« Yahoo Sidles up to Firefox | Main | Have You Met Ted? - Part II »
Using Google Analytics Bounce Rates to Gauge Site Stickiness
October 19, 2006
Buried deep in the guts of Google Analytics is a report called "Entrance Bounce Rates." It's off the beaten path of "Referring Source" and "Total Visits," so it doesn't always get a lot of attention. But it offers valuable information about visitors' habits on your site. Here's how to access the report:
The Entrance Bounce Rates report shows you a list of "entrance" URLs for your site (those URLs that people used to enter the site, whether via a search engine, third-party link, etc.) and the percentage of visitors who left your site after viewing only that page. Thus, if your bounce rate for a page is 100%, that means each person who entered the site on that page viewed that page only, then left the site. Like golf, the lower the number, the better.
If you don't know what to look for, the numbers can be confusing, or worse, useless. But when you filter the data by content area, things begin to make sense. For instance, if we wanted to measure bounce rates on this site for articles written in 2005, we need only enter that folder in the filter box, hit the plus sign, and we have our data.
The filter button is a toggle. When you press the green plus sign once, it becomes a red minus sign. If you press this, it enables you to see the bounce rates for every page except those in the filtered directory:
So comparing the stickiness of the articles written in 2005 vs. those written in 2006 happens in only a few seconds. Use this method across multiple categories of your site to see the rates in your case studies, executive bios, pages within a certain product or service area, and so on. If people leave one area of the site more frequently than they do in others, why is that? Did you offer a call to action there? Did you give them further opportunity to find out more?
Answering these questions requires some time and perhaps some tough content decisions, but it's an effective way to gauge the effectiveness of certain segments of your content - and in turn, create a more compelling, sticky, and (ideally) profitable site.
All posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at October 19, 2006 10:34 AM
Intrapromote: [ Case studies | SEO services | Bios ]
Trackback Pings
To TrackBack this entry, use the following URL:
http://seoblog.intrapromote.com/mt-tb.cgi/308
Comments
That's useful info. I was searching every where to understand Bounce Rate and I got the answer from this paragraph,
"if your bounce rate for a page is 100%, that means each person who entered the site on that page viewed that page only, then left the site. Like golf, the lower the number, the better."
Posted by: Gaya at February 27, 2007 05:37 AM
The new Google Analytics reports make the bounce for entrance discovery much easier.
Click on Content>Top Landing Page it's over at left side of page.
You'll see there the bounce - which in this case is single page view with an immediate exit for every landing page. What is nice is the raw numbers are there too, so you can check the calculation. Too many single page bounces on your landing pages and you got trouble.
Should you want to see single page bounces for all pages
Click on Content>Top Content
You'll see bounce rate for each page. The only problem is the raw numbers aren't shown on this report. The % bounce shown in this report matches the % shown on Top Landing pages report.
Hope that helps. BTW, GA now makes it much easier to compare these variables over time.
Posted by: James Capparell at June 20, 2007 10:23 AM
That's useful info. I was searching every where to understand Bounce Rate and I got the answer from this short article,
Posted by: Reverse Funnel System Community at February 25, 2008 08:02 PM
Very useful information for me. I was searching what bounce rate means. Thanks for the info.
Posted by: estetik at April 17, 2008 04:25 AM
Thanks for the info. I think I finally understand Bounce rates.
Posted by: TimFitz at May 15, 2008 05:22 PM
Bounce rate means as one Analytic Guru says ' I came I puked and I left". That's what it means.
So get rid of that bounce rate as fast as you can. Do not let your site crumble to pieces. Our bounce rates are 15%-20% and that is what it should be like on yours...
Posted by: Index Options Trader at August 28, 2008 02:30 AM