Bounce Rate Formula
Bounce rate is a key metric that measures the percentage of visitors who abandoned your website immediately after visiting the first page.
The visitors are said to ‘bounce’ as they land on the website and leave quickly. While this key metric seems to tell you only about the %age of the visitors who bounce your website, you need to dig deeper to understand what more it implies.
Keep reading to know what bounce rate is and how you can measure its bounce rate formula to track your growth. So, let’s get started!
Bounce Rate
Google says that the bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits on a website. These are the visitors who visited your website but left without interacting or taking action, such as watching a video, clicking ‘read more,’ etc.
Generally, visitors bounce when they do the following things-
- Click the back button to see the previous page.
- Close or exit the browser window immediately.
- Click the outbound links as soon as they land on your webpage.
- Go to another URL that isn’t related to your site.
Thus, the bounce rate provides visitors with information on the visitors’ behavior or how well the website is engaging them. In other words, it lets you know whether the quality of the audience visiting your website pages fits the purpose of your site or business goals.
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What is Bounce Rate Formula?
The bounce rate formula is a simple equation-
Bounce Rate = Single Page Visits/Total Visits x 100
Or
Bounce Rate = Number of Bounced Pages/Total Number of Visits x 100
For example, suppose your website’s homepage gets 1,000 visitors in a month, and 400 of them left the website just after viewing the page. Then, the bounce rate will be 40%.
So, in order to measure the bounce rate, all you have to do is to analyze the number of single-page visits and total visits over a certain period. You can use Google Analytics to see the bounce rate of different web pages of your website.
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How to See Bounce Rate In Google Analytics?
Log in to Google Analytics. Go to the Audience > Behavior section.
Then, navigate to the left, i.e., Behavior > Site Content > Landing page report. At the top, you will see a line graph that tracks users over a specific period of time.
When you scroll down, you will see the summary by the landing pages; the bounce rate will also be seen as a key metric for each page.
Click Views > Comparison on the right-hand side. Then, click individual pages > bounce rate at the top of the columns. The pages in red indicate they are worse than the average at directing the users to other pages.
Is a High Bounce Rate Always Bad?
Well, in most cases, a high bounce rate isn’t a good thing. However, in some cases, it neither means good nor bad. All of it depends on the purpose of your website and your business goals.
For example, if you are selling the best speaker, or best smartwatches and doing a conversion on another website so the high bounce rate would not affect you in this scenario. If you are not getting I would like you one more example below.
For example, suppose you have a business website, and one of your goals is to direct your readers to the landing page. If the visitors only view the first page of your website and leave, it causes a high bounce rate, indicating that your website isn’t performing well.
In such cases, a high bounce rate is a danger!
On the flip side, if your goal is to make your visitors contact you through email or phone, you don’t want them to visit any other page. Once they fill in the contact information, they can quit. Even though you get a high bounce rate, it isn’t a bad sign for you. Reason? Your webpage has fulfilled its purpose.
What is a Good Bounce Rate, Then?
It depends upon the niche your website is working on. In most cases, the average bounce rate of websites is around 40%. But, if you own a publishing website with a lot of blog posts, articles, etc., the bounce rate might go up to 80%.
Suppose a person searches for some topic, found it, and left the website after reading a particular piece of information. Here, the purpose of a blog is completed. The more readers, the more successful your blog is.
When it comes to an eCommerce store, your main goal is to sell. Generally, the average bounce rate for eCommerce websites is between 10 and 40%. This is quite less than that of a blog!
Thus, it depends on the type of website, your goals, your niche, and the sales method. However, regardless of your niche or website, it’s good to look for ways to improve it.
What are the Benefits of a Low Bounce Rate?
Assuming that a low bounce rate is the best for all types of websites, here we are listing two significant benefits of looking for ways to reduce the bounce rate-
Better Engagement
A low bounce rate means that the visitors aren’t leaving your website after viewing the first page. It shows better user engagement. And, better user engagement means increased page views, genuine fans, more conversions, and more revenue.
Improves SEO
Another benefit of a low bounce rate is that it helps with your website’s SEO. Google also considers user engagement as a top website ranking factor.
If it finds that a website is beneficial for the target audience, it ranks the site higher in the SERP. Thus, a low bounce rate sends a green signal to the search engine.
Conclusion
Bounce Rate is an important metric every marketer should inspect closely. Not only, does it provide SEO benefits, but it also indicates that your website is performing well.
If you find that your site has a high bounce rate, it means that your website structure, content, or site’s navigation might have problems that need to be fixed.
Moreover, it indicates that you need to improve the quality and engagement level of your content. Or, it’s time to optimize your website for different devices.
Use Google Analytics to see the bounce rate of your website and see where you need to improve. Then, look for ways to reduce the bounce rate and boost the conversion rates.