What`s Your Bounce Rate?

I'm having exactly the same problem with one of mine. I'm now changing and testing to try and improve. Odd thing is, i thought it was one of my better sites too.....

Without looking at your site, ask yourself:

If you were looking for answers to the search queries people are using to find your site, does your site look authoritative, and does the content show that you know what you're talking about? Is there a 'face' behind the blog for transparency? Is the content unique?

Hey guys

Bounce rate is meaningless without knowing the context of your site.

It's a measure of the number of visitors who land on your site and leave without looking at any other page. It doesn't matter how low they stay on one page or the other - time spent on pages has no effect on bounce rate.

For a single-page salesletter page, the bounce rate is going to be 100% and that's fine.

A high bounce rate is only a problem if you want people to view multiple pages on your site and they don't.

Cheers,

Neil

If the page they click to is being monitored by the same tracking system that's monitoring the bounce rate of the sales page then moving to that 2nd page will reduce the bounce rate.

If that 2nd page is not being monitored, the bounce rate will not changed when someone clicks to that page. For all the tracking script knows, the visitor left the site.

Therefore bounce rate is also pretty meaningless unless you're tracking all the pages in your conversion process so that views of those pages will reflect in the bounce rate number.

Cheers,

Neil

Thanks all three,

I have after some thinking found out what the reason might be.
I had a different theme before (A rather confusing one) And people was presented with A lot of information and had to look longer to find what they where looking for.
Now i have changed the theme and people do not longer have to click a lot of links on my page to find good information.It like BAAM it`s all on the first page and BAAM out if you don`t like the first impression.

Do you know what i meen?

One thing to consider (related to bounce rate)...

You'll lose people simply by giving them too much choice.

Consider that in the context of your home page.

Butting out now

Cheers,

Neil

I posted this elsewhere, but here you go:

My bounce rate year to date is around 21%. Over the past month, it has averaged 10.53%. Keys to reducing bounce rate in my opinion are:

- Have great, relevant content that is in sync with the keywords you are targeting. If you don't give them a reason to stay, they will click away. Remember, you only have about 6 seconds to catch their attention so that first impression has got to be meaningful.
- Site design that is in sync with your product, message, service and is in sync with your target audience. For example, don't have tiny font on a site targeting older people. Or font colors, background colors that are hard on the eyes.
- Loading rates. Make sure you have good loading rates from page to page. If a page is slow in loading, people will just click away. Improving loading rates would require optimizing your images and / or upgrading your hosting server. You can use an optimization tool like this to check your page loading rates at different download speeds. It will also provide recommendations to improve download speed if it is an issue: Web Page Analyzer - free website optimization tool website speed test check website performance report from web site optimization.
- Credibility - having secure site logos for example will help give the reader instant assurance that your site is legit. Place these logo in a prominent position (typically upper right is recommended) so it is one of first things to be seen.
- Testimonials - if you are selling a product or service, have testimonials placed prominently. When the person comes to the site, they will be naturally drawn to those testimonials. If they are glowing testimonials, then the person will be more apt to stick around and see more.

Hope that helps...

The best thing the bounce rate can tell you is where are the people that have the highest bounce rate coming from?
An ad campaign you are spending time or money on? Then it becomes easier to drill down to those traffic source's conversions. If their bounce rate is high, MOST times the conversion is low. (not always... if 100% of a traffic source's customers that do not bounce, do convert, than even if the bounce rate is 92%, you are converting 8% or 4 times what would be considered by many to be the 'average'. But the chances are much more likely that the bounce rate and conversion rate will be as bad from a same traffic source.
This lets you spend more money and/or time on sources with a lower bounce rate (and better converting) and dump the lower performing traffic sources.
So it isn't so much what your bounce rate is, as what you now do with that information.

In my opinion 'the targeted keywords' that are bringing a particular visitor to your site also play a crucial role. just think if you are targeting a completely wrong keyword or a wrong keyword at wrong page, then anyone coming from that keyword will definitely not find the information of his choice and will flee.

good video

Bounce Rate: The Simply Powerful Metric - Conversion University Help

High bounce rate is normal for a sales page or a squeeze
page, however, I can see that your site is a blog, so this
is not healthy.

Looking at your blog, I can say only one thing:

"This site looks as if you're trying to sell me something rather
than helping me find information or solve a problem.

I don't have a reason to stay on this site, since I know
that I don't want to buy from someone I don't trust..."

That very well may be the reason for your high bounce rates.

Igor

Newbie here, I am just wondering what you use to measure bounce rate?
thanks in advance!

The only reason I can think of for bounce rate mattering on its own is if you're somehow getting paid for people to click around the pages of your site - if you're getting paid for displaying banner ads for example, or you're charging for ads based on views to a page.

If you've got defined goals for a visitor to your site (you do, right?) then you should be measuring the success or failure of those, not the generic bounce rate that tells you very little and gives little scope for improvement.

It's all about defining EXACTLY what you want your visitor to do in order that she drives your business forward and making every pixel on your site earn its keep.

Check out Ken Evoy's Most Wanted Response (MWR) which is a simple concept and exists in various forms from others too.

Cheers,

Neil