Comments on: Bounce Rates

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 21:01:29 +0000

Don’t read too much into bounce rates alone. For example a lot of my audience will visit to read one blog post and then leave. They may spend 10 minutes reading an article and will be back again for the next one, but technically they bounced since they only view one page at a time.

Also realize that many people inevitably find you site while looking for something else. Those people bounce, but they really weren’t your audience.

However if you do think your bounce rate, particularly with people who leave quickly is something that needs to be improved, look to design. In the first few seconds someone visits your site they don’t have time to absorb your content. Their decision to stay or leave will be more about how the site looks and the if the main heading on the page is visible and matches what they were looking for.

By: Registered Nurse Sarah

Registered Nurse Sarah — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:05:36 +0000

Thanks for this detailed article on bounce rates.

I noticed that my tend to run higher for the majority of my sites. One site has a bounce rate of around 61%, and it is one of the best/most popular sites.

Another is around 80%, which is a bit disappointing considering that this is also one of my better sites.

I guess I need to keep working and tweaking on things to try to reduce it.

Thanks again for the info!

By: Conference Coordinator

Conference Coordinator — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:40:21 +0000

Dictionary.com is one of the most popular websites in the world. It ‘probabaly’ has bounce rates of 90% for obvious reasons; see the correct spelling, hit the back button.

Do not get caught up in the bounce rate figure too much, take much more notice of your intended goals.

Regards

By: Bounce Rates | Van SEO Design

Bounce Rates | Van SEO Design — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:26:28 +0000

[...] Read the original here: Bounce Rates | Van SEO Design [...]

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:30:47 +0000

Oh. Still I wouldn’t worry too much about the stats in that case. After all what you’re hoping will happen is for someone to call so in the end the page is successful. Why take a chance you’ll get less calls just to improve the metric?

By: JustADesigner

JustADesigner — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:49:58 +0000

I meant Exit Pages… not bounces. Sorry. I think removing the number from header will remove the variable that they exited any page because they saw number and called.

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:21:44 +0000

I’d sooner make it easy for people to contact you than worry about bounce rates. I think bounce rates can give you some indication of how people are interacting with your site, but in truth the metric is flawed.

For example someone reading your blog might visit each time you post, read your content, and then leave. That’s a great visitor, but will still show as a bounce on every visit.

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:19:38 +0000

I think your experience is atypical. Unless your search traffic is highly targeted it tends to bounce more often than from other sources.

By: avvocato spagna

avvocato spagna — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:14:31 +0000

based on my experience, the more traffic a search engine sends to your web, the smaller the bounce rate. Other important factor is whether the traffic comes through a targeted keyword or not. Both the source and the keywords are the perfect combination to reduce the bounce rate and increase all the KPI (in my case).

By: JustADesigner

JustADesigner — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 02:15:36 +0000

Our company has been having trouble accurately tracking page bounces, because our phone number is in the header on every page. We have decided to instead put a contact us button to a contact page with number, form, etc. Hopefully we can remove the variable that the users might have called from any page causing the bounce. Negative to this could mean less calls, which we will have to measure. It’s only 1 click away.