What Is Bounce?

There are a lot of terms and phrases thrown around in business and marketing industries, particularly when it comes to online businesses and digital marketing.

What Is Bounce

However, not all of these terms are adequately explained and this can leave a lot of new and small business owners feeling confused. 

Luckily, that’s where we come in – we are going to help explain some of the jargon linked to your online business. 

The term we are going to be focusing on here is bounce – so what is it and how can it help you improve your online business? Let’s find out! 

What Is Bounce In Online Business? 

Bounce, or bounce rate, refers to the number of visitors to your site that do not leave the page they have visited.

This means that the visitor has clicked on a link, taken a look at a single page, and then left your website without sticking around to see anything else.

Bounce rate is a way that online business owners monitor and measure their website’s engagement with visitors and customers. It is given as a percentage so business owners can see the percentage of visitors who leave after viewing a single page. 

For example, if a website receives a total of 10 visitors in a day but 5 of them left after viewing a single page and did not click to view a second page, then this means that the bounce rate of the website is 50% because half of the visitors left after a single page session. 

This means that as an online business owner, you want to keep your bounce rate as low as possible. 

Bounce Rate And Exit Rate: What’s The Difference?

Bounce rate is often confused with exit rate because both are used to monitor website engagement but they are actually two different measurements.

While bounce rate measures how many visitors leave a website without visiting any additional pages, exit rate measures the visitors who leave from a specific page. 

This means that all bounces are classed as exits, but not all exits count as bounces. 

For example, a website could have 10 visitors and 5 of those entered and ‘bounced’ from the homepage without viewing any other pages, giving the website a bounce rate of 50%.

However, 8 of those visitors chose to view other pages but left the website through the same homepage. This means that while 5 visitors left immediately, another three chose to visit other pages but left through this homepage.

This gives the homepage an exit rate of 80%. 

While exit rates help business owners find out what kind of content their audiences are most likely to quit the website through, bounce rates help find out which keywords are bringing in visitors but the content is not keeping them or turning them into customers.

What Bounce Rate Should You Aim For?

There is no exact ‘bounce rate’ that you should aim for. Instead, you should aim to try and reduce your bounce rate as much as possible.

This is because it means that you are turning a majority of your visitors into loyal customers and generating more revenue for your business. 

However, in general, there is no ‘good’ bounce rate. 

For example, a page with a high bounce rate does not necessarily mean that your visitor disliked your content. They could have found exactly what they were searching for and did not need to visit any other pages.

On the other hand, some business owners may take this as a sign that their content was not ‘good enough’ to retain the visitor. 

The nature and content of your website can also dictate whether or not your bounce rate will be naturally high.

For example, using landing pages often leads to high bounce rates between 70% and 90%, while retail and e-commerce websites ten to have a lower bounce rate of between 20% to 40%. 

So, what kind of website you have will also limit how long you can get your bounce rate for your business’s website. 

How To Reduce Bounce Rate

Using your website’s analytics is a great way to find out what areas you need to change and improve to help your business grow and expand.

As a result, many website managers and business owners choose to try and reduce their website’s bounce rate – but how? 

Check out these proven ways to reduce your bounce rate! 

Analytics

This method involves refining the definition of ‘bounce rate’ on your analytics. Sometimes, your analytics will count visitors as a bounce even if they spend a considerable amount of time on a single page.

This is an indicator that the visitor enjoyed your content and found exactly what they needed, making it a success – yet some analytical tools such as Google Analytics will count this visitor as a bounce! 

What Is Bounce (1)

So, by adjusting your analytics, you can refine bounces so you have a better understanding of which visitors actually engage with a single piece of your content and what the actual number of unsuccessful ‘bounces’ you have. 

Content

An obvious way to improve your bounce rate is to change your content. 

If you find that your homepage in particular has a high bounce rate, then you can use your web analytics to try and find the best content you have to feature on that homepage. This will help improve your engagement with visitors. 

This is a method that a lot of e-commerce websites use as they  can feature their best selling and most viewed products on their homepage as they are more likely to be visited, reducing your website’s overall bounce rate.

However, you can still use it with all kinds of businesses and website content. 

It’s also a great indicator to help shift your attention to the kind of content which gathers the most engagement.

If you find shorter articles have a lower bounce rate than longer ones, then you can start producing more shorter articles to try and copy this success. 

Conclusion

So,  that’s everything you need to know about bounce and bounce rates in online business and marketing. Check out the above information and we hope this has helped you understand more about your new business.

Justin Shaw