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Is Bounce Rate Really that Important?

Writer's picture: John ParsonsJohn Parsons

YGTMedia Blog - Bounce Rate

Many companies, as well as individuals with online businesses, don’t understand bounce rate, so don’t have any benchmark to measure its importance. Basically, a bounce occurs when someone visits your website, views a single page and then leaves, no purchase is made and they make no attempt to contact you – the reason for this is generally that the content on your website doesn’t match what the visitor was looking for so they click off and look for an alternative and that alternative may well be your business rivals.


A high bounce rate is a tell-tale sign that your website might need an overhaul. The content you are producing is not meeting the browsers’ wants and needs. If you take a look at your site analytics you will be able to calculate the bounce rate as a percentage, so if its 75%, then 75% of the people who make their way to your website leave after only viewing the page they entered on. If this is the case then you need to find a hook to interest them, keep them on your site and viewing more pages, hopefully leading to a sale or an expression of interest in your product or service; so how can we do this?


Improve Content Quality:

Speak to your audience while providing them with the information they need to become happy and loyal customers. First, you know what you want to say to your audience, but does your audience fully understand your intentions? Why have they chosen your website over your competitor and what do they want to find out from you to give them a level of comfort that they have made the right choice? Once you have the answers to these questions you can then develop engaging content that speaks to your visitors and their unique objectives.


Your content should effectively answer the visitors’ questions, allowing them to take the path through your site that eventually leads to a conversion. If your site is populated with irrelevant content, spelling or grammar errors and is not easy to read, then your visitors will bounce, and your conversions will suffer. Instead, be empathetic with your content and speak to your audience while providing them with the information they need to become happy and loyal customers.


Create a Pleasant User Experience:

The choice of whether or not a visitor stays after landing on your site is made in seconds. If the colours aren’t easy on the eye or the navigation isn’t easy to manage then the browser will simply hit the back button with no plans to return. When it comes to user experience (or UX), it’s important to have a simple but effective layout and design, a menu that is quick and easy to navigate, and content that entices visitors to convert.


Reduce Technical Errors:

If your bounce rates are uncommonly high, it could be that visitors are hitting a technical error that you aren’t aware of, perhaps a plugin has failed which is leading to a form not loading.


Speed Issues:

A web page should (in theory) load instantly. Anything longer than a few seconds is far too long for any internet user, so if you can shave a single second off your loading time, the improvement to your site could deliver more traffic and conversions. In fact, a faster loading site may be just the thing you need to reduce the bounce rate site-wide!


So, if you notice that your websites bounce rate is high, go through the page like as if you were a visitor, look at it with a fresh pair of eyes and try to navigate your way through. Make notes of anything you find and then sit down with your tech team to correct any areas that need a reworking. If you don’t have a web design team in place we’d be happy to help.



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