The Positive Side to Bounce Rate

Did you know that a user can complete action on your website with just one click?

I recently read an article on MeetContent.com that talked about “The Bounce Rate Myth”. If you’re familiar with Google Analytics and your website statistics, you’ll be familiar with the term ‘bounce rate’.

Bounce rate is a term used to describe the amount of single page visits to your website, meaning a user visits one page and one page only on your site. To most, this seems like a negative measurement and truthfully, it can be bad in some cases.

It’s important to keep your eye on your website’s bounce rate especially if you’re running an online ad campaign. If your ads are not targeted (Google Ads, Facebook Ads etc.), your bounce rate can increase because a user may land on your site and realize the information provided is not what they’re actually looking for.

On the other hand (as noted on MeetContent.com), bounce rate is not always a ‘bad thing’ or negative measurement.  MeetContent.com points out that users can in fact complete action on your site in just one click. A user may follow you on Twitter, bookmark your site or print a web page among many other things, which can still create leads and potentially a sale.

At Echidna, when running online ad campaigns, we try to keep client’s bounce rates under 35%. Of course, this number does vary depending on the client, organization and ad campaign goals, but this number helps us to ensure that our ads are targeted, well-written and appeal to our target demographic.

I’ll leave you with a few good pieces of advice on bounce rate off MeetContent.com:

• Every metric has more than one angle
• A bounce does not mean a visitor didn’t take action
• We need to understand web content that encourages offline action