The Bounce Rate Myth (?)
Bounce rate is a kind of standard bearer metric for measurement in web analytics, it’s up there with conversion. Even novices in web analytics know what bounce rate is, and when asked what should be the objective regarding bounce rate you’d have to be a lunatic to say anything other than “try to reduce it”. But increasingly, I think there are some misconceptions about this metric. Remembering that bounce rate applies to both entry pages and referring sources of traffic, two thoughts that come to mind are as follows:
- When thinking about bounce rate in the context of entry pages it is hardly surprising that it’s lower on the home page than on a product page. I’ve seen very few sets of data in which the situation is reversed. I think this is because the home page offers a bigger target, i.e. there are more options for a visitor when they arrive on the home page than if they arrive on a highly specific product page. Trying to reduce the bounce rate on a product page is worthy and will yield results for sure but don’t expect to get it down to home page levels.
- Lower bounce rate = more actual conversions. I’m not disagreeing with this but increasingly as I look at weekly and monthly trended data for various clients I see examples where BOTH bounce rate and conversion actually go UP against a particular referral source. This in turn quite often results in higher yield volumes as well.
This isn’t to say that it’s OK to let the bounce rate metric rocket up, retaining more visitors at the same conversion rate WILL of course produce greater conversion yield volumes. It’s simply to say that it’s not necessarily worth freaking out the minute a bounce rate shows signs of edging upwards. I would always look at the surrounding metrics to build a bit of additional context before deciding on a course of action.
The old adage ”quality not quantity” comes to mind here. A higher bounce rate might mean lower visitor retention but if more of those visitors are converting and the overall conversion yield is going up then that might prompt another old adage “if it isn’t broke….”
Tags: Analytics, Bounce rate, Conversion
October 26th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Hi Hugh,
We tend to think of bounce rate in negative terms only. I actually believe that a very low bounce rate isn’t necessarily a good thing especially on the homepage.
Some of my clients have bounce rates below 10% on their homepage. I’m always suspicious when I see that. This phenomenon seems very common amongst companies that drive a large proportion of their marketing traffic to their homepage.
In these cases the homepage (and consequently overall site) bounce rate is pretty low. You might fall into the illusion that you are engaging visitors well. However, in my opinion, the low bounce rate is due to visitors clicking through to find the category/product pages they really should have landed on in the first place. Note: these companies do not have higher conversion rates to those landing visitors on more relevant pages. Those with unique landing pages have the highest conversion rate.
Consequently, I encourage clients to develop a landing page strategy and discourage them from simply landing visitors on the homepage. Essentially I’m telling them “your bounce rate is too low”!
Cheers,
Michael
October 27th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Good point and reinforces the point that there is no such thing as the average visitor.
Knowing things such as where they came from, whether they are repeat visitors and even whether they have even purchased before allows you to put the bounce rate into far greater context.
For example, the new custom variables in Google Analytics should allow you to store relevant information to your organisation within Google Analytics
November 9th, 2009 at 7:28 am
Absolutely Michael. I have today come across another client who’s y.o.y bounce rate is up and yet despite that, the proportional y.o.y increase by which sales and revenue has grown is infact double the proportional increase in BR.