Is a high Bounce Rate always such a bad thing?
It is so important that in Google’s recent upgrade of its analytics tool, the overall profile was considerably raised throughout the user interface. Given the huge uptake of GA this is only likely to bolster its overall profile as a benchmark metric.
Google’s own notes on the Bounce Rate read as follows:
“Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce Rate is a measure of visit quality and a high Bounce Rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages are not relevant to your visitors. You can minimise Bounce Rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy”
If the resultant action from an observed high Bounce Rate is to make changes to an entry page then it is probably worth setting some additional context.
Without wanting to reduce the status of Bounce Rate in the performance analysis of any site it is worth asking the question of whether a high Bounce Rate is always such a bad thing. It is precisely because of the growing popularity of the metric that it is worth considering its status.
Below are six points which add a bit of context to the Bounce Rate metric:
1. Networked sites with separate analytics accounts (same tool)
Larger organisations may run a suite of sites or micro-sites which complement each other but are not fully integrated. As a result each site may have its own analytics account. There may also be a roll up account sitting across all sites. In circumstance like this a visitor arriving on one micro-site from PPC search may then move straight onto another if there is relevance and an available link. This may be an entirely desirable outcome but the Bounce Rate report in the analytics account for the original site will show the visit as a single page visit and therefore contribute to a higher Bounce Rate. In this case it is worth looking at the same page in the roll up account to get a better idea of the overall Bounce Rate.
2a.Variations: Home Page, List page, product page
As with many reporting metrics in web analytics, averages can sometime be misleading. The same goes for Bounce Rate. The Bounce Rate will vary considerably between different types of page. Generally it is likely to be lower on the home page and increase the deeper into the site the entry page is. So a category page will have a higher Bounce Rate and a product page Bounce Rate will most likely be higher still. As the pages become more focused and less generalised there is less to encourage a visitor entering to look around. If they don’t see what they want immediately it is easier to go back than forward.
2b.Weight of entry visits
The previous point has greater relevance when linked with the weighting of entry visits. In an extreme example, if 90% of visits enter on a home page which has a Bounce Rate of 10% and the other 10% of visits enter on product pages which have a Bounce Rate of 90% there is clearly little point in diverting resource to address the Bounce Rate issue on the product pages. The overall site Bounce Rate will be low anyway and until the landing strategy changes to make more use of product pages, or better still landing pages, there is little point in diverting resource.
3. News & media sites
Bounce Rate may be viewed very differently when looking at news and other media sites. Peaks in traffic on these sites often occur on week days at around 9am and again at around lunchtime. Visitors may often come in, take a quick look at the home page headlines and leave again. This would be enough to get a quick fix until there is time to read more. As lifestyles become busier and more time pressured this kind of activity is less surprising. On the web this would results in a high Bounce Rate. The solution might not be to encourage the visitor to delve deeper (thereby lowering the Bounce Rate) but in fact to make sure visitors can get exactly what they want on that fleeting visit thereby ensuring they continue to return for their fix. Bounce Rate has reduced status here.
4. Brochureware sites / offline calls to action (web-centric telephone numbers)
Some sites may not have a business goal that can be easily measured online. The desired action may require a telephone call. In this case it is possible that a landing page could supply all the required information for a visitor to take the decision to act and pick up the phone – hopefully to dial a telephone number that is unique to the website or landing page. High Bounce Rate + desired outcome.
5. Traffic source: Banners Vs PPC entering on a landing page
Just as different entry points have different Bounce Rates the same entry point may have different Bounce Rates depending on the sources of referral traffic. One landing page may be acting as a receptor for an advertising campaign which uses both online display (banners etc) as well as pay per click search (PPC) advertising. It is quite possible that banners may direct the greater volume of traffic and have a lower Bounce Rate whilst PPC may drive a lower volume with a higher Bounce Rate yet despite this the overall volume of good outcomes may still be low. In this instance it would be worth looking at overall volume of good outcomes for both referral sources and see which has the better conversion rate – sometimes the effect of a higher Bounce Rate can actually act as a quality filter to weed out the wheat from the chaff.
