MARKETING FOR NON-MARKETERS: BOUNCE RATE

URL, domain name, ROI, KPI, bounce rate, algorithm, SEO, meta data, alt text… what does it all mean?

All too often, we hear marketers throw out all these words that mean nothing to us. We’re going to make sense of all this marketing jargon. Let’s break it down.
marketing for Non-marketers

Bounce Rate

What the technical marketing guy says:

“Your bounce rate has decreased this month by 2%, we’re moving in the right direction.”

Uhh what did you just say to me? Bounce rate represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and leave (“bounce”) rather than viewing other pages.

What the technical marketing guy means:

“Of the visits to your website, less people are leaving right away and instead, continuing to view other pages.”

 

HERE ARE A FEW REASONS YOUR BOUNCE RATE MIGHT BE HIGH:

  1. The user could not find what they were looking for when they arrived at your site and they got confused (bounce).

  1. The user was looking for your phone number, your address, your hours, etc. and was able to find it on the page they arrived at and left (bounce).

  1. The user was looking for something specific (ie. where to buy a gallon of ice cream) but they found your site and you own an ice cream shop (bounce).

Why does bounce rate matter?

Don’t get too hung up on having a high bounce rate (above 70% typically). First, determine the goal of your business and how your website works to accomplish those goals.

Let’s say your goal is to get more people to walk in the door of your ice cream shop. Your address is on the homepage of your website, and your bounce rate is 75%. No problem. They already found what they were looking for and don’t need to look any further!

Now let’s say you’re a local roofing company and your goal is to get people to fill out a form for a free inspection and your bounce rate is 75%. This is cause for alarm! User experience, SEO, and many other things can help improve your bounce rate (we’ll save these for another post).

Don’t get too hung up on your bounce rate. Keep in mind the goal of your business and website when discussing your bounce rate with that technical marketing guy.

Was this helpful? Have any technical terms you want to learn? Let us know in the comments below.