The bounce rate can often be a matter of concern for a lot of site owners. Is it too high? What can you do about it?
Actually, it might not be as high as you think. Perhaps you can stop thinking you’ve done something horribly wrong.
Let me explain…
First, What is Bounce Rate?
The bounce rate is simply the percentage of people who come to your site then immediately back away and go somewhere else. In other words, they don’t click anywhere else on your site.
Pretty much every stat solution out there will give you this information. So, if you have a bounce rate of, say, 50%… this means that half the people who come to your site simply leave.
But, 50% is actually on the low-end for many sites. It isn’t uncommon to see people with bounce rates upwards of 80%.
But, here’s what you need to know…
Not All Stat Systems Are Created Equal
DavidRisley.com has a bounce rate of 76.3% according to Google Analytics. Definitely nothing to be proud of. But…
Luckily, I don’t run only one stat service on this blog. I also use Clicky Web Analytics. Clicky reports that I have only a 32% bounce rate. That’s a HUGE difference.
Why the two services are so different, I don’t know. They’re different in other ways, too.
Stats over last 30 days (Google Analytics):
- Visitors: 25,447
- Bounce: 76.3%
- Avg. Time on Site: 1 min, 45 seconds.
When you look at the same data from Clicky:
- Visitors: 23,306
- Bounce: 32%
- Avg. Time on Site: 4 min, 28 seconds.
So, for some reason, Clicky shows about 2,000 less people overall, but their behavior on the site is significantly better. People stay longer and they’re more involved.
So, The Motto Is…
Don’t depend on just one stat service. They obviously don’t all compute the same, so if you want the whole picture, you need to use at least two.
Google Analytics is a great service – especially being free. I recommend everybody use it. But, I also recommend using something else which isn’t Google-owned. It might completely change the outlook of what’s happening on your site.
My personal preference is, of course, Clicky. The other thing I like about it is the real-time nature of it. Stats are all updated in real-time, and I can even “spy” on visitors to see what they’re doing right now. Analytics has a several-hour delay, by contrast.
If you want some more information on reducing your bounce rate, check out this post I wrote about plugging the “leaks” in your blog.
David Risley has been building and operating authority blogs for 15 years, and operating a six-figure business doing it for a decade.
Thanks for sharing the link. Daily Shot Of Coffee is my most successful blog to do date, yet it also has the highest bounce rate I’ve seen on one of my blogs. It would be nice to get a second opinion from another service.
On a related note, any tips for reducing bounce rate? Besides using a second service to monitor stats.
Check out that “leaks” post I linked to at the end of the post.
How did I miss that! So far I’m loving the stats on Clicky, although I should probably wait for a bigger sample size.
Mike and David, let me know what do you think about my reasoning here. Maybe this is a blog post on its own
I believe it is false to look at the bounce rate (BR) as a piece of data on its own. I believe it has to be looked at with other considerations and is much more complex than we think. Examples:
1.One of my sites has around 50-60% BR. At first, I worried. Then I considered what my website is and adjusted my thinking:
Since I built that site for affiliate marketing my intention is for people to click away, really. I believe the site has one of the best content on the web for its niche, so it didn’t make sense to have a high BR. However, if I am getting people to click the aff links from the very first page they land on that means high BR, yet it also means I was able to convince them very quickly to follow the links I provide.
2.
If BR is high (lets say 60%) but staying on the website is long (2min+) then again you might not need to worry about the BR depending on the goals of your site. Back to my site from #1, so if a visitor lands on my page, spends 2min+ reading then goes away that might not be bad for business if you compare that to the aff links clicks. It could easily mean the content was great and they decided to proceed where I want them to go (to a store) instead of meaning the content is bad.
Lastly, this is what Google says about its bounce rate data:
“Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert….”
Again, they say that “….high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors…” Generally that what it means but it really depends on your goals.
To me David’s website is better of with a lower BR because he tries to sell his own products. However, people might not be clicking away because the content isn’t great but simply because his niche is so competitive that people are just clicking thru websites like his cause they are overwhelmed with so many of them, to the point they don’t take time to evaluate them.
Simply, the BR data are more complex and analytic then just good vs bad content.
I am using both tools as well, and I think it might have to do with that fact that Analytics doesn’t show people (or their behavior) if they only spent short time on the blog and clicked back. Not sure, just guessing, but Clicky counts everything in, which is better.
The funny thing is that I read somewhere (might be one of the Google analytics blog posts or something) that a bounce rate of 70% is normal for blogs and it isn’t something to worry about.
That’s interesting. Well, either way, it seems there’s something odd about how they measure it. I mean, its a pretty big discrepancy.
I do have a low bounce rate..mainly because of the inner linking I do which has my numbers very low. Plus I do a couple track system to give me some real numbers.
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
I actually discovered this a few weeks ago. I was pretty frustrated with a 79% bounce rate and average onsite time of around 1 minute, 56 seconds based on Big Goog. However through Get Clicky my bounce rate is only 23% and average time on site is 4 minutes, 24 seconds. That’s a huge difference. I’m not saying I still don’t have tweaking to do on certain posts I’ve got a non optimized title where I was trying to gain eyeballs and attention, and it’s pulling in traffic for “masturbation techniques”. Yeah, not ideal for a personal development blog
So anyway I believe that somewhere in the middle is the truth in numbers. I’m digging get clicky and of course the numbers are more palatable. I just realize there is still some work to do.
I also have a high bounce rate of ~60%. Do you think that the higher visitor numbers and click-rates from Google analytics are due to it taking into all the non-human visitors and the “1 visit, time on site 00:00″ that referring sites sometimes give?
Perhaps. There’s a 2000-visitor gap, and I’m thinking that those 2,000 might not be real people, yet Analytics is counting it. Just a guess, though.
Perhaps. There’s a 2000-visitor gap, and I’m thinking that those 2,000 might not be real people, yet Analytics is counting it. Just a guess, though.
Music to my ears Dave!
I was freaking out about my bounce rate wondering what in hell I was doing wrong.
Since I use only Google’s service I now know to reserve my panic until after I check out a second service.
Cool one Dave. Just signed up to Get Clicky now to try it out!! Thanks
Piwik is another stat service but you have to install it on your own server for tracking. It offers all the features that you can find on google analytics and any other stat service. I found bounce rate and top content difference in both google analytics and piwik as well.
Great post Dave…! I use both too but they are kind of close my bounce rate is about 20% lower on clicky but the visits seem to be about equal. In wordpress they have a Clicky add on which I love because it is real time….But I definitely use both…
How does Clicky compare to clicktale. i know lots of people who love clicktale and i have never heard of clicky
I just p a i d $21 for an i P a d 2-64GB and my boyfriend loves his Panasonîc Lumîx GF 1 Camera that we got for $38 there arriving tomorrow by UPS.I will never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially when I also sold a 40 inch LED TV to my boss for $657 which only cost me $62 to buy.
Here is the website we use to get it all from BídsFírst.Com
Even at 80%+ i don’t think a high bounce rate is all that bad. Sometimes the user finds exactly what they are searching for in that first page. There would be need to continue onto to the site and read other pages.
thank you for posting this. I just signed up for clicky…
I guess I don’t really care if my bounce rate is super high if people come to my site for a quick answer. I do care if they come looking for more general information, and are not reading the page. I hope this lets me know the difference