Tweet

Using Website Bounce Rate to Improve Your Small Business Marketing

Guest post by: Karen Scharf

Article Overview: The bounce rate your website receives indicates how many visitors came to your site and left without doing anything more. Bounced visitors are those who didn't visit any other pages, didn't submit a subscription form, didn't watch any videos, etc. They came and they left in a flash.

Using Website Bounce Rate to Improve Your Small Business Marketing

The bounce rate your website receives indicates how many visitors came to your site and left without doing anything more. Bounced visitors are those who didn't visit any other pages, didn't submit a subscription form, didn't watch any videos, etc. They came and they left in a flash. The bounce rate is calculated by taking the number of visitors who visited a certain page and immediately left, divided by the total number of visitors entering the page. Bounce rate can be calculated on a per-site or per-page basis. Most analytics programs, such as Google Analytics, will do the work of figuring out the bounce rate for you.

Knowing your bounce rate can help you unlock problems that your website visitors may be experiencing. It can also help you determine if you need to change the content on your website, improve your navigation, make your calls to action more clear, improve your keyword targeting, etc.

** Why Should You Care About Your Bounce Rate?

The reason that you need to know and care about your bounce rate is that it is an indication of how well your website is doing. Having a high bounce rate is generally a bad sign, meaning there are technical and/or content issues that need to be fixed.

There are some exceptions to this, such as in the case of blogs. Many times visitors read or scan a blog post without ever needing to click any other page on the site. This is normally counted as a bounce, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the purpose of the blog was not served. (I encourage you to do all you can to keep visitors at your blog as long as possible, however.)

However, in just about all other cases, having a high bounce rate is bad; but analyzing your website's bounce rate can be extremely helpful not only to the success of your website, but to all of your small business marketing efforts.

** What is a "Good" Bounce Rate and What is a "Bad" Bounce Rate?

There is really no ideal bounce rate, and percentage points vary from industry to industry and the context through which the determination was made. Generally super high scores such as 95% or above and super low scores such as 5% or below indicate technical problems.

Most industry experts agree that a bounce rate above 50% needs to be addressed. A bounce rate below 30% is an ideal target. But remember, these are across-the-board averages; context and industry specifics must be taken into account.

A 50% bounce rate basically means that half of the people who land at your website leave after viewing just one page. If you're spending time and money to get that traffic to your site, it's almost criminal to let them leave after just a few seconds.

** What Your Bounce Rate Can Tell You

The bounce rate can tell you a number of things about your site and often further investigation can help you determine where the problem actually lies.

For instance, if you're seeing excessively high bounce rates, anything over 75%, you'll want to make sure your website is not experiencing any technical issues. Verify that your navigation is working properly, that all of your links are operable, that there are no 404 or other server errors being generated. A good idea is to check your web server error log for issues that may not be visible by simply looking at the web page.

Bounce rates between 40-60% usually indicate that your website's copy needs to be improved. Chances are, your website visitors don't go anywhere else within your site because they simply don't know where to go. Review each of the pages that are receiving a 40-60% bounce rate and read the copy objectively. Is it extremely clear what you want your visitor to do or where you want him to go next? What changes can you make to encourage your visitors to dig deeper into the site or to respond to your call to action?

Also take a look at the eye path for each of these pages. Is there something getting in the way or distracting your visitors from performing the action you want them to take?

While a 40-60% bounce rate might seem extremely depressing, to an entrepreneur whose livelihood relies on his website, it might actually be a hidden blessing. First, most of the issues that cause bounces in this range are generally easy to fix.

But what's even better is that a 40-60% bounce rate can actually lead to an improvement of your small business marketing across the board. Let me explain...

Most small business owners use what we call "integrated marketing" - and they don't even realize how sophisticated they are!

Basically, entrepreneurs create one message, and use it over and over again. That means that the copy you used on your website is probably the same copy you used in your brochure, and your newsletters, and the flyers you pass out at the chamber of commerce events. And perhaps you even used the same copy in your radio ads and your other offline marketing efforts.

But your 40-60% bounce rate is a good indication that your copy isn't quite clear. The people who read that copy don't really know what to do next. So you are now armed with information that you can use to improve your brochures and your newsletters and your flyers and the rest of your marketing efforts. And you would have never even known that they weren't effective if you didn't pay attention to your website bounce rate.

If your bounce rate is in the 60-75% range, that generally means that you're driving untargeted traffic. Take a look at the keywords that are bringing visitors to those high bounce pages. Are the keywords really relevant? What about the traffic sources? Is someone linking to your site with misleading or incorrect information? Do you have a directory listing that is out of date or an advertising campaign that has expired? A bounce rate between 60-75% usually means those visitors are looking for something else when they arrive at your web page.

You can further analyze your website's bounce rate by segmenting your high bounce pages by traffic sources, keywords, country of origin, and any other segments that may be useful. This can help you pinpoint more specific issues that need to be addressed, such as your local SEO efforts or your advertising campaigns.

Finding out your bounce rate, good or bad, can help you to identify and greatly improve issues that you may be having with your website and your conversion rate. Be sure to invest the resources necessary to analyze your website and translate the information that is uncovered in order to improve your overall small business marketing.

Related Articles
  Using Statistics To Improve Your Customer Retention And Bounce Rate
  Web Analytics that Lie
  Learn How to Lower Your Bounce Rate
  Bouncing The Right Way to Market Your Company
  10 Steps to Creating Emails That Get Results
  Top quality Email Marketing Software features
  Creating an Effective Landing Page
  Tips to improve Website conversion rate
  Search Engine Optimization Landing Pages
  Website Usability: Tips to improve the user experience
  Banner Advertising - CPM vs CPA Costing Methods
  Several benefits of having a good, appropriate and attractive website design
  A Shared IP Address Isn't Always So Bad
  Web Analytics: Making Sure Your Online Offerings Are Working for You
  4 Easy Ways to Improve Your Blog
  Increase Conversions With Optimized Landing Pages
  10 Power Settings to Supercharge Your Website
  The easy way to close more sales
  How Do You Know If Your Website Is Pulling Its Weight?
  Online Marketing Strategies Worth Knowing

Article Tags: bounce rate, traffic, web design



Related Forum Posts
Re: Social Media Marketing on StumbleUpon? - The one serious disadvantage for automated traffic systems like StumbleUpon is the increased 'Bounce Rate' they return. Bounce rate is simply the rate at which visitors leave your site after each visit, taking into consideration the duration (stayed time) on visit. Negative bounce rate certainly is not good for marketing purposes. In other to reduce bounce rate it is advised that webmasters explore better traffic options. Organic and Direct Traffic remains best options.
New Small Business Topic - Hello everyone, I'm on the lookout for new topics to add to my site. We just launched a Franchising section and are planning Human Resources section. Do you have any thoughts for a new section? Here's a list of what we currently have: Angel Investors Branding Bank Loans Business Coaching Business Plan Franchises (New) Insurance Legal Marketing Public Relations Sales Small Biz Loans Venture Capital
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: what position to request? - Hi Michael, Great suggestion from David, or you could try something around a design consultancy, How about Website Design Consultant, Design and Development Manager, Website Support and Development Manager or maybe Internet Business Development Consultant. Ultimately whatever you are comfortable with and good luck for the future, Mal.
Re: Reduce Bounce Rate - Website bounce rate matters most today. You can decrease by providing 1. Good Web Layout And Design 2. Relevant and unique content 3. Content clear and proper navigation 4. Improve website loading speed 5. Add relevant images 6. Analysis of keywords 7. Minimize pages 8. optimize your target keywords 9. Good quality of links 10. Take People Where They Want to Go


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Stay Employed In A Down Economy

Promoting your company and self with verve

Adapting to Technology and the Internet

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.