I also have one client who only wants a website for surface level credibility… They want the customer to call them. We’ve made the phone number blazingly prominent… and guess what people visit the site and make a call. High bounce rate – successful site in the eyes of the client! I’m interested if Google is using bounce rate as a determinant in ratings… anyone got more info on that?

I used to advise clients to ensure a lower bounce rate (40% or less), before investing in banner ads, other click throughs, pay per click etc. I’ve changed my language a little – make sure your site does what you want it to do… 🙂

A 0% bounce rate is common for brand new websites. I’ll explain why this week in a new post.

Are you sure you aren’t mixing up uniques and pageviews?

Last time I checked it was around 75%.

Interesting points Massimo, and I agree.

I would only say that a click on an ad or on an external link is still considered a bounce, but it sure is much more useful if you can different such bounces from “hard bounces”, which is when the user hits the “Back” button on his browser or closes the tab.

Yes you would be contributing to the bounce rate.

Time plays a role in some web analytics programs. That is, if you stay 5 minutes it won’t count as a bounce any more, but Google Analytics does not work like that.

Thanks,
Aaron

Christian Guico.

1. It is my understanding each post should include some internal links and external links. If this is true, then why would it be considered a “bounce” if the person goes to one of the external links? Seems to me that would be a good thing.

2. Most of my posts are over 1000 words. So, it would make sense that people might need to go to something else and not go to another story. The comment above about the amount of time actually spent on a site does sound fairer. Are they figuring this into the statistics somehow?

Thanks, sometimes I think it is better to just write your best stuff and not worry about all this. But, if there are only a couple people reading it, it doesn’t matter how good or useful it is, it is not reaching an audience.

Getclicky in nice I just used it now. My bounce rate was 72% in GA now in GetClicky its 28% with average time 4m 32s. That’s amazing! As Stephen showed one problem I don’t think many ppl leave their tabs open for more time if they so I don’t mind my to consider my bounce rate 38% rather than 28%. 🙂 because that’s also better!

First of all on a site, external links, ads or other similar items should be tagged as events in GA, goals, or something similar. This will eliminate those bounces (because they are not) and allow you to understand what works.

Second, if you have a blog and use GA you should add a timer to the bounce rate to be any visit shorter than 30 seconds. By default GA has no timer and if I can read the whole article without changing pages then leave you have a false bounce.

Lastly, bounce rate like time on site need to segmented properly to understand what it means. Does a longer time on site mean that your visitors are reading or just confused by what they see? Does a high bounce rate show you that the page design sucks or that the content cannot hold it’s own?

Analytics is my passion, ask me about it.
massimo@mpaolin.com

I think I could do better though. Looking forward to reading more on what you think the ideal bounce rate should be. 🙂

Christina

The trouble with this is distinguishing between someone who reads the content and one who opened it in a tab and checked it later.

If someone opens a bunch of pages (one of which is yours) and moves through tabs over the course of 5 minutes, they would register as a non-bounce. If they get to your tab after 5 minutes and close it, they weren’t really there for 5 minutes.

Tabs are ubiquitous now, so GetClicky’s way seems like it would produce a lot of false positives.

Yes I believe this pattern is true.

I’ll mention these. Thanks for the feedback.

I plan to in a future post.

Each type of website will have its own “natural” bounce rate, yes. Sites with a large amount of RSS subscribers might have a higher natural bounce rate because many visitors will come via RSS, read the post and be gone.

Do you find there’s a big overall difference in bounce rate from sites that people keep coming back to as loyal readers (your blog for example) and a site that relies mostly on seo to attract visitors?

Looking forward to reading more about how we can encourage visitors to stick around for a while.

Nice informative post. I always do keep a check on them and try one thing or the other to reduce bounce rates. Can you suggest on ways on how to reduce bounce rates?

Thanks!

Bounce rate is something that I keep an eye on. There are tweaks you can do within your blog to decrease it.

Thanks for bringing this up!
Josh

My bounce rate % is usually slightly higher than my %exit.

thanks!

Mary Hunter

Bounce rate is one of the most important factor to be considered.
I’ve have a bounce rate of 30% and i’m really happy with it.

Anyways, Thanks for sharing this great Post.

Looking forward to reading more posts about bounce rate.

Bo

Thanks For Sharing
-Abhishek

GetClicky (a GA alternative) tracks bounce rate differently. If someone stays on a page for over 30 seconds then GetClicky doesn’t see that as a bounce.

I would say GetClicky is a fairer system.

I have seem dramatically different percentages from both sets of data on the same site.

Search varies between 40 and 60%. But this is also with sites that have historically had very little content, so things may be skewed a bit.

Many personal development site have low bounce rate, if writing is good and relevant! while I think I know plenty, I am looking forward to this series expand!

I’ll talk about this next week.

Jane.