At a glance
Firstly we need to understand what a "Bounce Rate" is; it's the percentage of single page sessions, in other words; sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page.
There are a number of factors that contribute to a high bounce rate - users might leave your site from the entrance page if there are;
- Site design or
- Usability issues
Alternatively, users might also leave the site after viewing a single page if they've found the information they need on that one page.
Why is this important: This is important because Google measures click depth as part of its website ranking method.
In depth
To access information what your bounce rate is login to your Google Analytics account and look for;
- Behaviour
- Site Content
- Landing Pages
You will see your percentage in the Bounce Rate column – each page will likely have a different bounce rate. The question to ask is why?
Reasons for a high bounce rate
A high bounce rate can be caused by one or many different factors, including incorrect implementation. If you're seeing a high bounce rate check to see that you've added the tracking code to all your pages.
Other factors may be solely attributed to user behaviour. For example, if a user bookmarks a page on your site, goes to it, and leaves, then that's considered a bounce.
Improve your bounce rate
The bounce rate and improving the bounce rate is as individual as your business.
Analyse specific data; a general site-wide bounce rate can vary too much due to the different marketing activities that run concurrently. Consider your bounce rate for specific traffic sources. To evaluate your bounce rate so it’s more actionable than your general bounce rate consider using other dimensions like;
- Medium
- Campaign
- Landing page
Add links to more pages within your website in your content. Think about other pages that people interested in that piece of content will want to see, and link to them throughout the content and at the end in a “if you liked this, you’ll love this” kind of way.
Conversion Rates
Something else to consider, take a moment to think about the goals for your website. You may want to consider focusing your energy and budgets on increase retention. Simply put, if visitors don’t convert then a great deal of acquisition spend is wasted.
Increase revenue requires you to pay close attention these KPIs;
If you are an ecommerce business;
- Average Order Value (AOV)
- Revenue Per Visitor (RPV)
Revenue Per Visitor RPV is a good KPI to work with because it merges both Conversion Rate and Average Order Value into one measurable metric
RPV = AOV * CR.
When visitors are acquired increasing revenue should include two additional dimensions: converting more visitors into paying customers (CR) and increasing customer spend per conversion AOV.
Driving traffic to a website costs money, but finding ways to increase AOV and CR costs less comparatively. Since there is a cost associated with each order, increasing AOV is a direct way to gain revenue at little extra cost.