What is Bounce Rate in Google Analytics? When does a visitor bounce? Is it just a visitor hitting the back button, or is there more to it? What can you tell by looking at a webpage’s bounce rate? In this piece, we’ll explain what it is, what it implies, and how to optimize your bounce rate.
What is bounce rate?
Bounce rate is a metric that calculates the percentage of visitors who arrive at your website but do nothing on the page they entered. As a result, they do not click on any of the page’s internal links, including menu items and’read more’ buttons.
This indicates that the Google Analytics server does not receive a trigger from the visitor. A user bounces when there is no engagement with the landing page and the visit is limited to a single page. Bounce rate is a measure that can indicate the quality of a webpage or audience. The quality of your audience refers to how well they align with your site’s objective.
How does Google Analytics calculate bounce rate?
According to Google, bounce rate is measured as follows:
The bounce rate is the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only one page and made a single request to the Analytics server.
In other words, it collects all sessions in which a visitor only visited one page and divides them by the total number of sessions.
A high bounce rate can indicate three things:
1. Page quality is low. There is nothing inviting to interact with.
2. If your audience does not align with the page’s aim, they are unlikely to interact.
3. Visitors found the information they were seeking.
Bounce rate and SEO
In this piece, I’ll discuss bounce rate in Google Analytics. There has been a lot of controversy about whether bounce rate is an SEO ranking element. We can’t imagine Google using Google Analytics data as a ranking component since if Google Analytics isn’t properly deployed, the data is unreliable. Furthermore, you may easily control the bounce rate.
Several Googlers confirm that Google does not use Google Analytics data in its search algorithm. To improve your rating, ensure that visitors from search engines do not return to the search results after seeing your website.However, the measurement may differ from Google Analytics’ bounce rate.
To achieve holistic SEO, optimize all aspects of your site. Analyzing your bounce rate can help improve your website’s SEO.
How to interpret bounce rates?
The objective of the page determines whether having a high bounce rate is beneficial or not. If the page’s sole objective is to inform, a high bounce rate is not necessarily undesirable. You want visitors to read your website’s articles and subscribe to your newsletter. When people visit a page for a specific purpose, such as reading a message or finding an address, it’s understandable that they dismiss the tab once they’re done. Even in this scenario, no trigger is transmitted to the Google Analytics server, hence the result is a bounce.
Create a segment for ‘New Visitors’ on your blog. If the bounce rate among new visitors is significant, consider how you may increase their engagement with your site. Because you want new visitors to interact with your website.
A high bounce rate might be detrimental to a page’s objective of encouraging active engagement with the site. Assume you have a page with a single goal: encourage visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. If the page has a high bounce rate, you may need to improve the page itself. To reduce bounce rate, consider adding a clear call-to-action, such as a ‘Subscribe to our newsletter’ button.
However, there could be other reasons for a high bounce rate on a newsletter subscription page. If you’ve brought people in under false pretenses, don’t be surprised if they don’t engage with your page. Visitors to your subscription page may have had different expectations. A low bounce rate on a subscription page may indicate that visitors are very motivated to get the newsletter, rather than the page’s quality.
Bounce rate and conversion
If you look at bounce rate from a conversion standpoint, it can be utilized to determine success. If you change the appearance of a page to improve conversion rates, monitor the bounce rate to ensure success. If you’re experiencing an increase in bounces, it’s possible that the design update you made was not effective, leading to a low conversion rate.
You might also look at the bounce rates of your most popular pages. Which pages have the lowest and highest bounce rates? Compare the two and learn from the pages with low bounce rates.
Another approach to look at your bounce rate is by traffic source. Which traffic sources cause a higher or lower bounce rate? Your newsletter, for example? Or a high-traffic referral website? Can you figure out what is causing this bounce rate? If you’re running an AdWords campaign, you should also monitor the bounce rate for that visitor source.
Be careful with drawing conclusions though…
We’ve observed many clients with a very low bounce rate. In that instance, all alarms should go off, especially if you do not anticipate low bounce rates. Because that most likely indicates that Google Analytics is not properly deployed.
There are various factors that influence bounce rate because they transmit a trigger to the Google Analytics server, which incorrectly perceives it as an engagement. Typically, an abnormally low bounce rate is produced by an event that alerts the Google Analytics server. Consider pop-ups, video auto-play, or an event you’ve set up to fire after 1 second.
Of course, if you’ve set up an event to track scrolling counts, a low bounce rate is ideal. It demonstrates that users are scrolling down the page and reading your information.
How to lower high bounce rates?
The only approach to reduce your bounce rate is to increase the engagement on your website. In my opinion, there are two ways to look at bounce rates. From both a traffic and page perspective.
If your page meets your visitors’ expectations but still has a high bounce rate, you need to look at the page. How usable is the page? Is there a call-to-action above the fold on this page? Do you have any internal links that go to relevant pages or posts? Do you have an easy-to-use menu? Is the page inviting visitors to explore more on your website? These are all factors to consider while optimizing your page.
What about exit rate?
The bounce rate is often confused for the exit rate. The exit rate refers to the percentage of the last page visits in a session. It indicates that people have decided to end their session on your website at that specific page.Google’s help page provides clear examples of exit and bounce rates. This is right from their webpage:
Monday: Page B > Page A > Page C > Exit
Tuesday: Page B > Exit
Wednesday: Page A > Page C > Page B > Exit
Thursday: Page C > Exit
Friday: Page B > Page C > Page A > Exit
The % Exit and Bounce Rate calculations are:
Exit Rate of each page:
A: 33% (3 sessions included Page A, 1 session exited from Page A)
B: 50% (4 sessions included Page B, 2 sessions exited from Page B)
C: 50% (4 sessions included Page C, 2 sessions exited from Page C)
Bounce Rate of each page:
A: 0% (one session began with Page A, but that was not a single-page session, so it has no Bounce Rate)
B: 33% (Bounce Rate is less than Exit Rate, because 3 sessions started with Page B, with one leading to a bounce)
C: 100% (one session started with Page C, and it lead to a bounce)
Conclusion
The bounce rate is a number you can use to evaluate your marketing efforts. You can use it to determine whether you’re meeting your visitors’ expectations. Nevertheless, you want people to interact with your website. So you may utilize the bounce rate to determine which pages require additional attention. Meeting your visitors’ expectations and making your pages more appealing are all steps toward developing an outstanding website. We all know that excellent websites rank higher!