Bounce rate is a term often used when talking about web analytics. Bounce rate refers to the number of people who visit a website and never go beyond the first page. For most websites, this is not the desired action and the goal is to achieve a low bounce rate.

What Affects Bounce Rate?

There are several factors that contribute to the bounce rate of a website.

1. Website Stickiness - The design of your website plays a key roll in the bounce rate of your website. If your landing or home page is cluttered, difficult to navigate or does not give the visitor a quick indication that they have come to the right place for what they are looking for, they will likely leave without exploring further.
2. Traffic Quality - Driving the wrong traffic to a website might boost your visitor numbers, but will not do anything for your conversion numbers. If you are driving the wrong kind of traffic to your website either by promoting in the wrong places or running misleading paid ads, you are wasting your time and negatively influencing your bounce rate.
3. False Negative - A casual viewer, who may be searching for what you offer, but bookmarks and leaves the website shortly after arriving, could create a false negative to your bounce rate averages.
4. Paid Ads - If the visitors to your website are leaving by following the link to a paid ad, it will inflate your bounce rate numbers, but on the plus side, (hopefully) you have made money from that ad.

Improving Bounce Rate

Bounce rate averages vary depending on the vertical you are in. Additionally, bounce rates vary based on how the traffic gets to your website. For example, traffic that arrives through organic keywords (ranking well in the search engines) or paid search ads, typically will produce a lower bounce rate than traffic that arrives through referring websites. In a recent conversation with one of Google's web analytics engineers, Google sees an average global bounce rate of 50%. So if you need a bench mark - use that number.

Improving bounce rate involves analyzing your web design, paid ad campaigns, organic keywords that are driving traffic to your website etc, and trying to improve the bounce rate in each area. Unless you see obvious areas of your website that need wholesale changes, make small adjustments and measure the impact of those changes before making more changes.