Bounce Rate: What on earth is it and why does it even matter?

So you’ve heard about bounce rate, or you’ve seen it in your Google Analytics reports.

But what is it, and why does it matter?

Watch my video to find out what bounce rate is all about, and how you can get it headed in the right direction.

Check out the other 6 numbers that I also recommend you track in your business here:
Know Your Numbers Cheatsheet

And discover how to fix your Google Analytics spam here:
How to Stop Google Analytics Spam

Video Transcript

Hello! I’m Nikki, the Data Fairy from MeasureWhatWorks.com and it’s time for another dose of measurement magic.

And today I want to talk to you about bounce rate.

What is it and why does it matter?

So bounce rate is something that Google Analytics calculates as the percentage of people who visit your site and then leave again without doing anything more.

Whether that’s loading another page, or triggering an event that’s sent to Google Analytics, they basically bounce on your site – they come, they go.

So why does it matter? Bounce rate is basically a measure of how engaging your site content is.

So a higher bounce rate means that people are less engaged with your content and a lower bounce rate means that people bounce less often and are more engaged with your content.

So it’s useful to have a sense of what normal is for you.

There’s not really a right or wrong bounce rate because it depends on your industry, your content and your visitors.

But by looking at your bounce rate on a regular basis you can start to get a sense of what a typical bounce rate is for you and then do things to reduce that.

There are a couple of things that can increase your bounce rate.

One of them is spam traffic.

So if you have a lot of spam traffic visiting your site, a lot of the time it comes straight in, chucks rubbish in, leaves straight away.

And it has a bounce rate of of a hundred percent, so it’s going to push your bounce rate up.

If you have a lot of spam traffic on your site, I have a blog post on my site that takes you through everything you need to do to fix that problem.

One of the other things that can affect your bounce rate is poorly targeted traffic.

So perhaps you’re running ad campaigns or spending time in groups, or on social media sites that have a lot of people who aren’t a really good fit for your business, so when they come to your site they’re not that interested and they leave again without finding out more about what you can do for them.

And it’s kind of a wasted opportunity when people bounce on your site because they’re not taking the time to learn more about what you can do for them.

So there are some ways that you can increase the quality of the engagement with your content:

• One, of course, is to make sure that you are actually creating engaging content, giving people reasons to explore your content further,
• To make sure you’re solving people’s problems, so if they’re coming to your site to solve a particular problem, to have lots of different ways for them to do that and, also
• Just to make sure that there are links to your other content within your site. The more you can link to the content on your site, the more likely they are to go exploring further on your site.

So that’s a few ways that you can decrease your bounce rate.

So basically by tracking your bounce rate, doing what you can to decrease it, you make your site more engaging for your visitors and you build a better relationship with your customers.

So that’s a bit about bounce rate and what it is and why it’s important.

It’s one of the numbers that I recommend that you track in your online business, of the seven numbers that I recommend are the most important to keep your eye on in your business to make sure it’s going in the right direction.

If you want to know what the other six are I have a cheatsheet and I’ll put a link to that in the description of this video.

I hope you found that helpful and I will see you in the next video.

Have a great day!

Nikki, The Biz Pixie

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