How to measure bounce rates - And why it matters

What are bounce rates?

            According to Google Analytics (2021), bounce rate is “single-page sessions divided by all sessions, or the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server.” In layman’s terms, it is the “percentage of visitors that leave your Website after viewing only one page” and taking no further action (Wilson, 2020). A bounce refers to a single page session on a Website. Bounce rate includes all visitors that decided not to continue browsing on a Website after landing on a homepage (i.e., not clicking on a link, not making a purchase). It is a good measurement of engagement on a Website.

How to measure bounce rates?            

            A bounce rate is a ratio that is expressed in a percentage. It is calculated by the total number of one-page visits divided by the total number of entries to a website. Figure 1 includes the calculation formula used to discover bounce rate.

Figure 1

Bounce rate calculation                          

Reprinted from Driskill, J. (2021, February 11). Bounce Rate [BR]. Retrieved from TOAG: https://theonlineadvertisingguide.com/glossary/bounce-rate/

Why measure bounce rates?

            Measuring bounce rates can allow businesses to understand user engagement on its Websites. If a sites bounce rate is high, it could indicate low user engagement. Low user engagement leads to lower conversion rates and lower sales. Bounce rate is factored into Google’s Rankbrain algorithm. “The algorithm assumes that if someone isn’t spending a lot of time on your site, it must not be relevant to them, and therefore ranks it lower when displaying to people searching with similar intent” (Mailchimp, n.d.). Measuring bounce rate to understand user engagement will allow a business to make necessary adjustments to not only decrease bounce rate but improve its rank on Google search.

            Bounce rate can also give insight on how well content is performing on a site. If there is a high bounce rate, the content may not be interesting enough or relevant for a business’s target audience. Content is key in keeping users engaged and on a Website for an extended time period. Measuring bounce rate can provide businesses with better insight into which content is performing well and which is not. For example, if a landing page is not encouraging users to interact with other aspects of the site, the landing page might need to be revamped to include better, more relevant content.

            Broken links are another reason a business should measure its Websites bounce rate. If a bounce rate is unusually high, the site may have a broken link which is inhibiting consumers to visit, land and/or engage with the site. If a business also sees that users are spending an extremely short time on the site (i.e., a few seconds) before leaving the page, it could indicate that “your page is blank, returning a 404, or otherwise not loading properly” (Wilson, 2020).

            According to Jay Peyton (n.d.), contributor for The Rocket Blog, most businesses will have bounce rates ranging from 26 percent and 70 percent. Peyton (n.d.) goes on to state that the average rule of thumb for bounce rate ranges is as follows:

• 26 percent to 40 percent is excellent,
• 41 percent to 55 percent is roughly average, 
• 56 percent to 70 percent is higher than average, but may not be cause for alarm depending on Website,
• 71 percent and above is disappointing for everything outside of blogs, news and events.

While Peyton claims that to be a rule of thumb, bounce rates do vary by industry. Figure 2 includes varying bounce rates of six different industries.

Figure 2
Bounce rate by industry

Reprinted from Little, J. (2020, May 11). High Bounce Rate? Here are the Reasons & What You Should Do. Retrieved from Crazy Egg: https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/high-bounce-rate/

How to decrease bounce rates?

            Once a business has the understanding of how to measure a bounce rate, it needs to know how to decrease it. Depending on the industry a Website operates in will depend on if a business needs to decrease its bounce rate. For those industries that need to decrease bounce rate, Little (2020) provides the following ways to do so:

• Run a Heatmap to visualize how users are engaging with the content on a Website, 
• Install a Website recording tool to understand how users navigate on a site, 
• Analyze the data and understand the results, 
• Implement A/B testing to find which variables perform better with the sites target audience,
• Repeat the process on other pages with a high bounce rate.  

Real-World Example

            Revelry, a bridesmaid dress retailer, found that it needed an update to its e-commerce website to increase speed after measuring the bounce rate of certain pages. Prior to ShopRevelry.com relaunch, its category landing page that shows all of its bride dresses averaged 12 seconds to load but could take anywhere from 30 to 50 seconds to load (Berthene, 2020). While the average page load was only seven seconds, customers were still leaving the site and complaining directly to the retailer via Instagram messages and product reviews (Berthene, 2020). The ecommerce site was relaunched in May 2020 and saw immediate improvements. The sitewide average dropped from seven seconds to about four seconds, and that category page load decreased to 3.4 seconds from 12 seconds (Berthene, 2020). The bounce rate decreased sitewide by eight percent and decreased 37 percent on the all-dress category page as of mid-September compared with before the relaunch (Berthene, 2020). Since the retailer consistently measured the bounce rate, it was able to improve the overall ecommerce site to result in better customer engagement.

Conclusion

            Bounce rates are an important metric to measure for any business with a Website. Understanding bounce rate will ultimately help business’s improve user engagement, its Google rank and it’s Website. There are many tools to help decrease bounce rate and these days, those tools tend to be very user-friendly for even the most novice of Web metrics.

 

References

Berthene, A. (2020, September 22). Revelry’s bounce rate plummets with faster site. Retrieved from Digital Commerce 360: https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2020/09/22/revelrys-bounce-rate-plummets-with-faster-site/

Driskill, J. (2021, February 11). Bounce Rate [BR]. Retrieved from TOAG: https://theonlineadvertisingguide.com/glossary/bounce-rate/

Google. (2021). Bounce Rate. Retrieved from Google Support: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009409?hl=en

Little, J. (2020, May 11). High Bounce Rate? Here are the Reasons & What You Should Do. Retrieved from Crazy Egg: https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/high-bounce-rate/

Mailchimp. (n.d.). Bounce Rate. Retrieved from Mailchimp: https://mailchimp.com/marketing-glossary/bounce-rate/

Peyton, J. (n.d.). Good, Bad, Ugly, and Average Bounce Rates. Retrieved from Rocket Fuel: https://www.gorocketfuel.com/the-rocket-blog/whats-the-average-bounce-rate-in-google-analytics/

Wilson, A. (2020, November 14). 13 Reasons Your Website Can Have a High Bounce Rate. Retrieved from Search Engine Journal: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/website-bounce-rate/332439/#close