Bounce Rates 101 - Why Are Customers Leaving My Site?

If you are spending money marketing online, it is vital that you are able to measure the performance of your website.

Bounce Rates are one of the most effective metrics to include in your website “heath check” and shed light on one of the most important questions you have: "Why are customers leaving my site?"
What constitutes a bounce? A customer bounces from your site when they:

1. click the back button on their browser within 5 seconds of visiting
2. close the window or tab your site is in
3. leave and visit another website by clicking a link on your site
4. leave by typing in a new website address
5. timeout (never visit more than one page within a 30 minute session)

Bounce rate is measured as a percentage and is calculated by dividing the total number of one page visits by the total number of entries to that same page. Generally speaking, e-commerce sites average 20-40% bounce rates and referral generation sites can average 30-50% bounce rates. Bounce rates for landing pages for online advertisements tend to be highest and can run in the 70-90% range. Like most metrics, the real valuable data lies in trending: is your bounce rate going up, or is it going down.

But how do we use Bounce Rate Data? First, bounce rates can indicate which search keywords are really engaging your visitors. You would expect branded keywords to have low bounce rates and keywords with high bounce rates should be evaluated carefully. Are they really that important? Secondly, you should measure bounce rates for each of your traffic sources, especially if you are paying for traffic. Perhaps you have a few websites that are sending visitors that bounce from your website at a much higher percentage…consider reducing your advertising spend on those sites. Next, break out bounce rates for each individual entrance page to your website (also called a landing page). High bounce rates can indicate that a particular landing page is underperforming. Of course, high bounce rates can also indicate external problems – perhaps the website simply is not sending visitors that are very qualified for your products or services. This is valuable information when deciding where to spend your marketing dollars.

Tips on improving bounce rates:

1. First and foremost, provide relevant and engaging content. If you are buying advertising space (even on Google, Yahoo or Bing) make sure those ads are pointing to landing pages tailored to the ads themselves. Don’t send that traffic to your homepage and expect the visitor to understand the connection.
2. Make it easy for visitors to navigate your website by using a clean, easy to understand navigation menu. Include a search box as well.
3. Avoid running pop up ads and unless absolutely necessary
4. avoid having links to other websites on your primary landing pages. If you do link to other websites, have them open in a new window.
5. Stay Fast - test the load speed times of your website. Most site visitors are impatient and will not wait for a site that loads slowly. Improving site load times will also improve your search engine optimization with Google.

Are you carefully measuring your bounce rates?  What trends have you seen and what steps are you taking to keep customers from bouncing?