Bounce Rate the Killer factor of your site …

Bounce Rate

Not many care about the Bounce Rate of their site; the most predominant factor that influences your site’s performance is the bounce rate. Bounce rate in simple terms means the percentage of people who come to your site, then immediately leave without viewing any of the inside content pages. Bounce Rate is usually used to measure visit quality – if the bounce rate is high it means that the landing page is not relevant for the users coming to the site. Low bounce rate indicates that the visitors are engaging and exploring the site. So what constitutes a good rate? This is a very hard question to answer, but if you do some research, most say it needs to be under 50%. It also will depend on the type of site that you have. For example, if you have a news website, many times a visitor will come to your site to read the latest updates then leave. Thus more often a News Website will have a higher bounce rate than a “normal” site as there is no need for them to go any deeper.

How can you improve your bounce rate?

1. Track the bounce rate of your site over a period of time

2. Also check the time spent by visitors on your site

3. Check the Traffic Sources – Identify which source contributes bulk of your traffic. Is the traffic coming from Direct Links, Search Engines or Social Networking Sites

4. After getting your Statistics rate, Start making changes in the landing page

5. Make sure that you showcase prominent links that will pull the visitors interest

6. Make the site Navigation more user friendly

7. Check for the load time of the site – check in different browsers. Make sure your site loads quickly 8. Change one thing at a time and keep an eye on the bounce rate and check if there is improvement.

Follow the basic principles said above and ensure your visitors pass the home page and read the content inside the site thereby increasing the stickiness of the visitor. I have also read that it plays a big role in search engine algorithms. Sites with less Bounce Rate get better rankings.