Why Do Marketers Ignore the Bounce Rate Metric?

Such a simple metric — Bounce Rate. However, even with industry evangelists like Avinash working to shift our focus to this website metric by naming Bounce Rate "The sexiest metric ever...", marketers are still ignoring this simple metric. Visitors bouncing off of your site at first sight should be a startling reality of your "first impression". Imagine operating a bricks and mortar store and 75% of potential customers left the store within 10 seconds — basically they walk in, take a quick look and walk right back out. In the "real world" we would take immediate attention to fix this major issue. In the "online world" we have a quantifiable metric updated every few minutes and people simply ignore this metric.

I believe Google Analytics should send you SMS or RSS alerts if your bounce rate increases more than 10% at any given time. Because if it does increase by 10%, you are losing potentially qualified customers because of that fancy design element you put up!

If you are ahead of the crowd and passionately focused on this one simple metric, Bounce Rate, then lets look at what you can do to make it better. First you need to establish What is a Good Bounce Rate? The new benchmarking service from Google Analytics will provide you good insight into what is the "norm" amongst similar sites in your industry. If not, I believe a 20% bounce rate is fantastic, 40% average and acceptable and above 50% should be improved up...oh and if you have above 80% you better get your act together and stop losing 8 out of 10 potential conversions before they have a chance to hear your message.

So once you've established what your bounce rate is and if it is good or not, start thinking about your segments. I'm not talking about demographics or anything like that (not a big fan of demo), I'm talking first-time and repeat visitor segments, which indicate attitudes. A first time visitor needs to understand if they want to take the time to explore your website and if it will lead value in their time (time is money). A return visitor however most likely understands what to expect but now they may need to find something new. It is likely that both their intentions are the same — came to find information, make a purchase, get contact information, etc. — but their attitudes are different.

Ideally when you segment this metric you'll find your bounce rate for return visitors is lower and for new visitors it is higher. Once you've established your bounce rates you have to consider if you want to invest in improving (lowering) your bounce rate for a particular segment and what impact it will have.

This is one of many posts to come on how to Optimizer Your Bounce Rates...stay tuned.