What Are Bounce Rates and What Do They Mean?

Correctly interpreting bounce rates and what they mean can drastically change how your business works. Bounce rates give you an indication of the success of your website or individual web pages. Here at Bamboo Nine, we often analyse our bounce rate data to measure the effectiveness of our web pages and web copy. Read on to find out more about bounce rates and what they mean for your business.

What is a Bounce Rate?

A bounce rate is a Digital Marketing term that refers to the percentage of people who enter a site and then leave (or ‘bounce’) rather than spending time viewing other pages and content within the site. Bounce rates help businesses measure the visit quality of their website. Once you come to understand the relevance of bounce rates, you will be able to measure the effectiveness of your website and make appropriate improvements that encourage visitors to continue with their visit.

How to Analyse Bounce Rates

For your business to grow, it is important you understand and effectively analyse bounce rates. One very good comparison for bounce rates is to analyse the average time spent on the page itself. If the ‘Time on Page’ metrics is less than 30 seconds, you should consider changing the content and keywords on that page to bring more value to readers and increase traffic. As I discussed in my article Why Do We Write Content? high-quality content helps convince readers that the content on the rest of the site is of equal value. This encourages them to click through and read more articles, encouraging website crawlability. By encouraging visitors to your website to click through to other pages, you will be simultaneously lowering the bounce rate.

What is a Good Bounce Rate?

So, what is it that makes a good bounce rate exactly? Well, it depends. Generally, when a visitor has a positive experience, they tend to spend longer on your website and, as a result, the bounce rate is lowered. If the bounce rate on your website is high, it shows that the content and structure of your website is not engaging enough to hold the attention of visitors. For example, if the goal of your website is to encourage visitors to enter the sales funnel, one of your primary goals is to lead your readers all the way through the sales process. However, if the visitor reads the landing page and immediately leaves, it creates a high bounce rate and indicates that your website is not fulfilling its purposes. In this instance, it is good to take a step back and analyse what could be going wrong so that you can fix the problem.

So, What Does Bounce Rate Mean to Me?

You may find this all very interesting, or you may wonder what any of this has to do with you and your business. Well, I would suggest that bounce rates give you a good indication of how well your website is performing and they help you understand the elements and pages of your website that need improving. Once you understand bounce rates and their importance, you can start developing a clear strategy that will grow your business.

How to Improve Your Bounce Rate

So, how do you improve your bounce rate? Below, I have made a list of the top things you can do to improve your bounce rate and gain more visitors to your website, who stay for longer and (potentially) purchase your services at the end of their visit.

Add Links: If you want to improve your bounce rate, add more links on your website and in your content. Links encourage website crawlability by allowing people to click through from article to article. Links are extremely important for increasing the usability of your website.

Improve Your Content: Here at Bamboo Nine, we know the importance of well-written, informative and interesting content, which is why we are constantly seeking to improve ours! The quality of your content can have a big effect on your bounce rate. If there is an issue with your content, if facts are incorrect or it is grammatically inaccurate it can mean visitors leave unimpressed with the standard of quality. To avoid this, always check through your work strictly, keep it relevant, up-to-date and easy to read. Content is incredibly important for websites and help businesses grow and succeed.

Call to Action: Having a compelling call to action on your website will encourage visitors to click through and purchase your services. It will also encourage people to stay on your website for longer. Attracting visitors to your website is only half the job, you want them to click through and purchase your services but you can’t do that with a weak call to action. The aim of your website should be to encourage visitors to buy, or at least think about it.

Final Words

Here at Bamboo Nine, we know the importance of bounce rates. We have experienced the elation of a low bounce rate and that crumbling sensation you get when your bounce rate is high. Ultimately, however, we take it all as an opportunity to develop in our understanding of bounce rates and how they can assist in improving the way we do business.

If you take your bounce rate for how it is, heed to the advice of others and make your goal to constantly learn and improve, your website will only get better. So, go and check out your bounce rates, analyse the results and set to improving them! If you would like more information, or you have any questions, give us a call today!