The bounce rate is very important for analyzing your website. The bounce rate is the number of visitors who leave your website - or one of your subpages - after a few seconds. You should know the bounce rate of your most important subpages. This is the only way to determine the success of your content. As a rule, the bounce rate should be kept as low as possible. Incidentally, the bounce rate is a strong ranking factor for Google. All the more reason to look into it. I would like to explain the bounce rate in more detail below.

Bounce rate definition and calculation

The definition of the bounce rate is relatively easy to understand compared to other web analytics concepts: A "bounce" describes a session in which the visitor only accesses a single (sub)page and then leaves your website. In this scenario, the entry page is also the exit page.

The bounce rate is calculated from all sessions in which only a single page was visited without any further action (e.g. leaving a comment or clicking on a subpage) divided by the total number of all sessions.

Analyzing the bounce rate therefore gives you many insights into the performance of your website. This is because the bounce rate tells you how your visitors behave on your website and how well they are engaged. Basically, leaving the page plays the fundamental role here. 

Sample calculation and other bounce rate factors

Example: If, for example, 40 visitors leave a landing page on your website without interacting with it again and a total of 100 visitors have been counted, the bounce rate is 40%.

Additional factors: Event Hits

A visitor may not open a new subpage, but may add an item to the shopping cart or share a page via a button on Facebook. These interactions are also recorded and minimize the bounce rate. 

Three factors are important here:

Event Hits: User clicks on a button.

E-Commerce Transaction Hits: An item was purchased or added to the shopping cart.

Social plugin hits: A page is shared via social networks.

Bounce rate vs. exit rate

Bounce rate and exit rate are often seen as synonyms, or at least as if they ultimately provide the same data. This is a big misconception and can lead to incorrect analysis of the bounce rate and poor decisions.

At first glance, both concepts measure similar things, as they analyze the behavior of visitors when they leave the website. However, there is an important difference in the calculation: 

As already described, the bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors who access a website (entry) and leave it again before interacting with it in any way. The exit rate, on the other hand, describes the percentage of visitors who left the website after viewing a particular page - regardless of how many subpages of the website they visited earlier in the session.

Example: A visitor lands on your homepage and clicks "About us" (good for the bounce rate of the homepage because another action has been taken). However, the visitor only stays on the "About us" page for 3 seconds and then closes the page (bad for the exit rate of the "About us" page).

Average bounce rates

The question of which bounce rate values describe a low, high or average bounce rate is difficult to answer. Because what is a high bounce rate for some may be considered low by others. Last but not least, the purpose of the subpage, the design or the industry must always be taken into account when evaluating the bounce rate. 

In rare cases, a high bounce rate is actually beneficial. For example, leaving a blog article could indicate that all questions have been answered and there is no need for further research. 

As a rule, the bounce rate gives you an indication of how relevant and "captivating" your visitors find the content on your website. However, you should not rely solely on this value when analyzing your website. To evaluate the success and performance of your website, you should always include several factors such as page views, dwell time, interaction and loading speed. This will give you a comprehensive impression of visitor behavior.

What is a good bounce rate?

Industry standard bounce rates consider anything over 50 percent to be high and anything between 20 and 50 percent to be low. Anything below 20 percent is probably a mistake and should be investigated.

A good bounce rate should be between 20 and 50 percent of total visits. However, it is important that you consider other measurement tools and analysis techniques in order to gain a comprehensive insight into the behavior of your visitors. As mentioned above, it is not possible to give a general guideline here.

How to check the bounce rate of your website

Now that you know what the bounce rate actually means, the next step is to explain where you can read this value. To do this, you need to look at the Google Analytics data for your website. In addition to the bounce rate, Google Analytics also provides other exciting metrics that help you interpret behavior. Unfortunately, it would go beyond the scope of this article to go into these in detail.

Jonas Tietgen from WP Ninjas explains how to set up Google Analytics in WordPress in this guide.

First, log in to Google Analytics. Select the "Target group overview" tab there. Here you will also find many other metrics that can be very useful. All your bounce rate information is listed here. You can see how high the bounce rate of your homepage is and how your subpages and other links are performing. This will give you a better and clearer insight. For the entire website, simply click on the bounce rate metric, which also contains a graph for the defined time period.

Click on "Behavior" for individual pages and then on "All pages". A list of the pages and links on the website and the specific bounce rate will then be displayed.

6 ways to improve your bounce rate

Once you understand the concept of bounce rate, your next question is probably: "Why is my website's bounce rate so high?" and most importantly: "How can I effectively reduce the bounce rate?" In the following, I will show you six starting points to optimize your bounce rate.

#1: Optimize the content of your (sub)pages

One of the easiest ways to reduce the bounce rate of a page or even the entire website is to improve the content itself. In a way, this should be self-explanatory. The more interesting or better written the content is, the more likely someone is to stay on your site and find out what else it has to offer. If it's e-commerce, it can also build trust, reinforce the brand or stimulate further sales. 

Of course, the relevance of your content is also important. Topics that do not correspond to your website's target group are likely to be met with disinterest and lead to an increase in the bounce rate.

Tip: Hire a copywriter for your web content. This is a one-off expense that pays for itself very quickly. Get references from the copywriter beforehand. Does their writing style inspire you to buy? If so, go for it!

#2: Ensure good readability and structure

Content refers not only to interesting articles or entertaining media, but also to the readability of the written texts. Text-intensive websites can be filled with the most relevant information - but if the site is not attractively structured, the first impression is already a failure. 

Make sure you use a mix of images, bulleted lists, subheadings and quotation marks. This is because if the content is presented in an appealing way and provides the desired added value, they are more likely to be interested in more of your content and not bounce. 

If you want your visitors to take a certain action, you should place appropriate calls to action. For example, you can include a form with the call to action "If you would like to receive more information on this topic, sign up for our newsletter". This will also reduce your bounce rate.

#3: Avoid the use of pop-ups

The use of intrusive pop-ups distracts from reading and impairs the user experience. You should therefore only use them selectively and, above all, make sure that the content of the pop-up is relevant at that moment. 

Pop-ups can help to build a subscriber list with a certain degree of effectiveness. However, there are more effective measures that are nowhere near as intrusive. For example, cleverly placed banner ads that visitors can respond to as soon as they have the opportunity to engage with the content.

Tip: The only exception here are "exit pop-ups". These are the pop-ups that appear when you want to leave a page. Sure, they might annoy your visitor - but they were about to leave your site anyway. Why shouldn't you take your last chance?

#4: Use targeted keywords (SEO)

Reducing the bounce rate always requires a mixture of tactics. One of the most reliable is the targeted use of keywords. The key lies in relevance and not in including as many keywords as possible.

The best starting point is to use keywords with high traffic value. But how can you find out which keywords are relevant for your website? Well, it's not as complex as you might think. A useful tool to identify targeted keywords for your website is, for example, the Google Keyword Planner. The tool is free, all you need is a Google account.

Use two to three relevant keywords for your website. Repeat these a few times. However, don't forget that you are writing for people and not for machines. So please avoid sentences like the following:

"08/15 Fensterbau Dortmund GmbH - best window construction Dortmund, if you need windows Dortmund, 08/15 Fensterbau Dortmund is ideal for window Dortmund seekers. Windows Dortmund."

#5: Check your meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are the information that appears directly below the title description of a website in a Google search. When your page appears in Google search results, many of your potential visitors will read your meta description first. In view of the bounce rate, it is important not to lure them in with false promises.

If your meta description says "Fridges for 30 euros" even though no item in your fridge store costs less than 100 euros, people will leave your store disappointed without interacting further with your website. The consequence: your bounce rate increases. 

#6: Include videos on your website

A video on a landing page increases the conversion rate by up to 80 %. Of course, this also has a positive effect on the bounce rate. A short explanatory video will be more than enough. If an animated video does not (yet) fit into your budget and you are reluctant to stand in front of the camera yourself, a recording of your screen and a soundtrack of you explaining it will often suffice. To get a decent sound quality, you should use a good microphone.

Conclusion

A low bounce rate is a good indication that visitors are interacting with your website and that you are offering them relevant content. With the tips and tricks in this article, you can not only find out what your current bounce rate is. I would also like to give you practical measures on how you can improve your bounce rate. With this in mind: Good luck optimizing your website!