Bounce rate: definition and analysis

Bounce rate. Two words that strike fear into website administrators everywhere. The idea that people come to your site, look at your content, and then leave without interacting is always the worst-case scenario you can imagine. You cannot control the people who leave your site. But the exit rate (which is uncontrollable) and the bounce rate (which can be managed) are two different things.

Let us define the concept and look together at how you might keep your bounce rate low and your conversions high.

The bounce rate

What is the bounce rate?

Fundamentally, a bounce is when a user arrives, looks around, and leaves without doing anything at all. No clicks, no scrolling, no conversions. Just in and out. Of course, these users may trigger ad impressions (but again, no clicks!), but their benefit to you stops there.

The bounce rate is therefore the rate at which people bounce in and out of your site without interacting. The exit rate is the rate at which people leave your site, full stop — with each visitor having a different page where they end their visit. You can track their user journey and their path through your site in order to see what interests them and when they left.

But bounces… you cannot really extract much useful information from those.

Is a high bounce rate bad?

Not necessarily. It all depends on the purpose of the page — not the site. Having a fairly high site-wide bounce rate tells you nothing. It might show that people are landing on your category archives, author biographies, random archive blog posts, or the About page and then leaving. When combined into an average, knowing you have a bounce rate above 75% is relatively meaningless.

Because what does it tell you? That 75% of the people who visit your site leave. But how do you fix it? Why are they leaving? There is no way to tell, for two reasons:

• You have no information other than the fact that they left your site. No specific pages.
• You have no information about why they came to your site in the first place. So, while the bounce rate may be high, your site could still be fulfilling its purpose.

So, as with most things concerning websites, turn to Google Analytics to find out what is really happening and how you might reduce your bounce rate.

Analyse your bounce rate with Google Analytics

To check your overall bounce rate in GA, go to Behaviour – Overview and Bounce Rate.

Since this is the overview of your statistics, this percentage applies to the whole site. It does not give you much information — just that the majority of people bounce before interacting.

Now, as mentioned earlier, you will need to dig a little deeper to obtain all the data you can use to take concrete steps to improve your bounce rate. After all, there is a big difference between your blog readers and your online shop customers. GA will let you explore, but you first need to understand search intent.

What is search intent?

It is the reason people landed on your site in the first place. If someone searches 'do my feet shrink when I lose weight?' and they land on a product page of your shoe shop, that page is not fulfilling the intent of their search.

So they bounce. If 99 out of 100 people do so, even if your overall site has a bounce rate of 75%, that particular page has a bounce rate of 99%.

Now, if they land on your blog post entitled 'Yes, your feet shrink when you lose weight', your article completely fulfils their search intent. But what if 90% of people also bounce from that?

It means that, while your blog post entices users to click on it, it does not encourage them to interact with your site.

To improve this you could, for example, set up a pop-up offering them the chance to subscribe to your mailing list so that when their feet do shrink, they have options immediately available. Or perhaps slip in a link to another blog post about shoe sizing that leads them to browse your site. These actions could potentially reduce your bounce rate from 90%+ to 40–55%.

To find those pages to optimise and determine search intent, look at Google Analytics.

Finding your bounced pages

There are several ways in Google Analytics to find pages that are bounced. Look at the user flow diagram. You can find it under Audience – User Flow in the left-hand menu.

The initial user flow diagram can be very useful, but add a segment to the chart. Click Add Segment, and it will turn into Choose Segment from the list. Then simply click on Bounce Sessions to make it appear in the charts.

All you have to do is hover over the green area to see which pages have been bounced. You will see the bounce summary by default. You can drill down by hovering. In this view, you will see the drop to 100% and through-traffic at 0%. That is your bounce rate on these pages. These are exactly the pages from which people are bouncing.

But you should note that these pages under the Bounce Rate tab are only the landing pages for visitors. They have not clicked on anything. So you will be able to analyse why they are leaving.

And if you want to see where users are going and clicking, click All Users. You will see the user journey through your site and its exit pages, as well as the rates at which they leave those pages too. You can set the desired amount of flow, but there are diminishing returns in trying to prevent exits from a user's 5th page compared to their 2nd.

In the first example above, the first bounced page is a blog post. The page itself 100% satisfies the user's search intent. So… readers bounce off the site. In the second screenshot, the flow shows users returning to the home page of this blog, but 63% of users do not click on another article.

This is the moment at which you need to determine how you can keep these users engaged — especially those who bounce on the very first page, even when their search intent has been satisfied. Looking at the second-page exit, we can (generally) assume one of two things: the search intent was fulfilled but left them wanting more information they may not have found, or their search intent was not fulfilled by any of the pages, causing them to leave.

Methods for reducing the bounce rate

There is no quick, silver-bullet solution for reducing your bounce rate. However, there are proven methods that tend to work for increasing engagement with your users and getting them to convert into members of your community.

Optimising page speed

While not directly related to your bounce rate, one of the main reasons users leave your site is simply that they cannot access the content quickly enough. If your page does not load in under 3 seconds (or 1, in ideal circumstances), they are likely to bounce. You can reduce your page load time by optimising your images, removing excess JavaScript, minimising markup and other site code, and caching the site using plugins.

Prompting users to act with CTAs: call to action

However you do it, creating meaningful calls to action is probably the best way to reduce the bounce rate. Using the right colours (orange and red, perhaps, rather than black or white for buttons), larger sizes to draw attention to them, and so on.

Try a persistent banner at the top of the page, or use pop-ups that only appear when users are about to bounce. A sliding email subscription box in the corner. Even a live chat box or an AI bot to keep them engaged.

Create better, more engaging content

You need to adapt your strategy to prevent people from bouncing. Perhaps you need more headings to make articles and pages easier to read. Perhaps more images (or infographics) would lead to more shares.

Or it may simply be a matter of needing to work on your content creation strategy. Perhaps a different tone in your articles would encourage people to read on. Get to the point quickly and succinctly, then explain it.

Conclusion

Ultimately, there is no reason to be afraid of the bounce rate. It might mean your site is doing exactly what you intended it to do. But by conducting a little analysis and looking at which pages your users are bouncing from, you can create an even better experience for them. If your site is slow, dull, or poorly structured, people will leave — but these are fairly easy fixes, and the most important thing is to be aware of your users' behaviour and take it into account. Run tests, create pop-ups and articles, and you are sure to convert visitors into members.