According to Google Analytics help, 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 aren't relevant to your visitors.
Bounce rate can be calculated from site level and individual page level.
Individual Page Level: Bounce rate is the ratio of visitors who enter the site from that page and leave without going any deeper, to the total number of visitors who enter the site through that page. Basically, it is single page visits / total entries to the site through that page.
Site Level: Bounce rate is calculated as single page visits / total site visits.
The question typically asked is what is the industry standard of bounce rate? I would say it would depends on the site, industry, the mix of media and campaign that is running, how that landing page is served, etc.
According to a suvey studies, following are the min and max of the bounce rate for certain categories.
eCommerce: Min 14.3%; Max 68.0%
Product Information: Min 3.2%; Max 50.0%
Lead Generation: Min 5.2%; Max 81.0%
News/Media: Min 25.0%; 81.4%
Branding: Min 22.0%; Max 70.1%
Other: Min 13.0%; Max 85.0%
Additionally, you should be thinking about the types of campaing running at that time of measuring the bounce rate, too. Typically, PPC campaigns have higher bounce rate than traffic from organic search. Therefore, making sure that your campaign's landing page are optimized and customized to address the bounce rate issues are important.
Bottom line, keep your bounce rates low as possible.
- Start off by making a goal to reduce worst pages below 60% and aim below 50%.
- Look at your highest converting path, are the bounce rates low for those entry pages?
- Optimize your landing pages if possible. Look into the keywords that brought traffic to the entyr pages.
Following screen shot is an example from Google Analytics, it could be a good point to start off your analysis to give you insights to landing pages and bouce rates.
Leave a comment