16 replies to this topic

[sathish sampath]

hi i have a fixed set of clients, whose referral site traffic and the search engine traffic is increasing very well. but i am not sure how to control teh bounce rate which is also increasing with the increase in the hike in traffic. i have few questions about bounce rate, if some one can help me in answering that, it would be really great.

1. will the bounce rate be deducted from overall traffic? (say if traffic shown in GA report is 100 and if the bouce rate is 50%, can i conclude that traffic could be more than 150+) something like that??
2. is there any way to reduce the bounce rate of a site?
3. how can i find the page where the bounce rate is high?

[Jarret]

1. No, I'm pretty sure that bounce rate is calculated for all visitors. I don't see any reason why they would be keeping something from you, doesn't make any sense.

2. Yeah, make it so that people want to click to another page on your site. Bounce rate is the percentage of people that leave without clicking through if I am correct.

3. Click on the Content tab on the left hand side in Analytics, under the Pages section click View Full Report and it will give you a complete run down

[sathish sampath]

1. No, I'm pretty sure that bounce rate is calculated for all visitors. I don't see any reason why they would be keeping something from you, doesn't make any sense.

2. Yeah, make it so that people want to click to another page on your site. Bounce rate is the percentage of people that leave without clicking through if I am correct.

3. Click on the Content tab on the left hand side in Analytics, under the Pages section click View Full Report and it will give you a complete run down

Thanks jarret for your reply. little conitinuation with point no. 2. does that means any user who comes and exits the site without a follow thro click will be added to teh bounce rate list? may be a silly question, but still situation makes me to ask everything about bounce rates

[sathish sampath]

Thanks jarret for your reply. little conitinuation with point no. 2. does that means any user who comes and exits the site without a follow thro click will be added to teh bounce rate list? may be a silly question, but still situation makes me to ask everything about bounce rates

if there are more hyperlinks to other urls will that also increase the bounce rate?

[Peter Matejka]

if there are more hyperlinks to other urls will that also increase the bounce rate?

No, this doesn't have anything to do directly with bounce rate. As far as i know bounce rate for a page is only calculated as amount of "nonclicking" people compared to amount of all people who come to this page(which normally shouldn't have anything to do with number of links on that page).

[MaKa]

1. will the bounce rate be deducted from overall traffic? (say if traffic shown in GA report is 100 and if the bouce rate is 50%, can i conclude that traffic could be more than 150+) something like that??

No. If you have 100 visitors to your website and a 60% bounce rate it means that 60 visitors viewed only one page on your website, and the other 40 viewed 2 or more pages.

2. is there any way to reduce the bounce rate of a site?

Make sure that visitors land on the most appropriate page of your site. If you have a square widget and a round widget section on your website make sure that links from pages about round widgets point to your round widget page.

[Randy]

In Google Analytics there are two cookies that help to determine things like time on page, bounce rate, etc. The are __utmb and __utmc.

Disclaimer: The following is if you're utilizing the newer "gs.js" code in GoAn. If you're still using the legacy "urchin.js" for your tracking the basics are the same, but some information regarding the __utmb cookie is not there.

__utmc is a true session cookie, one that expires when the user surfs away from a site or closes their browser. When a visitor hits a page if __utmc is not set GoAn counts them as a new visit. Either as a new first time visit or a new returning visit, depending upon other cookies being set or not.

__utmb also helps GoAn determine time on page, bounce rate etc. It's what can best be described as a modified session cookie, in that it gets an expiration date set to 30 minutes in the future. This one is somewhat there to account for some browsers that don't correctly handle session cookies, but is also going to be a main player with some new automated off-site click tracking that's not yet implemented. One of the bits of information it contains is current timestamp. Another is the number of pages in a site each visitor hits in a given session. It gets reset each time the user moves to another page of your site, effectively telling GoAn how much time a visitor spent on a page.

So in theory and depending upon which browser a person is using, any time they hit a single page of your site and then browse away it'll be counted as a Bounce. The same is true if they hit a page of your site and close their browser. And the same is also true if they hit your site and do nothing for 30 minutes. In theory.

<shameless plug>I did a little write up the other day on my blog explaining what all of the Google Analytics Cookies do, if anyone is interested. As well as what information is saved to each.

Improving bounce rate is one of those It Depends things. Because if you're offering up information, the search engines are doing their job well and searchers type in the correct search phrase(s) it may require that users visit no more than one page of your site. This can artificially inflate your bounce rate for some info sites.

If you're an e-commerce site or one where you need visitors to view more than one page to attain your goal the bounce rate can become an important metric. How to improve it usually means you need to do a better job with the page to first draw your visitors into your content (by using better headlines, subheadlines and first paragraph, etc), stopping the normal search & destroy mode of operation of most surfers exhibit and getting them to click on the one or two things on the page that will pre-qualify them and get them moving a step closer to completing your goal.

In short there's no standard, generic answer in how one decreases bounce rate. You'd need to do some conversion testing to see where the breakdown is occurring and what things need to be improved.

[rolf]

One of the sites I look after got a significant reduction in bounce rate by adding a highly visible and context specific navigation menu to some pages.

To be more clear, we have about 100 articles, all were already linked from every page in a main navigation dropdown (and sporadically inline in the content too). We categorised each article into topical themes and made a prominent menu at the top of each article that said 'other articles about topic X' and then listed/linked the appropriate articles.

I haven't got the figures to hand, but we saw an immediate change in bounce rate to nearly 0% on many of the pages, and the average rate went from significantly over 50% to significantly under 50%. (Sorry I can't be more specific with those figures at the moment)

This specific change may not be appropriate for your site/content, but the principle could apply - even though all those links were already in the navigation, a bit of latteral thinking as to what would be most relevant to someone on that specific page and then making that more prominent made a huge difference.

Edited by rolf, 08 October 2008 - 11:42 AM.

[circleck]

Avinash Kaushik from GooAn says that a high bounce rate means "i came to your site, i puked, i left" watch this video on youtube, (i'm guessing you're somewhat of a beginner at all this?) i am a beginner and i thought this video was awesome.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppgfjo6IIf4

[kynduvme]

To help with bounce rate, you need to make the site look better and make content that a visitor who finds you through relevant keywords thinks they've found what they are looking for. Oh and bounce rate is visitors who leave within 5 seconds of arriving.

[MaKa]

Avinash Kaushik from GooAn says that a high bounce rate means "i came to your site, i puked, i left"

I wouldn't agree with his statement for all queries. If I'm searching for the height of the Eiffel tower and I get my answer on the first page I click on, there is no need for me to go further into the website, and that doesn't mean I (unless I'm simultaneously fighting an violent illness ).

[MaKa]

Oh and bounce rate is visitors who leave within 5 seconds of arriving.

Not in Google Analytics.

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.

(my emphasis)

[Randy]

MaKa is fast.

In GoAn it can actually get more convoluted, though they don't tell you this.

Because of the way their cookies work (__utmb in this case) it's actually possible to have a situation where a visitor lands on a page then does nothing for 30 minutes. Meaning they neither close the browser window, nor go to another page of the site for a full 30 minutes.

In this (exceedingly rare) circumstance if someone moved to a 2nd page 31 minutes or more after the initial arrival the original visit would be recorded as a Bounce. Even though technically it's not one.

Some analytics packages do have a xx seconds timing aspect for bounce rate. There are debates far and wide as to which method is most accurate. Personally I don't think one is any better than the other. What's more important is to compare bounce rates with the same tool or method so that the anomalies average out.

[circleck]

I wouldn't agree with his statement for all queries. If I'm searching for the height of the Eiffel tower and I get my answer on the first page I click on, there is no need for me to go further into the website, and that doesn't mean I (unless I'm simultaneously fighting an violent illness ).

the violent illness could be another mind control device used by Google in their quest for domination?!

[torka]

Because of the way their cookies work (__utmb in this case) it's actually possible to have a situation where a visitor lands on a page then does nothing for 30 minutes. Meaning they neither close the browser window, nor go to another page of the site for a full 30 minutes.

In this (exceedingly rare) circumstance if someone moved to a 2nd page 31 minutes or more after the initial arrival the original visit would be recorded as a Bounce. Even though technically it's not one.

Ha! I did not know this. Learn something new every day. Some days, multiple things.

I already open almost every new site I visit in a new tab in Firefox. I shall now begin letting them marinate for at least 30 minutes before I even start looking at them, much less clicking through to another page. Particularly if I know the site is using GoAn. Because I am evil, and because I can.

--Torka