The last By the Numbers covered conversion rate.

If there is one metric more important than the rate at which your site converts it is bounce rate.

Avinash Kaushik describes bounce rate as:

It is usually measured in two ways:

• The percentage of website visitors who see just one page on your site.
• The percentage of website visitors who stay on the site for a small amount of time (usually five seconds or less).

I am a bit more aggressive in my analysis and so I personally prefer the latter definition (using time). But either definition is fine, each has its own slight nuance. Please check what your tool’s definition is and make sure you understand it and communicate it to your data consumers.

Basically bounce rate is a measurement that is intended to show you whether your visitors are finding the content they are looking for when they visit your site.

How do you measure this success?

A bounce rate above 35% usually shows some signs that it might now be what users are looking for. A bounce rate of 50% or above is a red light. Bounce rates of 25% and less are a good inidication you are matching your content perfectly with your visitor.

Let’s look at how to apply the metric.

Paid Search:

We have a site that sells bicycles. We bid on the term “Huffy” in a broad match and send people to a landing page optimized for the conversion of Huffy bikes.

Two weeks into our paid campaign we notice that traffic from this adgroup is bouncing at a rate of 40%. This is concerning. If we match this number with our click through rate for the ad we can start to focus on the problem.

If the CTR is high and the bounce rate is high, then you are getting peole that obviously are looking for what you may be selling, but you are not presenting exactly what they are looking for.

If the CTR is low and the bounce rate is high then you might simply be suffering from ad creative that is too generic.

The most likely culprit here will be that your landing page does not exactly match what your visitor is looking for. Most paid search visitors are window shopping and you need to deliver very specific landing page results in order to get them in your conversion funnel.

Organic Search:

Let’s say we are optimizing our bicycle site for organic rankings. We have decided the we want to invest some quality man hours in ranking for the term “buy bicycles.” Within 6 months we achieve a quality ranking that is bringing in traffic.

It is at this point that your bounce rate will be able to tell you whether that term is actually what your customer is using to find your product. Too many SEOs make the mistake of getting caught up in the hunt for the showy terms. Conversion driven, meaningful terms are all that matter. Unless you are a content site what is the use of ranking for a great traffic term that has a bounce rate of 75%.

On the other hand utilize your analytics during optimization to unearth nuggets. Perhaps you only rank #20 for a term, but the small traffic trickle you get from it has a bounce rate of 10%, you stop what you are doing on other terms and get that ranking on the first page.

Understanding visitor intent is key.

Media Buying:

Bounce rate can also be a great tool when you are buying media. This is especially true if you have a conversion funnel that might take more than one visit to complete. With this scenerio people may orginally find your site via online media you have purchased, but returned via direct typing or search. This sale should still be credited to the online media. In order to get a clear perspective of the effectiveness of a banner ad or other media purchase utilize the bounce rate to gauge visitor interest.

Ranty McRants A Lot:

There was a lot of discussion during the last By the Numbers piece whether conversion rate is something SEOs should be concerned about. I found this view bizzare, as if SEOs were dumb grease monkeys, working towards an objective no matter the result beyond traffic. I think that most quality SEOs will steer clients away from “pride rankings” and towards terms that convert and lead to low bounce rates. If you are not guiding your SEO efforts via analysis then are you simply going about the process with a blindfold on.

You are not going to remain in business very long, whether client based, ecommerce, affialiate, or any other format if you do not utilize the measurements around you to create the best results in terms of return on the marketing dollar.

Resources – Here are some great resources on bounce rate that go beyond my simply explination and examples above.

Standard Metrics Revisited: #3: Bounce Rate – Avinash Kaushik
How to Analyze and Improve the “Bounce Rate” for Your Site – Dosh Dosh
Reducing High Bounce Rates – SeoGamePlan.com
Avinash Bounce Rate Video (I am an Avinash fan boy)

(Note: Bounce rate doesn’t play fair with blogs, which is why Avinash opts for the timed metric. If you use the 1 page metric you will likely always have a high bounce rate because that is how blogs are read, one quick read and a bounce.)