โ€œHelp: 60% of my website visitors are bouncing off my main pageโ€

Posted by Dave CollinsWebsite Usability

Yes, this was the subject of an email I received last week. Yes, the person who wrote it gave me permission to quote him. No, Iโ€™m not going to name him.

Before going further, letโ€™s remember the difference between a bounce rate and an exit rate.

An exit rate is the percentage of visits to a page that go no further in your website. For example youโ€™d expect the exit rate of your formโ€™s confirmation page to be high.

A bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits. For example the number of visits arriving at your home page who go no further in interacting with your website.

Letโ€™s be realistic here. Your main pages are probably going to have a reasonably high bounce rate. People come to your website for all sorts of reasons, and one of the quirks of the search engines is that a number of them will probably looking for something that you donโ€™t provide.

In the case of the person who sent me the panic-struck email, there was nothing wrong with his website.

A quick play with his Google Analytics filters reassured him that a significant percentage of the visits to his main page were looking for something that had no connection with what he was selling.

When we excluded the junk-traffic, we saw that his bounce-rates were actually in the region of 35% โ€“ considerably lower than many other websites that weโ€™ve seen.

Of course it didnโ€™t take long for him to realise that there was room for improvement even here. Heโ€™s just engaged our conversion optimisation service to see how we can reduce his bounce rates further, and Iโ€™m confident that heโ€™ll be happy with the results.

The bottom line is that balance is a good idea. Thereโ€™s no need to panic when you see your bounce rates, but thereโ€™s no need to accept them either.

Unique ideas for your business

The Demystifier puts practical ideas into your hands. You won't find them elsewhere. Original, actionable and insanely effective.

Illustration of a person with a lightbulb