What Is A Bounce Rate And How Do I Know If It’s Good?

By Author: nicksmith
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Many people constantly ask, what is a bounce rate and what is a 'good' bounce rate for my website?

A website “bounce” is when someone comes to your site and leaves quickly. This can be due to a number of issues. First, your site’s landing page (the page a user comes to from another site – most often your site’s home page) may be unclear, unorganized or not loading properly. By unclear I mean the site does not clearly express what its purpose is. A site that offers books shouldn’t have a huge movie screen on the center of its home page. An unorganized site may not have a clear navigation. Most web users expect instant gratification. A user on your site who is looking for something – whether it be information, an item to purchase or contact information – should be able to find it in a matter of seconds. Whether I do a website design for small business or a large corporation, I always first anticipate why a customer or user might visit that site in the first place and am careful to clearly label all the navigation options.

Bounce rates may also be due to poor website optimization services. ...
... If a website optimization service provider is optimizing keywords for your site that are not relevant to what a user is searching for, this can cause users to visit your site and leave quickly because the information you have is not relevant to them.

As for the question, what is a ‘good’ bounce rate, unfortunately, the answer is not as clear cut as you would expect. The best goal you can set for yourself is this: better than your current bounce rate and better than your current time on site.

It is not wise to compare your bounce rate to other sites or competitors. Ever site is unique and each business may have extenuating circumstances on how the site’s users interact with it.

When you are looking to hire website optimization services, don't expect to compare yourself to others. Only compare yourself...to yourself. Focus on improving your business. You want more visitors for a certain keyword? Make your benchmark higher than what it is today. You want to get a better conversion rate? Then you should look at what it is today and aim for improving on that.

For more information about Web Design for Small Business, please visit www.rjwebdev.com