When looking through your site statistics using Google Analytics, you may be perplexed about what “bounce rate” means.
According to Wikipedia, bounce rate “represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who “bounce” away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site”. (source)
This video from Google helps give an understanding of bounce rates and why they are useful:
One of the recommended ways to reduce bounce rate is by writing effective web headlines. Google offers the following Five Tips for Writing Effective Web Headlines:
- Include your paid keyword in the headline
- Don’t sound like an ad
- Highlight benefits rather than features
- Make headlines look easy to read
- Don’t forget subheads
According to the Wikipedia article about Bounce Rate, “While bounce rate is a useful tool for e-commerce sites, it is of more questionable value for sites such as news and information, where many visitors go to scan headlines and conduct research, and can find what they want immediately on the entry page. Indeed, for any kind of informational site, sophisticated users are likely to bookmark a page within the site, which then becomes their personal entry page, check it (e.g., for sports scores, etc.), then bounce right off. The page will have done its job, but might still have a bounce rate above 80%, bringing up the average for the whole site. For such sites, metrics such as returning visitors vs. new visitors might be more informative and should be used to understand the overall picture better.”
