Bounce rate – what does it mean?
Bounce rate is the percentage of users who land on a webpage and leave without taking any action or clicking further around the site. The bounce rate is calculated in Google Analytics by taking sessions that only register the opening and closing of a single page and dividing them by the total number of sessions. This is how you calculate bounce rate:
Bounce rate (Fluktfrekvens) = Number of single-page visitors divided by total number of sessions
The drawbacks of a high bounce rate
A high bounce rate is not desirable in marketing. On most websites, the goal is for users to complete desired actions or click further into the site. If they do not, it may indicate that they did not find what they were looking for on the website, or that they did not find it interesting enough. However, a high bounce rate can be more acceptable in some cases, such as if you only have a blog. This is especially true when users have found what they are looking for on the blog and have no further actions they need to take.
How can we improve bounce rate
The single most important thing you can do to improve (reduce) your bounce rate is to make sure every page contains content that matches the visitor’s search intent. For example, if a visitor is looking for an in-depth guide but lands on a service page, this will likely result in a higher bounce rate. Here is a list of other actions you can take to improve the bounce rate on an individual page:
- Fast website – Check your page speed using Webpagetest
- Ensure intuitive menu navigation
- Relevant internal linking: Include clear calls-to-action in the text
- Nice design
- Good mobile usability
- Good structure with short paragraphs
- Remove dead links
Frequently Asked Questions:
What is bounce rate?
Bounce rate (or fluktfrekvens in Norwegian) is the percentage of users who visit a webpage without taking any action or clicking further around the site before they leave.
How can you reduce the bounce rate for a page?
The most important thing is to ensure that the content on the landing page is relevant to the search intent. Other measures can include fast page loading, strong internal linking, and good usability on mobile devices, among others.
