When you are trying to evaluate the performance of your website it is easy to become overwhelmed by the multitude of available key performance indicators (KPIs). However, there is one stand out KPI that is both easy to understand and easy to measure – bounce rate.
Bounce rate is so important in digital marketing because it measures how good your website is. It is defined in Wikipedia as, “the percentage of visitors who enter the site and bounce (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site”. In other words it measures your visitors’ experience with your site. If they don’t like what they find they will leave straight away.
The first question is what is a good bounce rate for any given landing page on your website? The answer is between 40 to 60%. One can’t expect to retain every visitor but if your bounce rate is above 70% you have a problem that needs to be addressed.
Bounce rate is so insightful because it gives rise to many questions, the answers for which will only improve your digital marketing. A high bounce rate means one of two things. Either you are attracting lots of the wrong people or you are attracting the right people but not engaging them when they arrive on your website.
Look at bounce rate across a range of criteria from referring sites, keywords and landing pages and see what questions it raises. For example, a high bounce rate on landing pages suggests that the information you are providing is not relevant or engaging the visitor. A high bounce rate on certain referring sites suggests that this is not the right target audience for your product or service. Finally a low bounce rate on certain keywords indicate that these are the most effective and should be the focus of any search engine optimisation or advertising campaign.
So how can you improve bounce rate? Again the answer is not difficult to find. When a visitor arrives on your website they need to immediately find the information they are looking for. If not they will leave. The information needs to be clear and easy to read, clearly sign-posting action and generating a sense of urgency. Above all the content needs to be interesting and engaging.
Waypoint is a Winchester marketing company specialising in delivering marketing strategy, content development and lead generation. For more information please get in touch at info@waypointdigitalmarketing.com or call 01962 862760.
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