Why is Bounce Rate So Important? What Is It & How to Find It

Imagine this: somebody visits your website and then leaves right away.

Is that what you want? Hopefully not.

But when that happens, it’s called a “bounce.” 

And it’s usually a bad thing.

The percentage of visitors who bounce away from your site right after landing on a single page is called a bounce rate. It’s a number you want to keep as low as possible.

In this guide, I’ll explain the bounce rate in a little more detail. I’ll also tell you how you can reduce it.

So, What is Bounce Rate?

First, some additional info about the bounce rate metric.

Let’s say somebody goes to Google and searches for “glass earrings.”

Now, as it just so happens, you run an ecommerce site that sells glass earrings. So that’s good news.

The even better news is you managed to contract with an SEO company that made sure your website is the #1 organic spot in the search results when people search for “glass earrings.”

So the person who did that search clicks on that #1 link and visits your site. That same person looks at your category page containing a dozen or so options for glass earrings.

After a few seconds, the visitor says “Meh” and hits the Back button on the browser.

That’s a bounce.

That visitor didn’t like your site. 

Fortunately, you can fix that.

But, Not All Bounces Are Bad

The example above is a bad bounce. But not all bounces are created evil.

Some bounces can be good.

Let me share another example.

Suppose somebody searches for “how to reduce belly fat.” And you also happen to run a weight loss website.

More good news: your site ranks at the top of the organic results for “how to reduce belly fat.” So the person clicks your link.

That same person reads an article on your website with several brief bullet points on how to reduce belly fat. And then leaves.

Was that bad?

Not if you gave the person the info that he or she was looking for. 

Sometimes, all you want is a single brief visitor for specific keywords. That might help build brand-name recognition.

How to Find Your Bounce Rate

If you’ve read this far and you’re kind of new to this digital marketing thing, you might be asking yourself: “How do I even find my bounce rate?”

Fortunately, you can get that info for free.

Google Analytics will show your bounce rate. It will give you the overall bounce rate for the whole site as well as the bounce rate for individual pages.

But it will also tell you the bounce rate by other dimensions, such as source, location, device, and channel.

That’s some valuable info that will give you big clues about how to get a grip on a high bounce rate.

For example, let’s say that your bounce rate is high for smartphones. That could point to the fact that your website simply isn’t responsive.

If you’re unfamiliar with the word “responsive,” it just means that the website has to look good on all screen sizes, from the tiny viewport of a smartphone to a huge desktop monitor.

Visit your own site on a smartphone and see if you notice what’s causing the bounce rate. Chances are good you’ll pick up on it quickly.

Then you can reach out to your development team to get that fixed ASAP.

Let me give you another example.

You can also use GA to check your bounce rate from your landing pages.

If you find that some of your landing pages have an unusually high bounce rate, that points to a problem with the promise on the page. In other words, your landing page might not live up to the promise from the ad that you’re running.

In that case, you’re not only increasing your bounce rate (bad) but also wasting money (worse). That’s something you can fix as well.

What’s a High Bounce Rate?

Now that you know how to find the bounce rate, you might be asking yourself: “What is a good bounce rate?”

Or, alternatively, you’re asking yourself: “What is a bad bounce rate?”

The answer is: it depends.

First of all, as I mentioned above: some bouncing is okay. Your info pages might offer nothing more than valuable content to visitors. It’s okay if they bounce once they’re done reading.

You also might be getting traffic from other countries when you only serve English pages. Those folks might bounce as well. But since they’re not in your target market, that’s okay.

Those are the kinds of things you need to look at when determining a good or bad bounce rate. It’s different for each site.

Start by doing a comparison of page bounce rates within your site. Find the ones that seem unusually high. Do some analysis there.

You might uncover a problem you didn’t even know existed.

That said, I’ll offer a few guidelines about “good” bounce rates:

• Retail Sites: 20-40%
• PPC Landing Pages: 70-90%
• Portal Site: 10-30%
• Self-Service & FAQ Sites: 10-30%
• Content Sites: 40-60%
• Lead Gen Sites: 30-50%

As a rule of thumb, anything over 80% should draw concern.

What Causes Bounce Rates?

I’ve already touched on a couple of reasons that can cause your bounce rate to go through the roof. But mostly I dealt with “good” reasons for bouncing.

Here are some “bad” reasons:

• Slow load time – Make sure your page loads in under a couple of seconds. Otherwise, you risk losing market share. Check those Core Web Vitals stats to get info about user experience.
• Inaccurate titles or descriptions – People don’t like to be deceived. If your ad promises something then your landing page had better deliver.
• Improper analytics setup – This one could go either way. You might see an unusually high or low bounce rate if you misconfigured GA.
• Mobile-hostile site – If your website doesn’t look great on a smartphone, you can expect mobile users to bail once they see the clutter on their screens. Get that fixed with responsive development (see above).
• Unengaging page – Maybe your page is just plain boring. Maybe it doesn’t have a great design. Maybe it’s too hard for the average visitor to figure out what’s going on.

The good news is that all of those problems are fixable.

How to Lower Bounce Rates

Next, let’s look at some practical solutions to lower your bounce rates.

• Examine the target audience – At Ignite Visibility, we like to go through a whole website and determine its ideal audience. Then, we’ll update the site to ensure that it gives people in that audience exactly what they’re looking for.
• Check every traffic channel – Look at the sources of your traffic and the pages that each source is hitting. Make sure there’s a match between expectations and reality.
• Include relevant links and suggestions – Use facts, figures, graphs, FAQs, blog posts, images, videos, and anything else that your visitors are looking for.
• Include a call to action – If you don’t want someone to leave your landing page then give them something else to do. Like clicking a button. Just make sure it’s above the fold.

Wrapping It Up

Bounce rate is an extremely important metric. 

But there’s no “right” bounce rate threshold for every website. Different types of sites should expect different rates.

Still, you should do everything in your power to keep your bounce rate as low as possible. Feel free to get that ball rolling today.