You guys ever test bounce rate?

[Nick Brighton]

If so, what's your benchmark?

I'm running a test on a piece I just wrote and although there's a pretty good conversion % right now, the bounce rate is 87%.

As far as I understand it, bounce rate implies the % of people who hit your page, then immediately click out.

Is this right?

If so, does this sound like an issue? It's targeted traffic. And I'm not panicking, because as I say, the conversions are starting to roll in already.

Cheers,

Nick

[Ross James]

Yes Nick you're correct.

What is the source of the traffic? If it's coming from a list, that metric may be inaccurate since I want to say it's tracked per keyword. I'm no expert but it makes sense if you're getting sales..

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.

From analytics

updating my OP: It also may be worth nothing that if they hit the sales page, buy something and leave, that data may be a part of the metric as well. Since if they never navigate away from the sales page, it get's tracked into the %

-Ross

[Nick Brighton]

so if my bounce rate is 87%, then where are the other 13% going?

If "the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page" is really what it means, then I expect the bounce rate to be fairly high, as it's a sales site (not a content site.)

But still, something doesn't add up there.

P.S - It's cold traffic, from PPC.

[Ross James]

Well, the other 13% could be navigating around the website. contact us page, affiliate page, any other page away from the landing page. It actually makes a lot of sense to me, maybe someone else with a lot more knowledge on the issue will chime in.

Yes YOU, right there.

[fasteasysuccess]

That's a high bounce rate man. It could be a few things.

It may be your load time-It could be competition clicking repeatedly-where traffic is coming from-or could be a few other things.

But if you said converting good, then get to the issue with the bounce rate and go make that money.

[Nick Brighton]

I'm starting to think that bounce rate means very little when sending people to a sales page cold. The only thing that counts is the conversions I guess.

And... the average time spent on site would be helpful too.

Although, I'm using Clicktale to watch onsite activity, which is probably more accurate than any other analytic data.

[Ross James]

It's google ... They don't like landing pages unless there is an optin with free stuff or it's a web 2.0 style site. You should maybe post this in the PPC sub-forum

[Kev Stevenson]

Yeah, bounce rate is a bit weird...

e.g. on an affiliate type site, they can bounce straight to a merchant page - so that would be good.
On a squeeze page they could bounce straight to the offer - also good.

Analytics would show a high bounce rate but conversion could also be high.

I suppose the problem is when a visitor bounces backwards i.e back to the source.

There's no statistical difference to the analytics tracker...

In my mind a bounce fwd is a 'positive' bounce (a 'squeeze' if you like?)

I prefer to consider it in conjunction with 'time on page' to give me a measure of how sticky the copy is.
K

[sethczerepak]

Originally Posted by Nick Brighton

If so, what's your benchmark?

I'm running a test on a piece I just wrote and although there's a pretty good conversion % right now, the bounce rate is 87%.

Nick

Frankly Nick, I've found that a high bounce rate isn't always bad. Sometimes it just shows that you're filtering out the non-buyers. Oddly enough, one of my best performing pages also has a bounce rate of 87% too...but the conversions are damn near 4%.

In other words, the people who stay are serious about buying, the rest can move on and continue their search to get something for nothing on someone else's site. I'm okay with that.