Of course you’re using Google Analytics to analyse traffic to your site, aren’t you! And you are checking the Analytics report regularly.

But, do you know what the reported “Bounce Rate” means?

It’s quite simple really, but also very telling… the bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who only read the page that they saw when they arrived at your site. In other words, a bounce rate of 56.4% means that 56 out of each 100 visitors to your site do not click on any links on your site!

What’s a “good” bouce rate? Well our client sites experience bounce rates of between 45 and 85% But even if your site is at the higher end of the range, a good bounce rate for your site is one which is lower that it was last week.

To Do…

Here are a few ideas which you could adopt to improve your site’s bounce rate.

• Make sure that in-text links are obviously links. One school of thought suggests that links should always be displayed in blue, because that is the default used by simple sites for many years now.

• Make sure that links are “active”. By this I mean that when hovered over, a link changes characteristics (becomes underlined, bold, changes colour etc)

• Make sure that your links have a tool tip. If this is so, you’ll see that little box with details of the link when hovered over. Ideally, the tool tip should provide your visitor with an incentive to click on the link.

• Place links in close proximity to where your visitor will be looking. A good example of this would be to arrange the visual flow for a shopping cart content as
  1. image
  2. description
  3. price
  4. order now button

• Break up menus into small logical groups of links with headings.

• Make sure that each visual element of your page has a clear indication of the next step that you want your visitor to take.

Action Plan …

Set yourself a target to reduce your site’s Bounce Rate by testing a change each week.