As part of our monthly reports that we produce for all of our marketing clients, we include lots of data and statistics on all areas of digital marketing and included in that is the website bounce rate. But what is a bounce rate, what is a ‘good’ bounce rate, and why does it matter?

What is a bounce rate?

Your website bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to your website who leave without visiting any other pages or clicking on any links. It’s a measure of the ‘one and done’ visits, where people don’t venture any further than one page. The bounce rate is calculated as a percentage, by dividing the total number of single one-page visits by the total number of visitors to your website. We generally look at this on a monthly basis to spot any trends over time that may need further investigation.

What is a good level of bounce for your website?

You may want to aim for a bounce rate of 0% because, naturally, you want visitors to be interested in your website and all of the content you have to offer, but this isn’t really realistic. The industry standard for a ‘good’ bounce rate is somewhere between 26-40%, with anywhere up to 70% being considered average and normal.

The average bounce rate varies by device too, with visits from mobile devices having the highest bounce rate of around 51%, for all industries. This is due to many different factors, including the fact that when people are browsing on their mobile devices they are often distracted, interrupted or browsing while doing something else, like watching television. So if you’re getting a lot of views from mobile browsers, then you may well see a higher bounce rate too.

Why does it matter?

We wouldn’t start to be concerned about the level of bounce unless there was a sudden increase, or decrease, which may indicate something has unexpectedly changed. If it suddenly drops to 0%, that could indicate an error in tracking, whereas a sudden increase could be a sign of the page being broken.

On its own, the bounce rate doesn’t tell you a whole lot about how people are using your website, as all it tells you is that someone arrived on your website and then left, so it’s worth looking at it in a wider context of your website health, user experience and accessibility.

How can you improve your bounce rate?

If your bounce rate is creeping up over 70% it is worth taking a look at ways to improve and bring it back down. There are a number of steps that you can take to improve the overall experience for people visiting your website which will all lead to reducing the bounce rate.

1.Make sure your website is mobile friendly
Over 50% of all web traffic globally is done on a mobile device so it’s essential that your website is designed with this in mind. It needs to be responsive, so visitors aren’t having to zoom in to read text or see details on an image, and user friendly so that visitors aren’t left waiting for a long video to load but rather are able to watch short, less data-heavy videos.

2.Consider the keywords and content for each page
If your website is ranking well but your bounce rate is higher than you’d like, it may be worth revisiting the content on each page to assess if it is providing the content that visitors are actually searching for. Consider if a visitor arrives on your site after searching for ‘what is Invisalign’, they probably aren’t yet in a purchasing stage but are looking for information. So landing on a blog post explaining the treatment may be more valuable to them than anything else.

3.Avoid disruptions to the user experience
We’ve all had the experience of landing on a website which immediately has large pop-ups, animations or other distractions that make it difficult to navigate around and find the information you’re looking for. You want your visitors to stay on your website for as long as possible, so it needs to be easy and comfortable for them to find what they are looking for.

Keeping an eye on your bounce rate can be a quick, helpful measure of the health of your website so it’s worth taking the time to understand exactly what it means and how it can be improved. If you’d like to understand more about how your website is performing and potential improvements, get in touch with Hive Marketing today for a free digital audit.