Bounce Rate
Chris and I were going over Google Analytics the other day as she recently got the add-on going on her blog, and got thinking about Bounce Rates. She thought that it was the percentage of visitors who upon coming to the site, left in a certain amount of time realizing that it was not what they wanted at all. I had looked it up before, but had since forgotten what I had learned so I decided to look it up again this morning.
Bounce rate represents the percentage of initial visitors who bounce away to a different site rather than staying within the website (go to other pages within the same site). According to Wikipedia, there is a formula to calculate your bounce rate:
Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visits Viewing One Page / Total Number of Visits
A visitor can bounce in a number of ways including; clicking on a link that sends them to another website, closing the window or tab, typing in a new URL, using the back button (to send them to a site other than your own) and/or session timeout (which is usually about 30 minutes).
According to Google.com analytics specialist Avinash Kaushik, "It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying". This statement may be true for actual websites, but in my opinion, when it comes to blogs and other informative sites, the percentages should be higher. I think blogs are much more of a daily read sort of site than one you would come to and go from post to post. The Wikipedia entry on Bounce Rate seemed to agree with me and stated that metrics such as returning visitors vs. new visitors might be more informative.
This being said, I am no longer going to care to much about my 70% Bounce Rate here on the Great Abyss, but rather focus on my 72:28 returning to new visitors ratio. I think it is a good ratio where most of my readers are returning (I must be doing something right) but I still have a decent percentage of new visitors coming in. This statistic is better used over time, where your returning would increase ever so slightly...right?
2 comments:
Yea, I still don't get it. I will need you to explain this to me in person. I think I have a 66% Bounce rate, but what does that mean again? My ratio for Returning:New isn't that good, I will have to go check it. I'm still sorting this analytics out.
66% bounce rate means that 66% of your visitors leave your site in some manner instead of going further into your site (reading another post). It isn't really a big deal because most of your readers only come for your most recent post and then go to their other daily sites. Your returning to new ratio will not be that good for you yet since you just got analytics - it takes time for your actual regulars to be seen as such on Analytics.
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