The Definition Of A Web Site Bounce Rate and The Important Cut Off Statistic

Marica in baby bouncer

Courtesy of Benjmain Hoyt (bfhoyt at flickr)

According to Wikipedia the definition of a Bounce Rate is in essence: “the percentage of initial visitors to a site who ‘bounce’ away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site…” Bounces happen when “…a web site visitor only views a single page on a website, that is, the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs.” Wikipedia continues to say that bounce rates: “… help determine the effectiveness or performance of an entry page. An entry page with a low bounce rate means that the page effectively causes visitors to view more pages and continue on deeper into the web site.”

How do you find out what your

Web site’s bounce rate is?

Start by installing free Google Analytics if you do not already have it installed on your Web site. Go to google.com/analytics/ and sign up for an account if you do not already have one. Google provides you with a site specific HTML code. This code must be embedded into the ‘behind the scenes’ source code area of your website. The code must be installed on each page you want tracked for the statistics to be recorded and available.

Caution: If you use a Web site developer please ask them to insert the code. There are several WordPress plugins allowing you to enter the Google account number assigned to you for hosted WordPress Web sites.

After you install analytics you will be able to view your bounce rate and a great amount of additional information about your website. You will need about 30 days or so to accumulate data to notice any trends. I like about a year of statistics to see how changes you make affect you site results.
Just what constitutes a good bounce rate?

It is subject to interpretation. I have read where some experts say a 60% cutoff point or lower is a decent target. Some specialists consider above 50% as worrisome. Anything above your target constitutes panic time. If your bounce rate is too high your visitors are sending you a message. They are saying…”Mr. Webmaster, you lured me here under false pretenses and your site does not meet my needs or answer my question. So I am out of here!”

I personally love seeing sites with a 15% to 26% Google Analytics bounce rate. Then I know the site is attracting the right audience. Visitors land and spend more time on these sites. They explore more pages filled with good information or content and this leads to more sales!

I will have some suggestions on how to fix a high bounce rate on a follow up post.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 14th, 2010 at 1:14 pm and is filed under Google Analytics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

6 Responses to “The Definition Of A Web Site Bounce Rate and The Important Cut Off Statistic”

  1. Barnet Fagel Says:
    August 14th, 2010 at 10:49 pm

    Very informative article Mike. It’s a simple explanation which makes sense.

  2. MikeyBlog Says:
    August 15th, 2010 at 12:41 pm

    As you know I am a big fan of statistics to track where we have been and where we are headed. Sometimes it takes a little explanation to understand the larger concept.

  3. Heather C Stephens Says:
    August 19th, 2010 at 7:49 am

    Hi Mike! Thanks for the information!

    I am kind-of new to google analytics and new to blogging and I was so excited to see your post title in the CommentLuv tag on the comment you left at my blog.

    I didn’t know what the bounce rate meant. It says that my bounce rate is .37%. Is something wrong, or am I doing a good job of sharing content relevant to my readers?

    Have a happy day!

    Heather

  4. MikeyBlog Says:
    August 19th, 2010 at 9:07 am

    Heather –

    Is that 37% or .37%? There is a BIG difference! Regardless, you should be very proud if you are new to Google analytics as well as blogging.

    The first is very respectable, while the second is astounding. Did you know you can drill down from overall bounce rate to bounce rates from various sources? I remember seeing results from a particular source to one of my wife’s sites at 0%!
    That meant she was grabbing the attention of the right audience.

    I will be following up with more articles on interpreting Google Analytics….so subscribe to the email RSS feed at the upper right sidebar.

    Michael

  5. Heather C Stephens Says:
    August 19th, 2010 at 9:42 pm

    Thanks for the reply Michael!

    I appreciate your reply and your follow up post very much. It’s .37%

    Would you please email me a direct link to your follow up post about the google analytics? I can’t get to it by going to your diywebjem.com/blog url.

    Thanks so much! Heather

  6. MikeyBlog Says:
    August 20th, 2010 at 7:52 am

    Thanks again Heather. I know about the difficulty and have technical support working on it. It was working one day and gone the next!