One of the most important indicators when we talk about metrics to measure the performance of a website using an analytics tool, such as Google Analytics, is the bounce rate. However, not everyone really knows how to analyze this data or use it.
In this article we will explain you what the bounce rate really is and how to interpret it according to your type of web. We will give you also some tips to reduce it if it is too high.
What is the bounce rate?
When a person visits our website, whether through a search engine, a link from another website or even an advertisement on social networks, we are interested not only in seeing the person visiting just a particular page, article or product but the entire website, and if possible, coming back to visit our website again. This means that people like our website, and that users of it are happy with it.
With the bounce rate we will be able to measure in a certain way how much people like our web. According to Google, the bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that come to our website and, without performing any kind of interaction on another page, decide to abandon it.
But is this really negative? Is it bad that someone enters our blog, read for a while an article that we have published and end up leaving it? Of course not. For this same reason, when analyzing the bounce rate, we must also take into account the time of permanence of the users in our web.
But first of all, we must know where we can consult all this information.
How to know the bounce rate of my Web?
We can see all this data in Google Analytics. This Google tool is very useful to know all the measurements and statistics of our website.
Enter the Audience section and then click on Overview to know both the bounce rate, the average duration per session, pages per session and unique users.
We have alternatives to Google Analytics, such as Woopra and Clicky. These have more accurate tools to measure the bounce rate, even though the Google application is the most widely used worldwide. It is up to you to choose the one that best suits your needs.
With all this data, you can already assess if your website has a high or low bounce rate. But you still need to know one last variable: what is the purpose of the web that you are analyzing?
Types of bounce rate
Imagine that you are analyzing a web that has a single page. As we can guess the bounce rate will be very high, since those who enter it will not continue browsing the web for a simple reason: there are no more pages where they can go.
On the contrary, if we are measuring an online store, the ideal bounce rate should be very low. We look for visitors to come and see a product, and keep moving around the store until they make a purchase.
As you see in the image, these are some of the rates that could be considered acceptable for that type of page.
As you can see, the bounce rate must be interpreted according to the purpose for which a website has been created. That is why it is very important when reading the metrics to take into account everything said so far before considering whether a bounce rate is good or bad.
Tips to reduce the bounce rate
You have now all the information so you are ready to know how you can reduce your bounce rate. Even if it is low, I recommend following these tips to further improve your website and make it more attractive to future users and visitors.
Attractive design
It will not be the first time we leave a website because it has an archaic appareance without even having read it. The web design should be designed so that the user is confortable in navigation, being pleasant and fluid.
Related content
If we have a blog, we will clearly outline articles that relate to what our visitors are reading. In addition, if we have an online store, we will show products of the same category or some type of relationship, to make it more attractive to continue browsing.
Internal links
The more links we incorporate within our website, the more possibilities there will be for visitors to click on any of them. However, if we put too many hyperlinks, we can create the opposite effect to the desired one, so do not abuse. It is also very important to keep these links updated to not to lose visitors.
Loading time
Avoid overloading with overly heavy images, too much publicity or the indiscriminate use of JavaScript. If a web takes a long time to load, the impatient visitor can abandon it in search of other alternatives.
Página 404
We have all found this page, and very few take advantage of it. You can always insert in this type of page some creative designs or even links to other parts of your web, so that the user does not abandon us.
