broader, re-evaluate the overall design of your website. This involves analyzing the graphic elements, the color, the calls to action and the layout of important elements on the page.

Now you know that measuring and improving your site’s bounce rate means having a more engaged audience, which tends to result in more conversions. Therefore, it is worth deepening your analysis to understand what this metric actually means for your business.