Bounce Rate: What Is It And How Should I Use It?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

If you are new to webmastering you may have heard of a bounce rate. But what is it? There really are two ways to define bounce rate.

1. Percentage of Visitors Who See One Page – Some analytics software define bounce rate as the percentage of people who only view one page on your website. They may stay on that one page for a couple of minutes, but they don’t go any further. They read a little bit and move on. You don’t have enough mojo to keep them around longer, therefore they “bounce” off to somewhere else.
2. Percentage Of Visitors Who Leave Your Site After A Short Period Of Time - Another way to measure bounce rate is by the length of time visitors spend on your site. Most analytics software define this amount of time as five seconds or less. Some use a minute. But whatever the length of time is, it isn’t long enough to say that the visitor has a real interest in your content.

Ideally, you want your site visitors to stick around long enough to order something. If you run a retail site, you want them to checkout. If you sell services, you want them to purchase, or come back later and make a purchase. But you want them to be genuinely interested in what you have to offer. If your site is an affiliate site then you want your visitors to purchase from your affiliates. To do that, they’ve got to stick around long enough to be genuinely interested in your content.

The best way to ensure that people stick around is to give them what they want. Understand what your target market wants and provide it for them. That means making the absolute most out of your content. But it also means marketing your website to the search engines effectively. Your bounce rate is an important part of analytics and can tell you a great deal about your traffic and the quality of visitors you are getting.