All For You

If you run a website, I would hope by now you know what Google Analytics is. If you don’t have it installed by now on your pages, you really should. It may not be 100% accurate with telling you how much traffic you have, but it is the most accurate free, remotely hosted counter I’ve seen. But that’s not really why you should use it. It is the extras that come with it, that can really help you out and that’s what this article is all about - well one specific feature and that is the Bounce Rate. A bounce rate is ….

1. Close the open window or tab or simply type in a new URL
2. Click Back Button, which would take them away from the website
3. Time-out, where no other action is taken after set time period (usually 30 minutes)

Why does a high bounce rate really matter?

Well it’s hard enough getting traffic to your website in the first place so if the traffic you do gets leaves as soon as they get to you, then you are doing something wrong. Ideally you want to have such a high quality site that the people you attract want to visit all the pages you designed and love them so much they don’t mind spending money with your advertisers!

I read somewhere that the average bounce rate is around 50%. Anything at 50% or higher means people just aren’t sticking around at your site. This typically means you need to work on improving the quality of your website. Anything below 30% means you have an extremely high quality website and are attracting the type of traffic for the content you have. This is great. 25% EVEN better but almost unheard of and should be a goal you work towards.

There are a few reasons why having a good Google bounce rate matters. First and foremost is pride in what you do! You should be proud of the work you do and work to improve it. Don’t you want to run a high quality website?

Next is because the quality of your website can greatly determine your profits. A higher quality website is obviously more likely to attract repeat customers as well as customers interested in paying for something you are offering. Quality websites always convert to higher profit margins.

And last but not least is because your bounce rates may also play a part in your rankings on keywords for search engines like Google. There is now some evidence to show that on highly competitive keywords, sites with a lower bounce rate get a higher ranking. So improving the quality of your website can help you get even more traffic.

So with knowing that, now comes the time to work on improving your bounce rate. Look closely at your site and try and imagine why someone coming to your website wouldn’t stay. Does your page take to long to load? Do you have more banners than content? Is your site confusing in the navigation department? Do you have custom 404 error pages? These are all things you should look at and consider when trying to improve your bounce rating.

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