What is Google Analytics Bounce Rate

What is Bounce Rate in Google Analytics?

GABR stands for the Google Analytics Bounce rate. Well before you go ahead, I think you should have a basic idea of the “Bounce Rate” and “Google Analytics”. Well, don’t worry I have covered all of it in great detail & explanation in our previous post. It won’t take more than 10 minutes. Check out the GABR link

Like any other tool, Google Analytics is a comprehensive tool provided by Google to make your website successful & it includes every possible tool you can have to manage & organize your website data and traffic. Analyzing your website traffic can help you to understand how your audience is interacting with your content, where are they coming from & let you see how your website is performing over time.

Quick Fact: More than 66% of all websites today are using Google Analytics tool for managing their website business.

In this post, I will try to cover everything related to “Bounce Rate”. I will be covering the measures you can take to improve your website ranking as well as some of the common mistakes that you should avoid.

We will look at the below points in detail throughout the post.

• Why do people Bounce?
• How to check the Bounce Rate in Google Analytics?
• Why the Bounce Rate is an important metric/factor to consider?
• How you can improve Bounce Rate?

Again a gentle reminder if you know nothing about Bounce Rate then do check out our previous post here.

Okay. So now at this moment, I assume you have gone through the post and know already what is the “Bounce Rate” in Google Analytics.

Why do people Bounce?

A “Bounce” generally occurs when a user lands on the landing page of your website and exits without triggering any requests to “Google Analytics Server”. By saying a “request” I mean navigating on the different pages of the same site.

©hotjar.com

Okay, you got it what is Bounce. But why do people Bounce?

Well, there are tons of reasons for “why people Bounce”. Let’s look at some of the major & most common reasons for Bouncing off from the website.

Reasons for Bouncing off from the website

1. Maybe your audience or visitors doesn’t match the purpose of your website.

let’s say your website is offering premium courses on cracking the toughest exams such as JEE, GATE, CAT… Now let’s assume that someone has visited your website and he/she is looking for a “Programming course”. Well in that situation isn’t it obvious that he/she will not visit further pages of your website as you are not offering such type of course. A Bounce will occur in that case & you can’t do anything about it. Because your website doesn’t serve the need of the audience.

2. Appearance – is your website visually appealing?

Maybe you have great & unique content on your website but is your website looks visually good. Most of the websites provide great content but just because of the “Bad design” or “Not attractive” they lose their audience.

3. Loading or performance time of your website.

You know what I mean. It is found from the research that you lose most of the audience if your websites take more than 3 seconds to load. Usually, people get irritated or sometimes even switch to another website if it takes too long to load.

4. Is your website is simple, easy & painless to use?

Sometimes people bounce when your website design is too complex or not so easy to use.

How to check the Bounce Rate in Google Analytics?

Bounce Rate is one of the few features provided by the Google Analytics tool. Well, you must have a Google Analytics account to check your website’s bounce rate.

Let’s see how to check the Bounce Rate in Google Analytics.

Once you have set up your account it’s pretty easy to check the bounce rate. Navigate to the homepage of Google Analytics. Then go to Behaviour -> Site content -> All pages. You will be able to see a table named Bounce Rate. See the below image for reference.

©hotjar.com

This table shows the bounce rate of all pages. It’s good to know how this bounce rate is calculated. I have covered it in our previous article here.

To check the Bounce Rate of individual pages you can go to the advanced search option located just above the Bounce rate table. You can search individual pages’ bounce rate by typing your page name in the search box. You can further narrow it down by including “Dimensions & Metric” in your search. Don’t worry if these terms are not known to you. Luckily we have covered them in our article to make your life easier.

Metric in Google Analytics Link

Dimension in Google Analytics Link

©hotjar.com

Why the Bounce Rate is an important metric/factor to consider?

©cxl.com

A general thumb rule for bounce rate:

80%+ is very bad

70 – 80% is poor

50 – 70% is average

30 – 50% is excellent

Does “Bounce Rate” really affects your website ranking or not is a heated debate going on for years. Because not all websites use “Google Analytics” and so it is hard for Google to track their “Bounce Rate”.

But there are a few things that you should take care of if your website has a high “Bounce Rate”. From research, it’s found that the average bounce rate is between 40% to 50%. Anything more than that is not good for business.

Having a high Bounce Rate is often a symptom of other SEO factors. Here are just a few SEO factors you might want to consider when you have an abnormally high Bounce Rate.

• Slow loading speed
• Poor mobile optimization
• Low-quality web page design
• A mismatch between content & keywords.

So usually having a low or average Bounce Rate is good for your website. But again it depends on what your website is about.

How you can improve the bounce rate?

Well, there are certain ways by which you can improve the Bounce Rate of your website.

An easy way to fix this problem would be fixing the landing page issues. I will walk you through some of the most common measures you can take right now to improve “Bounce Rate”.

But before you start it’s a good idea to identify the page with the highest “Bounce Rate”. Again go to your Google Analytics Home page & go to Behaviour -> Site content -> All pages. There you will see a table for “Bounce Rate”. Most likely fixing issues of the page having a high “Bounce Rate” can solve a greater part of your problem.

Some of the measures:

1. Improve the loading speed of your website.

Quick Fact: According to research a one-sec delay can cause 11% fewer page views & a 17% decrease in customer satisfaction. Hope you understand the seriousness of loading speed.

Well, there are several ways by which you can improve your site’s loading speed. If you don’t have time to go through all measures then two things you can try right now is optimizing images & switching to a better and faster-hosting provider.

2. Provide a better overall user experience.

User experience is the overall feeling of the user when they interact with your website. A good user experience doesn’t necessarily mean a website that is easy to use, it has to be appealing as well as pleasing. Creating a website that looks equally great on all platforms and devices is the first step for a better user experience.

3. Use short clips, animations, or even videos to engage your audience.

Video is much powerful and more engaging when it comes down to images or texts. They can grab more attention when compared to other tools.

4. Use high-quality images to grab the audience’s attention.

Most of the websites use high-quality background images because it’s an effective and proven method. Moreover, you don’t need to buy images. Tons of websites offer free images. A message conveyed through the image is far better than the text.

5. Consistency of uploading the content & content strategy.

Everyone knows the power of consistency. A consistent website can do better than a non-consistent one. Besides that quality of the content also matters.

Well, the list goes on and it never ends. But I tried my best to throw light on some of the common measures & improvements you can take to reduce the “Bounce Rate” of your website.

Ask away in the comment section if you have any questions regarding “Bounce Rate” or “Google Analytics”.

Thank you, guys!