Analytics drive business decisions every day, and the same should be true for your website. Key website metrics like unique visitors and organic search performance are frequently cited data points. But something called “bounce rate,” can tell an important tale of your site’s overall performance, as well.
For the unfamiliar, bounce rate is simply the percentage of visitors who hit any page on your website and leave without moving to another page on your site. This is an important metric, because it can help inform a search engine (i.e., Google) whether or not any given page of your website is of high enough quality to be displayed in their search results. This is because a high bounce rate may indicate that visitors to your site are not finding information they want, or are they are finding your site too difficult or uninteresting to use. Consistently high bounce rates is one of many factors that can ultimately result in poor search results for your site. On the other hand, a low bounce rate can indicate that your landing page was relevant, and the visitor is engaged in whatever conversion you may have set-up on your website (to continue reading, fill out a form, contact your company, add an item to their cart, etc.).
While it’s true that lower bounce rates are always better, there are instances where a high bounce rate might be still be expected and considered “normal,” like a contact us page that directs visitors to call your place of business. You would expect on this page that the bounce rate would be high, as visitors are likely looking for the businesses phone number in the first place, and then effectively closing the window after they’ve placed a call. So, the bounce rate in this scenario would be high, but the outcome is still good.
What may come as a surprise is that what is considered an “acceptable” bounce rate can vary widely by industry and type of website. Depending on your specific industry and target audience, an average bounce rate can range from 10-98%! Regardless of what your particular industry’s bounce rate average might be, you’ll likely have more success comparing the data with your own historic website data. This will give a much truer picture of how you are performing than looking at an industry average. That being said, here are a few benchmark averages for bounce rate, courtesy of QuickSprout.com:
- Self Service or FAQ websites typically offer the lowest bounce rates. The average for these is 10-30%.
- Retail or e-commerce websites come in just behind the service sites at a 20-40% bounce rate average.
- Lead generation websites, or those that sell services, generally see a 30-50% bounce rate.
- Content focused websites see a range of 40-60%.
- Landing pages generally see 70-90% bounce rates.
- Offering the highest average bounce rates are blogs, which are in the 70-98% range.
The good news is that no matter what your bounce rate may be, there are a multitude of ways you can improve upon it. Some of the best ways you can improve your bounce rate are:
- Simplify the layout and get rid of the clutter. This will also speed up the page load time, where even one second can make the difference between a sale or conversion and the user navigating to a competitor’s website.
- Use larger text and fonts that are easy to read on the mobile and tablet devices, and make sure you are catering to these users with a responsive website or a mobile dedicated website!
- Perform SEO related tasks that fully optimize your website for the search engines. Quality, useful content will help serve up more relevant results to the user and improve your bounce rate.
Some changes will be easier to perform than others, but we’re here to help! Simply contact us through the link above or the phone number at the bottom of the page.