ZoomMetrix.com
High bounce rate is an indication that your site is not providing the value visitors were expected, resulting in single access to a page and leaving the site. Web analyst would always say to lower the bounce rate, and some would say to aim less than 50%.
I’ve always noticed that blog contents tend to have a higher bounce rate than contents that tends to be static (typical non-blog like pages or sections). In my wife’s blog/site, I noticed that bounce rate was much higher than her static contents.
Insights
I’ve segmented the blog section and the static section (main section describing about her site, profile, etc.) by new visitors and returning visitors.
I came to notice that types of visitors were pretty much equally split (50-50) in terms of new and returning visitors for both sections. Looking at the bounce rate broken down by new and returning visitors across those two sections.
- The bounce rate for the new visitors in blog section was 120% higher than the returning visitors in the blog section.
- The bounce rate for the new visitors in the static section was 40% higher than the returning visitors in the static section.
The bounce rate for new visitors would most likely be higher than the returning visitors.
The learning is that the new visitors for blog section/site, the bounce rate tends to be higher.
Possible Reasons
1) Users reading the blog tends to read and leave and probably come back to read again on other time. Good metrics to use to analyze this are the recency and loyalty metrics.
2) Visitor sources for these two section may vary and stickiness for the source to content sections trending differently.
3) Expectation of visitors when entering the blog section and static section may vary. Possibly due to typical difference in designs, navigations, ads, etc.
I hope this would help you in finding the next step in the analysis of the bounces. Don’t give in lowering that bounces!
