Confusion surrounds the meaning of a website’s bounce rate and whether a website has a good bounce rate or not. Google defines the bounce rate of a site as a user session on a site consisting of one page being visited (Bounce Rate, 2018). It is believed that the bounce rate defined by Google and reported within Google Analytics is flawed by this simple definition and that time and interactions on a page should be considered. Paul Koks believes the best way to record and have an actionable bounce rate is to adjust the reporting by considering the time spent on the page (Koks, 2015). The idea of adjusting bounce rate with an amount of time on the page leaves us with more questions. We find ourselves trying to answer first, “what is considered a good bounce rate?” Also we ask, “how long should someone say on a page to be excluded from the bounce rate calculation?” It is impossible to answer these questions because they are relative to the website content, goals and history (Bounce Rate, 2018). High bounce rates can be considered ok for sites that intend to inform, such as news or blogs. A lower bounce rate is desirable for business because most intend for the user to navigate to a goal such as a sales conversion, which means the time on the page no longer matters when evaluating the bounce rate. The low bounce rate is still relative to the business and improved (lower) bounce rates compared to previous bounce rates is how the bounce rate should be reported.
Adjusting bounce rate with time and interactions could be considered to improve the reporting. It is possible that if the goals of the website are set to include navigating to other pages that this added to set up is a futile effort. With this said, all measurement of web metrics should be well defined within the goals and intentions of the website. Redesign of a website with better calls to action and navigation can have an impact to improve the bounce rate and to drive traffic to more than one page and even to sales conversions (Egan, 2013). Added features along with clear calls to action can improve engagement and interaction of users to lower the bounce rate on a site that already has an improved sales conversion rate (Goodwin, 2017). One case study showed that after a redesign of a niche website the result was an increase in the conversion rate of the website but a hard jump in bounce rates. Much of the content that had previously driven a lower bounce rate was no longer the landing pages that users came to. In order to fix the bounce rate, the site was tweaked to make the landing page more user-friendly. The page was improved with less text-heavy blocks, better calls to action and interactive content to increase engagement and click through (Goodwin, 2017).
Bounce rate can be an important measure of the health of a website. Goals should be defined before collecting and evaluating the bounce rate of the website. If a website goal is to inform the website may not benefit from the use and measurement of bounce rate. A business may use the bounce rate to measure the improvement of site engagement as the goals likely included navigating through multiple pages on the website. Bounce rate can be confusing, but it is because of its relative to the website goals. Comparing the current bounce rate of a website with the bounce rate history gives a clear actionable metric.
Adjusting bounce rate with time and interactions could be considered to improve the reporting. It is possible that if the goals of the website are set to include navigating to other pages that this added to set up is a futile effort. With this said, all measurement of web metrics should be well defined within the goals and intentions of the website. Redesign of a website with better calls to action and navigation can have an impact to improve the bounce rate and to drive traffic to more than one page and even to sales conversions (Egan, 2013). Added features along with clear calls to action can improve engagement and interaction of users to lower the bounce rate on a site that already has an improved sales conversion rate (Goodwin, 2017). One case study showed that after a redesign of a niche website the result was an increase in the conversion rate of the website but a hard jump in bounce rates. Much of the content that had previously driven a lower bounce rate was no longer the landing pages that users came to. In order to fix the bounce rate, the site was tweaked to make the landing page more user-friendly. The page was improved with less text-heavy blocks, better calls to action and interactive content to increase engagement and click through (Goodwin, 2017).
Bounce rate can be an important measure of the health of a website. Goals should be defined before collecting and evaluating the bounce rate of the website. If a website goal is to inform the website may not benefit from the use and measurement of bounce rate. A business may use the bounce rate to measure the improvement of site engagement as the goals likely included navigating through multiple pages on the website. Bounce rate can be confusing, but it is because of its relative to the website goals. Comparing the current bounce rate of a website with the bounce rate history gives a clear actionable metric.
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