By Pawel Borowicz on Tuesday, 11 August 2020
Category: Design & Development Tips & Tricks

What is bounce rate and why you should not be scared of it

Having a website is like having a baby. You want it to be the best of the best. You care for it and you cherish it. It's totally normal. But then you come across the term "bounce rate" and your head starts to spin. Numbers show that your beloved website is loved only by you. Why other people don't feel the same?  

First things first: what is bounce rate? 

Bounce rate is a term that is used in web traffic analysis. Bounce is a single page visit. Every user who visits your website, spends couple of minutes reading content and then exits it rather than continuing to view other pages within the same site is counted as a bounce. In other words: it's the percentage of people that leave your site without doing anything or browsing any further. How to measure it?

Rb = Tv / Te 

where:

Rb = bounce rate

Tv = total number of visitors viewing one page only

Te = total entries to page

Suppose your website is visited by 100 people daily and 40 of them leave your site without browsing any other pages. It means that your bounce rate is 40%.

Why are visitors bouncing from a website?

There are several reasons why some users leave your site without going to other pages. Maybe the problem lays in your site's code or content? Or maybe it's because your website load too long?

These are the most common bouncing-off routes visitors take:

When bounce rate is good?

Your bounce rate should be between 26% and 70%, but ideal range is 26% to 40%. As you can clearly see, too low and too high bounce rate is not what you want. The chart below shows bounce rate averages for the most common kinds of websites and it's been created thanks to Google Analytics bench-marking. This data will help you set a target for your site. Remember that interpreting your bounce rate in complete isolation can be very harmful to you and your website thus it's a very good idea to consider some factors such as type of your website, your content etc. first.

 

What plugins are going to help?

​ If you want to increase your site's search performance, you should get a closer look at your bounce rate. If it's high it could means couple of things, such as poor user experience, bad-organized landing page or website loading time is too long. There are couple of things you could do to decrease bounce rate.

  1. Hello Bar 

People will spend more time on your website if you engage them in a right way. Great idea is to create a simple pop-up in a form of hello bar, modal, slider, alert bell or page takeover. You decide! In just 5 minutes you will have a custom pop-up ready to go straight on your site. Thanks to this plugin you will grow your email list, generate new leads, reduce cart abandonment and, more importantly, convert your visitors into customers!

Learn more: https://wordpress.org/plugins/hellobar/

 2. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)

 A related post plugin will help you reduce your bounce rate by encouraging visitors to click on other interesting content on your website. The ideas here is a user who is engaged in your content will readily jump into another post. Widget with related posts will help him to do it and additionally will serve as ads for other content on your website. It's so simple!

Learn more: https://wordpress.org/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/

 3. Redirection

There's nothing worse than seeing a 404 page. Plugin Redirection will help you avoid these kind of situations. By installing it, you will easily manage 301 redirections and keep track of 404 errors. This plugin will also help you tidy up all loose ends your website has. Forget about broken links and improve your site ranking!

Learn more: https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/

4. The Events Calendar 

 If you want to inform your visitors about interesting events, gatherings or conferences related to you business, there's nothing better than event calendar. It's easy in use and completely customizable which means that you can add your personal touch to it.

Learn more: www.wordpress.org/plugins/the-events-calendar/

Befriend bounce rate

Bounce rate is an excellent metric that can be used to analyze your marketing efforts. It will show you whether people like your website or is there something you can do better. Don't be scared if bounce rate is over 90%. Instead of panicking, calmly think about all these things on your website that need improvement. Focusing on meeting your visitors' expectations is crucial if you want to have an amazing website. And we all know that amazing websites rank better!
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