Bounce Rate

[hilary]

Hi

I have several questions about bounce rate that I am hoping you may be able to help me with.

Should bounce percent be at a page level or site level?If at a site level is it single page visits/ total visits.Or should i report at page level ? I am looking for guidance on how others report/present their bounce rate to their clients/management. How much detail should i give.

Should i give the pages with the highest bounce rates and then explain where the traffic is coming from ?

Thank you in advance

[bradbox]

For ad driven sites, we just report on number of average pages per visit (1 or 2 pages is usually the most common unless you're counting Ajax events or very addictive sites like Facebook).

Top Exit pages are also useful, so that you can aim to improve content.

Bounce rate can 'feel' negative, so I'd be wary about reporting it to all but very knowledgeable clients.

Did this help?

[hilary]

Hi Bradbox

Thank you yes but no :-)

I suppose what I am looking for is what to include in a report on bounce rates.

Would i give

• site level bounce rate
• pages with high bounce rates
• Bounce rates of traffic sources

The report could be endless.

[bradbox]

You already know the answer - all 3 are interlinked and as important as one another.

Going back to what we do...

We have workshops with different teams, so for a weekly or monthly meeting with the Content Production team - all the bounce reports are vital. For marketing teams we'll concentrate on visitor sources (and not really bounce rates although you've made me rethink about this!)
Exec Summary we'll just do Exit pages and ignore bounce rates.

Hope that helps a little more. Just beware that bounce rates to the uninitiated are dangerous places for you to venture. E.g. your client might stop Google adwords because the bounce rate for adwords is too high, but what if the customers who use Adwords actually return for a 2nd or 3rd visit to purchase? If you cancel your Adwords, you've stopped their first visit and therefore the purchases as well.

[hilary]

Thanks Bradbox

Your answer is perfect.

Could i ask one final question. If you are in GA > traffic sources> non paid traffic and look at the bounce rate.

My bounce rate for organic traffic from google is very very high. For my top 20 landing pages where i get 1000's of visitors it is ok at 20%-30% but i have 1000's of pages that are visited 2-3 times with a bounce rate of 100% - would these 1000's of pages with a high bounce rate contribute to my high organic bounce rate?

[bradbox]

You've described a long tail - the top 20 landing pages doing well, but the remaining all bouncing too much. The remainder constitutes so much traffic that it's affecting the overall organic bounce rate.

I don't know what type of site you have, but I would iteratively spend time improving the content on the pages that appear after your top 20. Then improve the next set of pages, and so forth.

It's soooooooooooooo dependent on the site content:

Is your site the kind of place that people will do a search and find it on the first page? If it's a community site that is pretty factual per page (i.e. organic searchers want an answer and then want to leave), you're unlikely to change very much.

If it's more of a proper discussion community like this one, you need to do more work to promote joining the community and browsing (e.g. add blogs, etc.)

If it's an ecommerce site, you have a bit of work to do.

[hilary]

Thank you so much for the reply.

[AussieWebmaster]

Questions to ask.... what percentage bounce after one more page from the good ones - what are the links they are using to leave the pages (good ones) - and how do they relate to what brought them in...

bounce rtates can give you great insights into the visitors - if they are coming from a paid ad what is the message that has lower bounce rate and what is the link they take next etc.

[Puneet Thakkar]

You can probably show the pages visited and the exit pages for the sites and also the most number of pages visited. You can have your client's attention on the bounce rate only if it is decreasing...

[AussieWebmaster]

Originally Posted by hilary

Thanks Bradbox

Your answer is perfect.

Could i ask one final question. If you are in GA > traffic sources> non paid traffic and look at the bounce rate.

My bounce rate for organic traffic from google is very very high. For my top 20 landing pages where i get 1000's of visitors it is ok at 20%-30% but i have 1000's of pages that are visited 2-3 times with a bounce rate of 100% - would these 1000's of pages with a high bounce rate contribute to my high organic bounce rate?

The reason for the high bounce rate for the lesser visited pages is they may not quite fit the keywords bringing them there... it happens that a couple of words gets you well positioned for long tail terms but the page does not answer the search - you may want to look at that relationship and add a highly visible link at the top Are You Looking For X and send them to a more strategically crafted page or if the page is non-essential do a 301 redirect to a relevant one... you keep the ranking and improve the conversion