Bounce Rate was mentioned in the last post and it deserves further clarification. It’s a simple concept, but like many simple concepts, people often don’t keep it in mind and get distracted by shinier and flashier things.
Simply put, people “bounce” when they leave your site in less than 10 seconds without viewing another page. It’s the internet version of walking into a store and as you’re still holding the door you change your mind and leave. The percentage is calculated by dividing the total inbound visitors with the number that bounced, as illustrated in the lovely diagram to the right.
Like having people leave a real-world store, bounce rate is bad for business. You don’t want customers to wheel around and walk out while they’re still standing on the welcome mat, for obvious reasons.
How Can You Fix It?
The first step is to figure out why people are leaving. Businesses all too often get stuck on a #1 search engine ranking but that’s worthless if most visitors bounce. I’d rather have 500 hits with a 20% bounce rate than 5000 hits with an 80% bounce rate. I’m getting fewer visitors in the first scenario but the low bounce rate means they’re happy with the site and are more likely to eventually convert into paying customers.
People will leave if your site doesn’t deliver what they were searching for (or if it doesn’t deliver it well). That can be for any number of reasons – an ugly design, too many ads, obnoxious pop-ups, or simply that the site’s content is no good (or all of the above).
Not only does bounce rate directly impact your incoming customers, but it can even hurt that precious Google ranking. The all-seeing eye of Search knows when people clicked that search result and it knows when they pop back in after leaving your site. If your bounce rate is very high, they might take a look at that figure and decide you don’t deserve that high ranking because people aren’t finding your site relevant or useful.
That works the other way too, of course. If they stay on the page and click around the site that means they like what they see, and everyone’s happy – Google, your customers, and you.