Google defines Bounce Rate: The percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce Rate is a measure of visit quality and a high Bounce Rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren’t relevant to your visitors.
Not sure I agree with that second sentence, though. If a person lands on a particular page and then leaves, it could be because it was exactly what he/she was looking for. Or, it could be because it was not at all what they were looking for. I don’t think bounce rate means much at all — except the percentage of single-page visitors.
The relevance of these metrics depend a lot on the type of website you are running. For a blog, in the ideal world, you would want loyal readers to come regularly read new posts; in that frame, how often people come back (i.e. visits/absolute unique visitors) is very important, more than the bounce rate (if you come just to read a new post, the bounce will be high).
On the other hand, if you run a commercial website, it’s not unlike a supermarket – you want people to browse through every aisle, maybe come in because they google’d one product, then check the price, then other products… In that frame, bounce is very important, it reflects whether the first impression of your website on the new visitor was good enough that they would stay longer.
I think bounce rate would be high for a regular blog with a set of regular readers. They’ve seen the other pages, so they read one page and go away until tomorrow.
Hi Dick -
So what’s a bounce, and why does it rate?
..mrt
I would have guessed twice as many visitors for this site.
Google defines Bounce Rate: The percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce Rate is a measure of visit quality and a high Bounce Rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren’t relevant to your visitors.
Not sure I agree with that second sentence, though. If a person lands on a particular page and then leaves, it could be because it was exactly what he/she was looking for. Or, it could be because it was not at all what they were looking for. I don’t think bounce rate means much at all — except the percentage of single-page visitors.
Thanks, John -
I’d agree. I would think there’s linkage then between Bounce Rate (high) and Average Pageviews (low)
…mrt
The relevance of these metrics depend a lot on the type of website you are running. For a blog, in the ideal world, you would want loyal readers to come regularly read new posts; in that frame, how often people come back (i.e. visits/absolute unique visitors) is very important, more than the bounce rate (if you come just to read a new post, the bounce will be high).
On the other hand, if you run a commercial website, it’s not unlike a supermarket – you want people to browse through every aisle, maybe come in because they google’d one product, then check the price, then other products… In that frame, bounce is very important, it reflects whether the first impression of your website on the new visitor was good enough that they would stay longer.
I think bounce rate would be high for a regular blog with a set of regular readers. They’ve seen the other pages, so they read one page and go away until tomorrow.
[...] Daily Dose of Excel [...]
Here’s what reinvigorate says
Here’s what longhead says
Hmmm, the Reinvigorate stats don’t mean much without headers, I guess
This is from my site last month
Month Jun 2009
Sites: 54336
KBytes: 4136982
Visits: 87468
Pages: 146098
Files: 276092
Hits : 408252
What do the lines (graphs?) to the left of each stat represent?
[...] Daily Dose of Excel Pointy Haired Dilbert PTS Blog The Spreadsheet [...]
Matthew, those lines show the activity over the 30 days in June.
Dick – What’s “View Depth”?
Here are mine (Google):
19.176 Visits
37.360 page views
1.95 Pagines/visit
75,64% Bounce rate
00:01:34 avg time
82,98% New vistors
Longhead:
Total Hits 419,320
Total Page Views 91,906
Total Visitors 52,165
INtersting differences
I have no idea what View Depth is and they don’t have a glossary on their site (that I could find).
[...] month ever Visitor Stats June Stats Web Stats June [...]