Bounce Rates in Web Analytics

A metric that I know and love is the bounce rate. A bounce rate is “the percentage of sessions on your website with only one page view” (Kaushik, 2010). In simpler terms, it is the percent of people who leave your website before taking one action or click. Why do I love this metric? Because it is straightforward to understand and helps companies instantly start fixing things on their website. Please note, though, that a bounce rate should not be confused with an exit rate, which is the percentage of people who left the website from a particular page.

What problems can a company diagnose with the bounce rate? “If visitors bounce, it suggests they either didn't find what they were looking for, or the page wasn't user-friendly” (Kusinitz, 2017). If the visitor did not find what they were looking for, it could be an issue with the search engine keywords. If a company uses a keyword that is not relevant to the content on the page, visitors will exit without taking another action because they did not get the information they wanted.

Another issue that can be diagnosed is a website not being user-friendly. This can be due to slow load times, unorganized layout, and other distracting design. Website visitors today have low patience for sites that are not user friendly. According to Facebook, “as many as 40 percent of website visitors abandon a site if there’s a three-second delay” (Perez, 2017).

For more information about bounce rates, including benchmark averages for different websites, and additional tips on how to optimize to get a lower rate, check out this inforgraphic from QuickSprout.

Source: Quicksprout

So what is a good bounce rate? “According to a RocketFuel study, most websites will see bounce rates between 26% to 70%” (Wilson, 2017). Any rates that are lower than 25% or higher than 70% can be an indication that something is broken on the website. Based on data gathered during their study, Rocketfuel has created the following scale to gauge bounce rate effectiveness.

Source: Rocketfuel Study

An example of how bounce rates can affect a company can be seen in the unique goods retailer, Etsy. “With 45 million unique items across 50 different retail categories, Etsy represents a truly valuable Internet asset. The Company owns the 51st most trafficked website in the US and ranks number 4 within the Shopping – General Merchandise category" (Business Wire, 2017). In May of 2017, Etsy’s bounce rate was 24% higher than its peers. This was not the first time the company has had to deal with high rates. In 2015, after adding 160kb of images to its website, they saw an increase of 12% in their bounce rate.

The issues with their website’s bounce rate, along with other internal issues have caused shareholders of the company to be dissatisfied with the drop in stock values. Since 2015, “Etsy’s share price has declined 33% since going public” (Business Wire, 2017).

One final thing to note about bounce rates is that with every rule, there is an exception – blogs. Because the visitors for blog posts usually visit the post that is newest, the bounce rate is higher because the audience got what they came for. However, watching the rate for new visitors would be a better measure of the success of the website.

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References:

Business Wire. (2017). black-and-white Capital calls for change at Etsy. [Press Release]. Retrieved from http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170502005999/en/black-and-white-Capital-Calls-Change-Etsy.

Kaushik, A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability & science of customer centricity. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing.

Kusinitz, S. (2017). How to decrease your website's bounce rate [Infographic]. [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/decrease-website-bounce-rate-infographic.

Perez, S. (2017). Facebook will soon start ranking faster loading webpages higher in news feed. Tech Crunch. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/02/facebook-will-soon-start-ranking-faster-loading-webpages-higher-in-news-feed/.

Shooman, E. (2015). Case closed: I found out how Etsy, YouTube, & Google optimize. LinkedIn. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/case-closed-i-found-out-how-etsy-youtube-google-optimize-eric-shooman.