Website Review: Can My Website Bounce Rate Be Too Low?

Do a Website Review…Your Low Bounce Rate Might Be a Bad Thing

In the climate of website promotion and SEO, bounce rate is one of the primary metrics that webmasters throughout cyberspace fret over. As a webmaster, the first thing you need to understand is the importance of Google Analytics in any website review, which is probably the most comprehensive free analytics tool out there. Google Analytics will help you accurately gauge the bounce rate of your website and facilitate the implementation of any tweaks ? or outright overhauls.

So What is Bounce Rate, Exactly?

In short, bounce rate is a measurement of user engagement. It tells you how many, out of all the people who visit your website, leave after interacting with a single page. The higher the percentage, the more people leave after visiting one page or performing a single action called an event. If a website review shows your bounce rate to be low, then that usually means you have a lot of content on your site that is of interest to visitors, so they bounce from page to page without leaving your overall site.

The above is the primary interpretation of bounce rate; a low bounce rate could also mean your site architecture is very good, which makes navigation much easier. For example, you could have very good, keyword-targeted content on your website but a high bounce rate. This means your visitors cannot easily get from one page to the next. Perhaps you don?t have a hyperlink that allows them to reach the Home page from any other page; this could drive your bounce rate up. In short, then, the lower your bounce rate, the better.

Bounce Rate Details

A high bounce rate is bad, as you?ve now seen. Just how high depends on exactly what your website entails. Is it an e-commerce site? If so, then a bounce rate in the 90% is definitely bad, because you?re losing sales from all the people who leave after checking out a single product. You want to ? for example ? widgetize accessories at the bottom of the page, to encourage people to buy them. At the very least, you present them there for ease-of-navigation.

On the other hand, a bounce rate lower than 20% may not be as beneficial as it first seems. Across-the-board studies show that this is unrealistically low, and may point to something wrong with your analytics implementation. Check your code to make sure everything?s running smoothly under the hood. For the average website, a bounce rate in the 26-40% range is considered very good. The average site with good visitor interaction has a bounce rate of 41-55%, and anything up to 70% needs work, unless your website is a blog, events or news site ? these can?t expect a low bounce, nor do they depend on it for reasons beyond the scope of this post. Most importantly, though, you don?t lose sales for a high bounce rate on sites like these ? for the most part.

The world of bounce rates and an adequate website review involves many different elements. There?s no reason to be overwhelmed, however, as long as you take a meticulous approach and make a plan of action. To help you with raising your profile in Google Search and increasing engagement, feel free to take the following Inbound Marketing Assessment, which is a proven (and free!) tool that ramps up your digital marketing potential and lets you know precisely what you need to do to get your website where it needs to be.

Marketing Matters Inbound?is an inbound marketing firm specializing in online conversions, content?strategy, PPC campaigns and traditional media placement. Our experience in?B2B digital?marketing?and?traditional media?allows us to deliver results through a strategic media mix. We believe in?aligning and merging marketing and sales/operations for optimal return on your marketing investment.