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In a nutshell a high bounce rate would indicate that the website in question is being found but not of interest to your visitors. This being the case visitors, are not likely to return again, as they are simply not interested in what your site represents. First impression counts!
However bounce rates are not as clear cut as that, this being the case you should consider a few alternative scenarios that may be contributing to a high bounce rate:
A site has a splash page intro, with only the words 'click here' on it. The bounce rate is likely to be very low, despite the site quality potentially very poor.
A visitor is looking for sites selling widgets in order to find the best place to buy one online. They enter on the product page from a search query; make a note of the site and leave. The bounce rate will be high for these types of visitors.
The visitor has an informational query which is immediately answered by your landing page. The bounce rate will be high.
The purpose of your site is for people to click on ‘Ad Sense ads’ and these ads are well-targeted on your page. You want the bounce rate to be high.
You attract a lot of traffic for a very general keyword and only a small proportion of these visitors find what they are looking for.
The above example occur with varying frequencies and are of varying importance, however I thinks it's worth bearing in mind that a high bounce rate is not necessarily a bad thing. It needs to be strictly interpreted within the context of a particular site - Google's own site for instance will have a very high bounce rate, as will all search engines. The nature of their site demands a high bounce rate (if the search results are relevant). |
