First of all, I would define the term ‘bounce rate’ just in case if you do not understand what it is.
The formula used to calculate bounce rate is:
Bounce Rate = Single Page Access/ Entries
The higher bounce rate, the more single page access you got. Now the question is, does high bounce rate matter to you? Most of the marketers do not bother to care about this, but I believe they have to investigate what are the causes of the said issue.
Here are some possibilities you may encounter:
- False drop from search result, which means that you may define a wrong set of keywords, titles or descriptions thus information seeker got a ‘wrong answer’ retrieved from search engines
- Poor content. It applies to either poor copywriting or worse layout design.
- Single access for single purpose. Visitors go to your website may due to:
- Download driver from your website
- Download documents from your website etc
Hence, does bounce rate matter? I would say “it depends”. Of cause we would expect visitors to browse through all the webpages, however you may also expect the visitors to get what they want by 1 click!
Hi, Eugene,
Good to have you here with all the posts. I would love to make friends with you when I come back to Hong Kong. From your online work could I tell that you are a passionate tech pioneer with dreams. I have passion and dreams too.
Just get to know you through Linkedin where you have a SEO post on it. Well, I am no expert on SEO, but I try to explain it from business and user experience perspective, which most of IT guys don’t. Of course, your company is different, since it is not a “local” but a “global” company.
I also planned to optimise my site before launching it. But you could have a first glance via http://www.ewangenius.com, and you might be more interested in the Techlog igassis.ewangenius.com, where I wrote many stuff about digital life/work.
We can even keep in touch at Facebook, Linkedin or Skype, AIM. You have my email.
Great article and information. Bounce rate issues are very important and usually the starting point for many people to improve on.