Today I’m talking bounce rate. No, this isn’t something to do with jumping (although my guess is Tigger has a high bounce rate since that’s what tiggers do best). According to Google, bounce rate is the percentage of all single-page sessions where a user opens a page on your site, does nothing and leaves (in other words, they came, they did a quick look around, and they left) (Bounce Rate, n.d.). You can track bounce rates in Google Analytics in several places, including the Audience Overview report, the Channels report, the All Traffic report, the All Pages report.
Depending on the kind of website you have, this could be good or bad. For instance, if you have a website where it’s imperative that a user goes to more than one page (a shopping website where they look at an item and click “add to cart” and then go to the cart for the purchase), then having a high bounce rate is bad (Lahey, 2020). But let’s say you have a DIY website where you wrote a blog about how to fix a leaky faucet- most people are probably ending up there because they need to fix a leaky faucet and once they have the information they need, probably aren’t going to explore much beyond the blog post they came for.
High bounce rate means you have lots of users leaving before they look at anything else- they’re visit is super short (Lahey, 2020). A low bounce rate means people are clicking things and visiting other pages on your site. Remember, bounce rates are percentages, so a bounce rate of 80% means that 80% of your visitors are leaving after landing on one page. Remember too that this is different than your exit percentage- exit refers to the percentage of people that left your site on a certain page, regardless of if that was the page they came to your site on or how many page sessions were recorded.
So what causes high bounce rate? Probably your 2007 website with all those flashing banner ads (lol), although a poorly designed website could be part of the problem- users just don’t like what they see. Maybe it’s badly written content, or something is broken like a bad link. Other issues could include slow load times, a poor mobile experience, or maybe you made your page titles or headlines are too clickbaity (Bounce rates on news sites, 2016).
Most of my experience in running analytics has been for news websites. For six years, I monitored two newspaper websites, and both websites averaged bounce rates around 90%. My current newspaper, the Daily Athenaeum, averages around 80%.
Depending on the kind of website you have, this could be good or bad. For instance, if you have a website where it’s imperative that a user goes to more than one page (a shopping website where they look at an item and click “add to cart” and then go to the cart for the purchase), then having a high bounce rate is bad (Lahey, 2020). But let’s say you have a DIY website where you wrote a blog about how to fix a leaky faucet- most people are probably ending up there because they need to fix a leaky faucet and once they have the information they need, probably aren’t going to explore much beyond the blog post they came for.
High bounce rate means you have lots of users leaving before they look at anything else- they’re visit is super short (Lahey, 2020). A low bounce rate means people are clicking things and visiting other pages on your site. Remember, bounce rates are percentages, so a bounce rate of 80% means that 80% of your visitors are leaving after landing on one page. Remember too that this is different than your exit percentage- exit refers to the percentage of people that left your site on a certain page, regardless of if that was the page they came to your site on or how many page sessions were recorded.
So what causes high bounce rate? Probably your 2007 website with all those flashing banner ads (lol), although a poorly designed website could be part of the problem- users just don’t like what they see. Maybe it’s badly written content, or something is broken like a bad link. Other issues could include slow load times, a poor mobile experience, or maybe you made your page titles or headlines are too clickbaity (Bounce rates on news sites, 2016).
Most of my experience in running analytics has been for news websites. For six years, I monitored two newspaper websites, and both websites averaged bounce rates around 90%. My current newspaper, the Daily Athenaeum, averages around 80%.
Having high bounce rates like that on a news website is a mixed bag. A news site is usually designed to give the user what they want on their first pageview, so a high bounce rate reflects that action (Bounce rates on news sites, 2016). While this might be okay if you are measuring editorial content, it’s not okay for the big picture. Most news websites rely on banner advertising to generate revenue, as well as getting users to subscribe. If a user only visits one page, your ad impressions will be low, meaning you won’t generate as much money. Likewise, you can’t become a subscriber if you don’t click to a subscription page or form. Plus, only coming for one page and leaving means your users are missing out on all the other great content your site has.
To combat this, I work hard on recirculation. This is the idea that you place content on a page that entices engagement by the user. For instance, adding a trending articles box might get a user to click another article. A pop-up asking the user to subscribe to a newsletter will generate more engagement. I also add things like a related stories list at the bottom of each article, and I try to link articles within a story if it’s a follow-up to another story (for instance, am article about a murder trial might have the link to original murder story embedded in the trial story. When people click these links, it keeps them on your site longer, decreasing your bounce rate and increasing pageviews, ad impressions, engagement- plus the user will find more value in your product, which might lead to a paid subscription.
For example, at the Daily Athenaeum, bounce rates were averaging around 92%. Users were funneling in from social media (Facebook contributed to over 50% of all website traffic) or organic search, but once they read the article they came for, they left. I addressed this problem in two ways- optimizing the article page layout and training my content creators. For optimizing the website, I improved the menu so that sections of the paper were more noticeable and easy to navigate and added a “mega nav,” which showed articles in that section when you hovered over them. At the bottom of the article, I added a Related Articles list, which showed popular articles from the same section. In the side rail, I added a Trending Articles box, with headlines that were most read on the site within the past 24 hours. I also better targeted the ads so relevant ads showed for each user, improving the user experience, and added pop-ups for things like a newsletter subscription or breaking news. With my content creators, I taught them to create content that was similar to other historically high-traffic content, and I made sure they were adding in links to related content like a background article that was written in the past. We also worked on creating additional content like video and photo galleries that got users to click to another page. Keywords were also added to tag articles with a list of linked keywords that took you to section fronts generated by other articles tagged with the same keywords. All these things improved our website, increased engagement and time spent on page, and most importantly increased our circulation and decreased our bounce rate. For the semester we really pushed these tactics, our bounce rate went from 92% to 74%- still high, but a conservable drop none the less.
Where bounce rates are super important is in e-commerce. You want your user to work their way through the conversion funnel, meaning they have to go to more than one page to generate a sale or other desired action. If your user is only visiting one page, than they aren’t working through your funnel. As stated before, there are lots of reasons this can happen, so monitoring bounce rate is super important if you are tracking your users for engagement and conversions.
Okay- time to bounce.
-Nick
References
Bounce Rate. (n.d.) Google Analytics Help. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009409?hl=en
Bounce rates on news sites (2016, June 21. Everwas. Retrieved from https://everwas.com/2016/06/bounce-rates-on-news-sites/
Lahey, C. (2020, December 15). What is bounce rate and what is a good rate? Semrush Blog. Retrieved from https://www.semrush.com/blog/bounce-rate/?kw=&cmp=US_SRCH_DSA_Blog_Core_BU_EN&label=dsa_pagefeed&Network=g&Device=c&utm_content=485542679514&kwid=aud-298874018863:dsa-1053501811867&cmpid=11769537497&agpid=117335012791&BU=Core&extid=167368307910&adpos=&gclid=CjwKCAjwr_uCBhAFEiwAX8YJgVmWsZ-C_3zDWkCoP9taDqDjLXMrWpgR3s4FZCGcVRdrosw2TRA_LhoCOhkQAvD_BwE
Hey Nick,
ReplyDeleteWebsites have about 8 seconds to catch and hold visitors' attention, so websites need to make those 8 seconds count (Bowshier, 2020). Too many things going on can leave a visitor confused and not want to stay on the page. You make a great point about bounce rate depending on the context of the page. A high bounce rate on a blog post or an article can be good, but a high bounce rate on a product or a landing page can be bad. Google Analytics states, "If the success of your site depends on viewers viewing more than one page, then yes, a high bounce rate is bad" (Google Analytics, n.d.). Diving deeper into the cause of a high bounce rate helps determine if improvements to the website page need to be made. As always, context is key.
Bowshier, L. (2020 January 4). You have 7 seconds: Grab website visitor's attention in moments. Tribute Media. https://www.tributemedia.com/blog/you-have-7-seconds-what-a-visitor-should-know-about-your-website-within-moments
Google Analytics. (n.d.). Bounce rate. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009409?hl=en
Bounce is truer today, especially with mobile. I often am looking for specific information on a repair or hours of operation or a specific news story. I will get what I came for and bounce. That is one of the problems with mobile...well that and boredom:)
ReplyDeleteGood point about getting your information and bouncing- mobile audiences seem more transient as their attention span gets shorter and they become more resourceful in finding the information they want quickly. It makes you think that bounce rate might be less important as time goes on.
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