Bounce Rate
Bounce Rate
Definition
The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who land on a web page and then exit the site without navigating to any other page on the site. Google Analytics also counts the session time for a bounce as zero. A high bounce rate will significantly reduce the number of visitors the average session time is based upon.
The table above from Google Analytics shows a relatively high bounce rate of 67%. But care needs to be taken when interpreting the bounce rate and session duration. A user could spend a considerable amount of time reading content on a single page before leaving your site. Google Analytics would class this as a bounce even though the user was engaged with your content and may have been perfectly happy with the experience.
To understand the real level of engagement you should track how long all visitors spend on a page. This can be done by adding some extra script to your GA tag to measure time intervals that users spend on a page. You can then set up events in your web analytics to allow reporting of this data.
Resources:
Conversion marketing – Glossary of Conversion Marketing.
Digital marketing toolbox – Over 300 resources
Web analytics – Why are web analytics important?
