How to analyze and improve the bounce rate of a website"

The bounce rate is usually used to measure visitor engagement. It refers to the percentage of visitors who leave after logging on to the page, after these visitors log on, they will jump out without looking at other pages. You can use statistical tools like Google Analytics to easily calculate the bounce rate of your website.

A low bounce rate means that visitors are exploring your website more deeply. It can also be inferred that visitors and your content are highly involved. Jacob Nielsen mentioned in his article that bounce rate is still an important indicator.

As bounce rates are getting higher and higher, we must stop using "independent visitors" as an indicator to measure the success of our website. Those who leave the website immediately increase the number of independent visitors, but it does not play a role in long-term value. On the contrary, bounce volumes should be regarded as negative statistics: the website does not have enough temptation for them to participate-even a second of page browsing.

Nielsen suggested that bounce rates must be analyzed separately because there are four main sources of users: low-value recommendations, direct links to other websites, search engine tutorials, and loyal users. The reason is simple: Visitors have different needs, so they have different associations with your website.

Loyal users can access your website through the feed reader (to easily read RSS and Atom documents) and exit after reading a new article, because he is busy reading more content. Users who are eager for knowledge will access your website through search engines and will easily be tempted to click and view them everywhere. A loose visitor opens a page when browsing social channels like StumbleUpon.

Note that the bounce rate varies from source to source. Therefore, we should compare and analyze the bounce rate based on similar data in the past. For example, the search engine recommendation effect should be measured based on the previous bounce rate, rather than based on another visitor source (such as Digg.

1. Determine bounce rate based on the overall website goal

Comparing bounce rates with different visitor sources can show the value of your traffic. A low bounce rate may produce purchase, subscription, or return visit, which helps you find the best traffic source. Note that the bounce rate of each source should be determined based on the overall goal of the website.

In addition to the access source, there are also some problems that will affect the bounce rate. For example, the purpose and current design of your website. It is difficult to determine a scale as a standard for measuring bounce rates, but analysis expert avanciq kosike provides some good suggestions:

Bounce rate is an indicator that can be easily seen by many website analysis tools. It won't answer all your questions, but it will help you quickly focus on important things, show where you are wasting money and what content on your website needs to be reviewed again. Based on my personal experience for so many years, it is difficult to get a bounce rate below 20%. If the bounce rate exceeds 35%, you need to pay attention to it. If the bounce rate exceeds 50%, it is worrying.

Avinash said that there is a difference between a blog and other static websites. For a blog, the bounce rate of 50% is normal, and the bounce rate of 75% needs to be noted.

Indicators are useful, not only in identifying bounce rates, but also in influencing a specific target (such as conversion rate ). You cannot determine the bounce rate of your competitors or peers, so you need to focus on your website's past achievements and study trends to differentiate visitor models.

Will a lower bounce rate lead to more purchases or subscriptions? Which type of visitor will produce a high bounce rate? Can we change this situation by controlling elements (such as links) on the page? What are your high-traffic pages? How do visitors migrate from these high-traffic pages to other pages on the website? The following describes some improvement methods.

2. Improve bounce rate and get more page views

Each website has its own goals and requirements. Therefore, we will not describe each situation in detail here, but will only talk about the overall strategy. First, visual things have a great impact on the bounce rate of visitors. If they encounter a very relevant link, call for action, or information, they are more likely to click on other pages.

Optimizing the web page and connecting the web page to a whole can not only add value to loyal readers, but also add value to visitors who visit through referral websites or search engines. Suppose that your visitors have no idea about your website. If they want to know more information, they need to make the navigation points easy to use and add appropriate links around the content.

Nielsen proposed a solution to reduce the bounce rate:

Test a group of users. Ask them to log on to your website from a specific webpage and get feedback based on their experience. This helps you think of improvement methods.

Publish the next step. If the visitor is interested in the current page, let them take action. Add more links under the copy or content to give the visitor more information.

Many methods can be used to locate your visitor. The most important principle is to make the link highly visible and associated with the current page. Let's take a look at the BBC News website. I have always admired its outstanding interconnection practices. The following is a screenshot of a separate story page. Check the link on the sidebar:

For publishers, the BBC content model shows how pages can be well integrated into a unity whole, thus encouraging users to jump from the login page to another page. Through these two examples, you can see that content makers can include many additional links:

L links to the topic articles analyzed in depth

L links to the same topic but different articles

L only process links to the dedicated promotion pages for a specific topic

L used to invite readers to the comments section/forum links

L links to behind-the-scenes stories or background information

L multimedia demonstration (audio or video) links

You can also do this for other static websites, as long as you remember, the main purpose is to create a web page, allowing users to continue from the initial login page to other parts of the website, to meet their interests and needs.