The ultimate goal any website owner aims for is obviously sales and/or quality leads. That should definitely be the ultimate goal, but, (there is always a but, isn't there?) optimal sales/leads are the end goal and a good bounce rate is critical for achieving this end goal.
1. What is bounce rate?
This little gremlin has had many stuck with their hands in their hair! Bounce Rate refers to the percentage of visitors that leave a web page without taking an action, such as clicking on a link/button, making a purchase or filling out a form. Effectively that means they viewed a page but did not find what they were looking for quickly enough, didn't like what they saw or that taking another action proved to be too complicated and so they left your site. Bounce rates often varies by page and by the means a visitor accessed your site. For example; your bounce rate on your home page when viewed by visitors using a desktop may be 20% but amount to 100% by those visiting it from a mobile device. Alternatively your bounce rate on your home page may be 20% and 100% on your product page.
2. What is the ideal bounce rate:
The ideal that you should aim for is a bounce rate of 40% or less. Getting to this magic number takes some deep digging, goal orientated website changes based on your findings and some more monitoring and tracking and repeat....and repeat, and repeat.
3. Why is this important?
If you receive a good number of visitors but not enough sales or leads the odds are very good that you have a high bounce rate and fixing this could be the golden key to the sales and leads you want and need. You REALLY want to have your visitors taking multiple actions on your site, unless your sole goal is for people to land on your contact information page, view the info and leave. If you have an eCommerce site you want visitors that land on your home page to visit your products page, then view a specific product's info, add something to a cart, visit their cart and check out. Depending on your site's set up that will require a minimum of 4 visitor interactions. If your bounce rate on a specific page is too high it means that your visitors won't get to where you need them to be in order for you to achieve your goals.
3. How do you lower your bounce rate?
Before you can fix anything you need to know for certain what it is you need to fix to improve results.
Firstly, define the route you want your visitors to take through your website in order to complete a purchase or contact submission.
Secondly, check your stats to see which page on the defined route yields the highest bounce rate. We recommend using Google Analytics for tracking and analyzing purposes as it offers the most accurate stats which excludes the most duplication and bots.
Thirdly, check your performance by device. It could be that your bounce rate is perfect for desktop visitors but crashes and burns when it comes to mobile visitors, in which case your focus needs to be on mobile compatibility.
Once you have pin pointed the specific page and application that needs some amending you can zone in even more with some great, free applications that will allow you to monitor visitors actions on specific pages that includes where they are clicking on the page, how far they scroll down the page and where they are spending their time and where they are dropping off. This will allow you to know exactly where to focus your attention.
4. Conclusion
Getting and maintaining a healthy bounce rate this requires dedicated consistency and is definitely worth spending time and energy on as it will make the difference you need in terms of sales/lead volumes and generate more income for your business...which is why you invested in a website after all.
May you all enjoy fantastic bounce rates and the fruit it will yield for you. Feel free to contact us, should you require a bit of help with this.
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