Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Analytics insights: Bounce Rate

This year we're going to be focusing on providing some detailed insights into the world of website analytics. We've spoken before about the critical importance of analytics, so lets look at some of the key measurements of your site's performance. First off: Bounce Rate.

A bounce is not, as I've heard suggested, when someone scrolls up and down your webpage a few times. A bounce is simple - it's defined as a single page visit to your website. In other words, it's when someone goes to your site, and views no more than one page before leaving.

So your bounce rate indicates how 'interesting' your page (and site in general) is to a visitor. A high bounce rate suggests you have nothing to offer the visitor. But what's high, especially within the tourism market? I'd say you should be looking for a bounce rate under 50%.

And the next question you should be asking is: how can I improve my bounce rate? That we will explore in depth at a later date!

It's worth mentioning there is a related measurement - % Exits from a page. This is the percentage of visitors who left your site after viewing a particular page. Note the difference between % Exit and Bounce Rate - a bounce is a one page visit to the site. while an exit is simply leaving the site (and as such, not necessarily A Bad Thing).

No comments: