Website Analytics – What is a Good Bounce Rate?
ByWhat is the industry standard for bounce rate?
The simple and short answer is that there is no industry standard. There are a lot of factors that influence the bounce rate, so you really can’t compare bounce rates of one site (or page) to another.
The goal of the site should generally be to reduce the bounce rate to as low as possible. The lower the bounce rate the better job the site is doing to keep users engaged. One exception may be a site that is intended to accomplish all relevant user engagement on it’s landing page. This is more common on say, a campaign landing page intended to sign up users for direct marketing emails. Bounce rate is very unique to your site and page.
The best way to know if you are doing better or worse is to set your own baseline and compare your performance over time.
- Retail sites driving well targeted traffic 20-40% bounce.
- Simple landing pages (with one call to action such as add to cart) I've seen bounce at a much higher rate, anywhere from 70-90%.
- Content websites with high search visibility (often for irrelevant terms) can bounce at 40-60%.
- Portals (MSN, Yahoo groups etc) have much lower bounce rates in our experience 10-30%.
- Service sites (self service or FAQ sites) again usually lower 10-30%.
- Lead generation (services for sale) 30-50%
Time On Site: Why is This Important?
“Avg. Time on Site.” This is an important statistic in terms of better search engine placement. Google and other search engines take note of how long a visitor stays on your site as an indicator of authority and importance. Any elements of your webpage that keep visitors there longer is called ‘stickiness.' Elements such as videos, news, polls and MP3 can keep a visitor engaged and attentive, keeping them on the page longer. This statistic in the analytics program can help you measure and track what new elements you'll need to create stickiness.
Increased time on site results in more sales. How can you fix this?
