Bounce percentage is a metric that is too often forgotten or misunderstood. It does not always get the attention it should. This article explains why it is essential to pay attention to it, to analyze it and to correct it when necessary.
What is the bounce rate?
Before we begin, it is important to know what the definition of bounce rate is. It is a marketing indicator found in Analytics software, expressed as a percentage and which measures the number of Internet users who entered a page of your website and left the site right after, without consulting other pages. These users are therefore considered by Analytics as having visited only one page of a site. This gives information about the quality of the page and the user experience. This rate is to be analyzed in reverse of the classic results: the lower the rate the better. However, this metric is not so easy to understand and several parameters must be taken into consideration, especially the average bounce rate.
How to understand the bounce rate and how to analyze it
An Internet user who visits only one page of a website can be considered as a dissatisfied visitor. This does not lead to a sale and a return of this visitor to the same site may be difficult. Search engines, and especially Google, take this metric into consideration and can penalize, in terms of positioning, the sites that have a percentage too high. In the previous paragraph, the bounce rate definition, it is mentioned that the page that registers a high bounce can be considered of poor quality. However, when we analyze the nature of the page, we can identify a good or bad bounce percentage. A site selling pizza for delivery can register a very high percentage of bounce, but this is not to be taken as a negative and degrading measure. In fact, if the site displays the phone number very clearly, then satisfied users will leave the site after visiting only one page.
How to improve the user experience?
The google analytics bounce rate found on the homepage of the tool, right next to the number of global visitors is therefore to be understood as a whole. An e-commerce site that offers product listings should not record a bounce rate of more than 50%. Indeed, this type of site necessarily requires the visit of several pages, in particular to pass from the product listing to the shopping cart. The average bounce rate for e-commerce must therefore be as close to zero as possible to be satisfactory. The average bounce rate of a site must be analyzed in its entirety, but it should not be too much of an alert. Depending on the origin of the visitors (natural referencing, Adwords, reference sites or direct traffic) the bounce rate can be very different and even double. It must be corrected more if it comes from referencing than if it comes from Adwords for example. An e-commerce site with a high average bounce rate must correct its pages and think about improving the overall ergonomics of the site.
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