Pounce on That Bounce! How Website Bounce Affects Your Marketing

How bouncy is your website? We'd hope the answer is "not very", because since we're not talking hair care products, the fact is, bounce is BAD.

It's a term used for the percentage of visitors who land on a page of your site only to leave without looking elsewhere. And although, admittedly, it's becoming increasingly difficult to entice visitors to investigate any website thoroughly, if a large percentage of traffic is bouncing away the moment it hits your domain you've clearly cause for concern.

Experts generally agree that a bounce rate of up to 35% is the level to aim for (although extremely difficult to achieve). Anything above that figure, while not good news, is no cause for complete panic until you start to near the 50% mark.

If close to half or more of any traffic is leaving immediately, your site probably requires attention that becomes increasingly urgent the higher that bounce rate becomes. After all, in an highly competitive online scenario it's hard enough to get visitors to your site in the first place; if over half leave without looking elsewhere, something's clearly wrong. And if you're developing your site as a money-making venture, those defecting visitors are failing to view the advertising and smargeting techniques that are crucial to your income.

Bounce has to be looked at within context, however. A curious visitor who has arrives at your site via a random link is more likely to bounce (hopefully!) than someone who arrives via a specific search.



Certain sites are more prone to bounciness than others, too, especially if offering highly specific, directory style information. Once a visitor has successfully found an address or phone number, for example, they're unlikely to dig much deeper unless you do a great job of enticing them to stay.

The challenge, of course, is identifying what might be making traffic leave in the first place, then putting in place all the right modifications to keep visitors on-site and happy.


There can be many reasons for bounce, including the look of a site, but even the most aesthetically challenged pages should retain a decent number of users if the content - and, most importantly, access to it - is obvious and enticing enough.

Which, of course, is where those web design skills really come into play, with plenty of well-placed links that just seem too good to miss. You may also need to investigate factors such as loading time and even browser compatibility; call a few friends to check whether pages take ages to appear - and if they look very strange indeed when they do.

So how do you get to actually measure bounce rates? If you're unwilling to cough up cash for specialist software, good old Google comes to the rescue with its free web Analytics, a suite of tools which give bounce level readings and much else besides.

They're a doddle to set up - just insert a snippet of code into your pages - and produce daily readings allowing in-depth insight into how your web pages work (or don't).

All in all, an indispensable weapon for any publisher looking to take the bounce out of a visitor's step.