Livertising 5 advertising goes online student version

Issues in Marke,ng Communica,on:

LIVEr,sing # 5Adver,sing goes

online1Sunday 14 April 13

IntroONLINE?

2Sunday 14 April 13

3Sunday 14 April 13

http://www.digimedia.be/whos-who-company-list.php?lng=fr&rubric=whos-who-digital-media

4Sunday 14 April 13

http://www.digimedia.be/whos-who-company-list.php?lng=fr&rubric=whos-who-digital-media

5Sunday 14 April 13“Internet” is an empty word un3l you specify what it is; contrary to TV adver3sing, radio, and so on, which are immediately specific: 30’ commercial, …

WebsiteBanners Comments

6Sunday 14 April 13

7Sunday 14 April 13h@p://blogs.forrester.com/interac,ve_marke,ng/2009/12/defining-‐earned-‐owned-‐and-‐paid-‐media.html

Defining Earned, Owned And Paid MediaPosted by Sean Corcoran on December 16, 2009

79 Recommenda,onsPrintEmail9 CommentsThe terms "earned, owned and paid (aka bought) media" have become very popular in the interac,ve marke,ng space today. In fact, taken together they can be applied as a simple way for interac,ve marketers to categorize and ul,mately priori,ze all of the media op,ons they have today. Nokia was an early pioneer in this space (see Dan Goodall's posts on the subject). They now categorize all of their global interac,ve media as earned, owned or bought. Many agencies, including R/GA, Cri,cal Mass, Sapient and Isobar (my former employer) also use the model to help develop digital strategies. On top of that, many industry leaders such as Pete Blackshaw, Fred Wilson and David Armano have wri@en about the subject.

Yet as popular as these themes have become, they're oaen loosely applied across the industry and essen,ally no one is speaking the same language. Therefore we just published research defining each type of media and providing interac,ve marketers with prescrip,ve advice on how to best apply them. Here's a summary of how we defined each type of online media and their roles:

Ul,mately these types of media work best together but making the hard choices of what to include and what not to include is crucial -‐ especially when budgets are ,ght. But if you simply start by categorizing your media and iden,fying the right roles based on your objec,ves, then your on the right path. Here are some high level takeaways that you should consider when developing your 2010 interac,ve media strategy:

Create a solar system of owned media. Owned media is a channel you control. There is fully-‐owned media (like your website) and par,ally-‐owned media (like Facebook fan page or Twi@er account). Owned media creates brand portability. Now you can extend your brand's presence beyond your web site so that it exists in many places across the web -‐ specifically through social media sites and unique communi,es. In a recession in which marke,ng budgets are being cut by 20%, the ability to communicate directly with consumers who want to engage with your brand through long-‐term rela,onships can be invaluable. Recognize that earned media is a result of brand behavior. "Earned media" is an old PR term that essen,ally meant gegng your brand into free media rather than having to pay for it through adver,sing. However the term has evolved into the transparent and permanent word-‐of-‐mouth that is being created through social media. You need to learn how to listen and respond to both the good (posi,ve organic) and bad (spurned) as well as consider when to try and s,mulate earned media through word-‐of-‐mouth marke,ng.Your paid media is not dead, but it is evolving into a catalyst. Many people are predic,ng the end of paid media (aka adver,sing). However, that predic,on may be premature as no other type of media can guarantee the immediacy and scale that paid media can. However, paid media is shiaing away from the founda,on and evolving into a catalyst that is needed at key periods to drive more engagement(e.g. Q4 holidays).

8Sunday 14 April 13“Internet” is an empty word un3l you specify what it is; contrary to TV adver3sing, radio, and so on, which are immediately specific: 30’ commercial, …

9Sunday 14 April 13

10Sunday 14 April 13

If you continue to use this site without changing the settings, you consent to the use of the cookies.



http://www.google.com/settings/ads/?hl=en&sig=ACi0TCgQjDXaC3spGmlTTtc8M1TxERRjugdJKqiiKHoUWCab5p9m895QbkIapCm2bOJB7YBT4CfVdgbyI08Xc5Hme22orFtpWRh0hf3_QNNpEIy4IrRx_1rYZ3nS9AxCCBEzIyzvs3KNvRNk73bxlOTsmbxba4BD_kET9qCS4owLBBA2dG-fUk67x8eAhwO5iuxLRXdMG76N

http://www.google.com/settings/ads/?hl=en&sig=ACi0TCgQjDXaC3spGmlTTtc8M1TxERRjugdJKqiiKHoUWCab5p9m895QbkIapCm2bOJB7YBT4CfVdgbyI08Xc5Hme22orFtpWRh0hf3_QNNpEIy4IrRx_1rYZ3nS9AxCCBEzIyzvs3KNvRNk73bxlOTsmbxba4BD_kET9qCS4owLBBA2dG-fUk67x8eAhwO5iuxLRXdMG76N

collusion


BLOWING A FEW MYTHS


MYTH #1


Blowing a few myths

17Sunday 14 April 13Online vs Offline = Either / Or -‐ Agencies / campaigns / adver3sers

Digital = separate world from offline –

No: SMARTphones, SMARTcars, SMARTobject: ON & OFF convert

Need to decline the BRAND in an INTEGRATED MULTICHANNEL mode

-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐

OOH Adver3sing Reach Said Outpacing Other Media

May 8, 2012

inShare1 Adding out-‐of-‐home (OOH) adver3sing formats to other media can significantly boost a campaign’s reach, says the Outdoor Adver3sing Associa3on of America (OAAA) in a May 2012 report conducted by the Media Behavior Ins3tute. The study tabbed the reach of billboards highest among outdoor formats, at 83% of adults aged 18-‐64, with alterna3ve (42%), street furniture (28%), and transit (11%) following. Comparing these formats to the reach of other media, the report suggests that coupling billboards with mobile adver3sing can increase mobile’s reach by more than 300%, while billboards and the internet together can more than double the internet’s reach in the adernoon. Other results indicate that combining street furniture with social networking can increase the lafer’s reach by up to 66%.

OOH Audiences Feel More Posi3ve

Data from the “USA TouchPoints” study indicates that consumers feel more posi3ve when exposed to OOH adver3sing, when compared to other media such as live TV. For example, on an emo3onal index, a higher propor3on of the billboard audience than live TV audience feels confident and excited, while 40% less feel bored (9% vs. 15%). This pafern extends to other media, too: billboard audiences are slightly more likely than radio audiences to say they are happy (72% vs. 68%), while alterna3ve audiences are much less likely than live TV audiences to be bored (5% vs. 15%). Similarly, radio listeners are twice as likely to feel frustrated as alterna3ve audiences (16% vs. 8%), and live TV audiences are 40% more likely than transit audiences to be frustrated (14% vs. 10%).

The study used data from 1,000 smartphones diaries to capture data every 30 minutes over 10 days, tracking details such as ac3vi3es, emo3on, loca3on, media use, and social selng.

One reason why OOH ads might be received posi3vely by their audiences is that they provide a welcome distrac3on from daily life, par3cularly while traveling, which accounts for 62% of away-‐from-‐home 3me. Indeed, results from a CBS Outdoor survey released in March 2012 indicate that two-‐thirds of the European adults surveyed agreed that outdoor adver3sing is a welcome distrac3on while traveling, a propor3on that rose to 72% among 18-‐34-‐year-‐old smartphone and tablet owners.

OOH Audiences Highly Engaged in Other Ac3vi3esThe study also finds a significant propor3on of OOH audiences are also using other media. For example, 63% of billboard’s audience uses radio in the same half-‐hour, a propor3on that drops to 56% among 18-‐34-‐year-‐olds, but rises to 71% among those with $75k or more in annual household income. Similarly, 21% of transit’s audience also text, use an applica3on or browse the internet on mobile in the same half-‐hour, rising to 31% among 18-‐34-‐year-‐olds.

Other Findings:

The overall reach of transit ads is smaller on the weekend than during the week (8% vs. 12%), as it is for billboards (79% vs. 84%). Reach is the same during the week and the weekend for street furniture (28%), while it rises on the weekend for alterna3ve (44% vs. 41%).Only 6% of street furniture audiences are bored.7% of the alterna3ve audience aged 18-‐34, and 14% of the transit audience in that age group use social networking sites in the same half-‐hour.

18Sunday 14 April 13Unaided advertising recall shows how great the actual impact of thecampaign is and how well it remains anchored in the mindset of arecipient. A slight effect was detected even in the online-only and themobile-only test groups, as in each case 14.6 percent of the participantsremembered the Leibniz campaign. That represents 7.4 percentmore in direct comparison with the control group (13.6 percent). Inthe cross-media group, on the other hand, which had contact withthe campaign both online and on the mobile Internet, there was a significanteffect. Almost one in every four participants stated that theyhad seen advertising from Leibniz (23.2 percent) – that is 70.6 percentmore than in the control group. This result supports the thesis that acombination of online and mobile media leads to significantly bettercampaign recall after contact has been established.

This assumption is also clearly underlined by the result of aidedadvertising recall. A comparison between the test groups and thecontrol group showed impressively once again that the cross-mediacontact group demonstrated the strongest impact on advertisingrecall. For instance, 42.6 percent of the participants who had seenthe Leibniz Choco Crunchy advertisement on both the Internet andon mobile devices remembered the campaign. This corresponds to anincrease of 31.9 percent for the cross-media group compared to thecontrol group (32.3 percent). An examination of the single-mediumcontact groups also shows a positive effect in each case, with theeffects of the mobile contacts (+17.3 percent) being slightly greaterthan that of the online contacts (+13.0 percent).


Re-imagining Google Analytics to support the versatile usage patterns of today's usersMonday, October 29, 2012 | 9:30 AMLabels: Announcements

A typical consumer today uses multiple devices to surf the web and interact in many ways with your business. For most large businesses, already swimming in many sources of hashed data, it’s an enormous challenge, but also an incredible opportunity.

Measurement today is evolving from technology that counts site traffic into a broader system that measures your effectiveness in advertising, sales, product usage, support, and retention. Ultimately, this sort of integrated measurement can help you deliver the best service, products, and experiences for your customers.

We’ve been developing solutions, like Google Analytics Premium and Mobile App Analytics to advance this vision. For large enterprises, such as Premium customers and those who want to work with APIs, we're now starting to offer “Universal Analytics.” This will help these customers tailor Google Analytics to their needs, integrate their own datasets and ultimately get a more complete vision of the entire marketing funnel.

The new tools offered by Universal Analytics via the new Measurement Protocol (an API that enables you to send your data to Google Analytics) can help you measure the how people actually become and remain loyal customers:

• Consumers use multiple devices.Mastering data on your website is no longer sufficient - larger clients are increasingly asking for a cross platform view of their data in Analytics. The tools from the Measurement Protocol allow you to seamlessly send your own data about your customers and business (from any digital device that you are measuring) to your Analytics account. This can help you see how users interact with your brand from multiple touchpoints - phones, tablets, laptops or more - in one place.

• The world is mobile.We announced Mobile App Analytics at I/O in 2012 as a beta. It’s been delivering great results for clients. Universal Analytics now enables you to measure your marketing more holistically by integrating this data with your Google Analytics account.

• Cross-channel measurement is essential.Cross-channel information is more important and more diverse than ever before. Universal Analytics, via the Measurement Protocol, lets you sync your own data from across various marketing channels, so you can discover relationships between the channels that drive conversions.

• Your business is unique. Not every campaign (or app, or website!) is the same, and sometimes, depending on your business and goals, you want to learn more about a particular aspect of the way visitors interact with your business. With Universal Analytics, you can integrate your own data and can customize the metrics that matter to you - beyond website visits. Google Analytics can deliver the custom metrics you want, in the same report you’re used to, based on the customized data you provide.

As a Google Analytics user, Universal Analytics won’t mean any changes in your account. But if you’re a large enterprise that is interested in exploring the integration options, you can learn about getting started in our help center.

example de silo en digital

22Sunday 14 April 13http://www.digimedia.be/News/fr/13662/carrefour-crase-la-p-dale-du-marketing-digital.html

MYTH #2


ContentLinkReputa.on

24Sunday 14 April 13Des3na3on -‐> HUB

Web = CONTENT – LINKS – REPUTATION

1.Posi3oning2.Visibility3.Reputa3on


http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/interactive/1-in-4-smb-websites-wont-turn-up-in-online-searches-27767/

26.4% of SMBs cannot be found in online searches because their websites earn a Google Page Rank of zero or have

no Google Page Rank,finds vSplash in an audit of 3.9 million US SMB websites. The audit unearthed a series of

deficiencies, which the researchers believe translate into a $24.3 billion revenue opportunity for digital media and

marketing solutions providers. That’s despite a recent report suggesting that 1 in 2 SMB online marketing

service dollars are already being spent on web presence. (For that study, from Borrell Associates, web

presence represented $202 billion in spending in 2012, and included such services as website design and

management, hosting, and social media management.)

A separate study recently issued by Constant Contact found other discoverability issues with small businesses: half

admitted never updating their online listings, and the same proportion had seen inaccurate listings.

Meanwhile, other deficiencies cited by the vSplash study include:

■ 94.5% of SMB websites not being mobile optimized;

■ 94.6% lacking a Twitter widget on their home page, and 91.2% without a Facebook widget;

■ 94.6% lacking an e-commerce shopping cart;

■ 93.7% without a contact email address on the home page; and

■ 49.4% without a phone number on the home page.

Blowing a few myths


MYTH #3


Blowing a few myths

28Sunday 14 April 13Web = going data-‐driven rather than aesthe2cs driven

h4p://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/12/27/edgerank-‐and-‐graph-‐rank-‐defined/

EdgeRank and Graph Rank Defined

Comment

Bri4any Darwell•Dec 27th, 2011Applica2ons, Facebook, News Feed, Open Graph, Open Graph Apps, PagesFacebook has two algorithms that are important to marketers and developers but are largely misunderstood by people across industries.

Graph Rank and EdgeRank are what the social network uses to organize the massive amount of ac2vity generated by people, pages and apps and to decide what stories to show whom. Graph Rank applies to Open Graph applica2ons, not page posts or friend’s status updates. Those are affected by EdgeRank, which determines what shows up in your News Feed. Neither of these is a global score. Every bit of ac2vity on the site has a different rank for different users. And because 2me and affinity plays a role, the rank of each object is not constant.

EdgeRank is the algorithm that determines what items populate your News Feed. With all the friends people have and pages they like, most users would be overwhelmed to see all of the ac2vity generated by these connec2ons. Facebook, therefore, assigns a value to every possible story that could end up in the feed. This value is based on affinity, weight and 2me. Affinity is the rela2onship between the user and the page or friend that created an item. Weight is affected by the type of story, for instance, whether it is a photo upload or a comment on another person’s status. Facebook tends to value rich media content and oXen when it introduces something new like Ques2ons, it temporarily weights ac2vity from that feature higher. The third factor affec2ng EdgeRank is how recently an ac2on was taken.

These factors are why you might see every check-‐in and linked shared by your best friend, but only see whole photo albums from someone else. EdgeRank is also the reason most fans don’t see every post from pages they like. The more users interact with the page, however, the greater the affinity score becomes and the more likely they are to see page posts in the future.

Graph Rank is a new algorithm Facebook is using to determine how Open Graph applica2on ac2vity will be distributed through News Feed, Ticker and Timeline. Graph Rank was introduced at F8 with the announcement of a new type of app that can con2nuously publish user ac2vity to Ticker and Timeline. Because Facebook expects a prolifera2on of sharing through these Open Graph apps, it developed a system to manage the amount and type of ac2vity that each user will see. Graph Rank seeks to show users highly relevant applica2on stories based on the other connec2ons they’ve made on Facebook. So if a user plays Words With Friends, they are more likely to see a friend’s story about another word game than a story about an arcade shooter.

This seems to be a reac2on to the nega2ve feedback Facebook received aXer first allowing third-‐party apps on the pla]orm. Many users were frustrated with the amount of app ac2vity that filled their feeds. The social network ini2ally responded by cu_ng off several viral channels that allowed apps to grow organically. This leX a sour taste in the mouths of many developers. With Graph Rank, Facebook hopes to strike a balance that helps users discover apps they are likely to enjoy without compromising the site or turning off developers.

Together, EdgeRank and Graph Rank help personalize Facebook for each user. Marketers and developers who understand the way the pla]orm ranks content can find ways to op2mize their efforts there.

• CTA • Headline• Product/service description• Form • Layout• Pricing, promotional offers...• Amount of text, fold...

31Sunday 14 April 13http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/24/the-ultimate-guide-to-a-b-testing/

A/B testing isn’t a buzz term. A lot of savvy marketers and designs are using it right now to gain insight into visitor behavior and to increase conversion rate. And yet A/B testing is still not as common as such Internet marketing subjects as SEO, Web analytics and usability. People just aren’t as aware of it. They don’t completely understand what it is or how it could benefit them or how they should use it. This article is meant to be the best guide you will ever need for A/B testing.(Smashing’s Note: If you are looking for quality books on Web design, have a look at ourPrinted Smashing Books. We love them, and so will you: delivering in-depth knowledge by experts, one book at a time. Learn more...)

What Is A/B Testing?At its core, A/B testing is exactly what it sounds like: you have two versions of an element (A and B) and a metric that defines success. To determine which version is better, you subject both versions to experimentation simultaneously. In the end, you measure which version was more successful and select that version for real-world use.This is similar to the experiments you did in Science 101. Remember the experiment in which you tested various substances to see which supports plant growth and which suppresses it. At different intervals, you measured the growth of plants as they were subjected to different conditions, and in the end you tallied the increase in height of the different plants.

Large versionA/B testing on the Web is similar. You have two designs of a website: A and B. Typically, A is the existing design (called the control), and B is the new design. You split your website traffic between these two versions and measure their performance using metrics that you care about (conversion rate, sales, bounce rate, etc.). In the end, you select the version that performs best.What To Test?Your choice of what to test will obviously depend on your goals. For example, if your goal is to increase the number of sign-ups, then you might test the following: length of the sign-up form, types of fields in the form, display of privacy policy, “social proof,” etc. The goal of A/B testing in this case is to figure out what prevents visitors from signing up. Is the form’s length intimidating? Are visitors concerned about privacy? Or does the website do a bad job of convincing visitors to sign up? All of these questions can be answered one by one by testing the appropriate website elements.Even though every A/B test is unique, certain elements are usually tested:• The call to action’s (i.e. the button’s) wording, size, color and placement,• Headline or product description,• Form’s length and types of fields,• Layout and style of website,• Product pricing and promotional offers,• Images on landing and product pages,• Amount of text on the page (short vs. long).

Create Your First A/B TestOnce you’ve decided what to test, the next step, of course, is to select a tool for the job. If you want a free basic tool and don’t mind fiddling with HTML and JavaScript, go with Google Website Optimizer. If you want an easier alternative with extra features, go with Visual Website Optimizer (disclaimer: my start-up). Other options are available, which I discuss at the end of this post. Setting up the core test is more or less similar for all tools, so we can discuss it while remaining tool-agnostic.You can set up an A/B test in one of two ways:• Replace the element to be tested before the page loads

If you are testing a single element on a Web page—say, the sign-up button—then you’ll need to create variations of that button (in HTML) in your testing tool. When the test is live, the A/B tool will randomly replace the original button on the page with one of the variations before displaying the page to the visitor.

• Redirect to another pageIf you want to A/B test an entire page—say, a green theme vs. a red theme—then you’ll need to create and upload a new page on your website. For example, if your home page is http://www.example.com/index.html, then you’ll need to create a variation located at http://www.example.com/index1.html. When the test runs, your tool will redirect some visitors to one of your alternate URLs.

Once you have set up your variations using one of these two methods, the next step is to set up your conversion goal. Typically, you will get a piece of JavaScript code, which you would copy and paste onto a page that would represent a successful test were a visitor to arrive there. For example, if you have an e-commerce store and you are testing the color of the “Buy now” button, then your conversion goal would be the “Thank you” page that is displayed to visitors after they complete a purchase.As soon as a conversion event occurs on your website, the A/B testing tool records the variation that was shown to the visitor. After a sufficient number of visitors and conversions, you can check the results to find out which variation drove the most conversions. That’s it! Setting up and running an A/B test is indeed quite simple.Do’s And Don’tsEven though A/B testing is super-simple in concept, keep some practical things in mind. These suggestions are a result of my real-world experience of doing many A/B tests (read: making numerous mistakes).DON’TS• When doing A/B testing, never ever wait to test the variation until after you’ve tested the

control. Always test both versions simultaneously. If you test one version one week and the second the next, you’re doing it wrong. It’s possible that version B was actually worse but you just happened to have better sales while testing it. Always split traffic between two versions.

• Don’t conclude too early. There is a concept called “statistical confidence” that determines whether your test results are significant (that is, whether you should take the results seriously). It prevents you from reading too much into the results if you have only a few conversions or visitors for each variation. Most A/B testing tools report statistical confidence, but if you are testing manually, consider accounting for it with anonline calculator.

• Don’t surprise regular visitors. If you are testing a core part of your website, include only new visitors in the test. You want to avoid shocking regular visitors, especially because the variations may not ultimately be implemented.

• Don’t let your gut feeling overrule test results. The winners in A/B tests are often surprising or unintuitive. On a green-themed website, a stark red button could emerge as the winner. Even if the red button isn’t easy on the eye, don’t reject it outright. Your goal with the test is a better conversion rate, not aesthetics, so don’t reject the results because of your arbitrary judgment.

DO’S• Know how long to run a test before giving up. Giving up too early can cost you because you

may have gotten meaningful results had you waited a little longer. Giving up too late isn’t good either, because poorly performing variations could cost you conversions and sales. Use a calculator (like this one) to determine exactly how long to run a test before giving up.

• Show repeat visitors the same variations. Your tool should have a mechanism for remembering which variation a visitor has seen. This prevents blunders, such as showing a user a different price or a different promotional offer.

• Make your A/B test consistent across the whole website. If you are testing a sign-up button that appears in multiple locations, then a visitor should see the same variation everywhere. Showing one variation on page 1 and another variation on page 2 will skew the results.

• Do many A/B tests. Let’s face it: chances are, your first A/B test will turn out a lemon. But don’t despair. An A/B test can have only three outcomes: no result, a negative result or a positive result. The key to optimizing conversion rates is to do a ton of A/B tests, so that all positive results add up to a huge boost to your sales and achieved goals.

Classic A/B Testing Case StudiesHere are some case studies to give you an idea of how people test in the wild.Writing Decisions: Headline Tests on the Highrise Sign-Up Page37signals tested the headline on its pricing page. It found that “30-Day Free Trial on All Accounts” generated 30% more sign-ups than the original “Start a Highrise Account.”

“You Should Follow Me on Twitter Here” (Dustin Curtis)This much-hyped split-test involved testing multiple versions of a call to action for Twitter followers. Dustin found that “You should follow me on Twitter here” worked 173% better than his control text, “I’m on Twitter.”

Human Photos Double Conversion RatesA surprising conclusion from two separate A/B tests: putting human photos on a website increases conversion rates by as much as double. Scientific research backs this up, saying that we are subconsciously attracted to images with people.

Google Website Optimizer Case Study: Daily Burn, 20%+ Improvement (Tim Ferriss)A simple variation that gave visitors fewer options too choose from resulted in a 20% increase in conversions. The winning version was also much easier on the eye than the control in its detail and text.

Two Magical Words Increased Conversion Rate by 28%The words “It’s free” increased the clicks on this sign-up button by 28%, illustrating the importance of testing call-to-action buttons and how minor changes can have surprisingly major results.

Changing the Sign-Up Button from Green to RedAlong with its other A/B tests, CareLogger increased its conversion rate by 34% simply by changing the color of the sign-up button from green to red!

Single page vs. multi-step checkoutIf you have an online store, it is quite common to see visitors abandoning the purchase process at the time of checkout. This A/B test found out that a single page checkout process works much better at completing sales than multiple-page checkout process.

"Mad Libs" style form increases conversion 25-40%Defeating conventional wisdom, in this A/B test it was found out that a paragraph-styled form with inline input fields worked much better than traditional form layout. Though the result was probably specific to their offering as it wasn’t replicated in another, separate A/B test.

Complete redesign of product page increased sales by 20%A software product company redesigned their product page to give it a modern look and added trust building elements (such as seals, guarentees, etc.). End result: they managed to increase total sales by 20%. This case study demonstrates the effect of design on sales.

Marketing Experiments response capture case study – triple digit increase in conversionsThrough a series of A/B tests they optimized the mailing list opt-in rate by 258%. Focus was to remove all distractions and require the visitor to only provide email address. For completing his/her complete profile, the landing page motivated the visitors with an Amazon gift card (which was again split tested).

Tools For A/B TestingA number of tools are available for A/B testing, with different focuses, price points and feature sets. Here are some:• Google Website Optimizer

A free A/B testing tool from the search giant. A great option to get started, but lacks advanced features.

• A/Bingo and VanityServer-side frameworks for Ruby on Rails developers. Requires programming and integration in code.

• Visual Website OptimizerAn easy-to-use A/B testing tool, with advanced features such as WYSIWYG editor, click maps, visitor segmentation and tag-less integration. (Disclaimer: my start-up.)

• Unbounce and PerformableLanding-page creators with integrated A/B testing.

• Vertster, SiteSpect, Webtrends Optimize and Omniture’s Test&TargetEnterprise testing tools.

Resources For Deep-Diving Into A/B TestingIf you’ve read this far, then A/B testing has presumably piqued your interest. Here, then, are some cherry-picked resources on A/B testing from across the Web.GET IDEAS FOR YOUR NEXT A/B TEST• Which Test Won?

A game in which you guess which variation won in a test.• 101 A/B Testing Tips

A comprehensive resource of tips, tricks and ideas.• ABtests.com

A place to share and read A/B test results.• A/B Ideafox

A search engine for A/B and multivariate case studies.INTRODUCTORY PRESENTATIONS AND ARTICLES• Effective A/B Testing

By Ben Tilly.• Practical Guide to Controlled Experiments on the Web (PDF)

From Microsoft Research.• Introduction to A/B Testing

From the 20bits blogTHE MATHEMATICS OF A/B TESTING• Statistics for A/B Testing

From the 20bits blog.• How Not to Do A/B Testing• What You Should Know About the Mathematics of A/B Testing

From my own blog.• Easy Statistics for AdWords A/B Testing, and Hamsters• Statistical Significance and Other A/B Test Pitfalls

MYTH #4


Blowing a few myths

33Sunday 14 April 13Important element = no longer the number of visitors but:

1.The quan3ty of visitors analysed in terms of conversion rather than visit – bounce rate

2.The quality must be analysed: where are they coming from – how long are they staying – what are they doing – where are they going to

3.Diversify your traffic sources – there are basically 3 sources: direct access – referring sites – search engines – rule of thumb: 1/3 each, to avoid dependence on a specific SE

Measuring online ac.vity: tracking– Interac,on

Visits, unique visitors, visit dura,on, page views

– Par,cipa,on Ac,ons completed

– ConversionCTA > Lead > Sales

– OutreachRSS, sharing, viral effect

34Sunday 14 April 13Conversion (% goals) : tracking which pages are efficient in conver3ng consumer visits into the desired ac3vi3es, such as asking for informa3on, visi3ng a page, subscribing to a newslefer, buying a product, leaving an address… also, which goals are completed by consumers

Goals are mainly: sales, leads, contact forms, downloads

Outreach: how popular your RSS feeds are, how much is your content shared between consumers, how viral is your campaign

35Sunday 14 April 131 Home2 Press, Videos, Podcasts3 Speaking Engagements4 Knowledge5 About ▼»

6 Search this website …

Occam's Razor by Avinash KaushikDigital Marketing and Analytics Blog

Standard Metrics Revisited: #3: Bounce Rate248 Comments | Print | PDF

It is quite likely that your company is spending tons of time, energy, and dollars on web marketing efforts yet conversion rates (or ROI) are stuck in the two to three percent range.

You are trying really hard to figure out how to improve the performance but you are stymied by the fact that there is ton of data and you have no idea where to start.

Ms. Bounce Rate to the rescue!

Bounce rate is a beautiful way to measure the quality of traffic coming to your website. It is almost instantly accessible in any web analytics tool. It is easy to understand, hard to mis-understand and can be applied to any of your efforts.

So what is this mysterious metric? In a nutshell bounce rate measures the percentage of people who come to your website and leave "instantly".

Thought about from a customer perspective rather than I came, I saw, I conquered, the action is I came, I saw, Yuck, I am out of here.

Your marketing efforts should yield more customers who are able to conquer (accomplish the task they are there to accomplish) and fewer who say yuck and leave.

Bounce rate measure quality of traffic you are acquiring, and if it is the right traffic then it helps you hone in on where/how your website is failing your website visitors.

Definition:

It is usually measured in two ways:

• The percentage of website visitors who see just one page on your site.• The percentage of website visitors who stay on the site for a small amount of time (usually five seconds or less).

I am a bit more aggressive in my analysis and so I personally prefer the latter definition (using time). But either definition is fine, each has its own slight nuance.

It is important to note that the first definition is the standard definition in tools like Google Analytics, WebTrends, Yahoo! Web Analytics, CoreMetrics etc etc etc. Having only a single hit (usually page view) in a visitor's session will mark it as a bounce.

[In Adobe's Site Catalyst bounce rate is not a standard metric, but you are able to create a special custom metric. Please check how to with Adobe's customer service or your account rep.]

So how can you use it?

#1: Measure the bounce rate of your website.

This will help you understand what percent of your website traffic is actually engaging with your site (i.e. you don't have a chance of success with all your site traffic!).

This IndexTools report shows that approximately 70% of the site traffic above is bouncing. This 70% won't even give you five seconds, or see more than one page. You can't even start to impress them with your goodness. No matter how great your goodness is.

There are two exceptions: 1) You have a one page website 2) Your offline value proposition is so compelling that people would see just one single webpage and get all the information they need and leave.

If you don't fall into those two categories you need to pay very careful attention to this metric.

Action: You'll understand better why your conversion rate is so low, if you have made changes over the last x amount of time then watching a trend of bounce rate is a sure way to know if the changes you are making are for the better.

#2: Measure the bounce rate for your traffic sources.

Your goal is to figure out if some sources of traffic are sending you particularly terrible traffic compared to others. In your web analytics tool simply go to the Referring URL's / Sites report and take a look, you'll find something like this……

For this site Google Analytics illustrates that both myspace.com and simplyhired.com is not sending great traffic, while their direct marketing campaigns (#2 and #3 above) seem to be doing much better.

Action: Do you need to revisit relationships with sites that are not sending you high quality traffic? What is the call to action that is causing people to come to your site and bounce? Are your email, affiliate, other marketing campaigns yielding low bounce rates? You get the idea.

#3: Measure the bounce rate of your search keyword.

Search engines are king and hence probably sending you a large chunk of your traffic. Find out the quality of traffic coming from the search engines. In addition to looking at just the aggregate levels (the row marked Total in below report) also look at each key phrase……

In this ClickTracks report notice that each key word / key phrase performs differently, and it also differs by search engine. Sweet actionable information. Instantly useful!

Action: When you create SEO and SEM campaigns ensure that your team has this data. In this case either you have nothing to do with competitive intelligence (hence 90% bounce rate) or that traffic is landing on the wrong pages. Also it is easy to take a dump of top keywords and bid on them with PPC campaigns, the table above will ensure you don't bid on the wrong ones.

#4: Measure bounce rate of your AdWords, AdCenter, YSM (PPC) campaigns.

In my humble experience this is one piece of analysis most agencies and companies overlook when doing paid search campaign analysis.

Sure we measure conversion and roi and revenue, but are you measuring bounce rate for your PPC campaigns? Remember you can only convert if people are staying for more than five seconds on your website (or see more than one page)!

This screenshot from Google Analytics shows the bounce rate of traffic on each keyword compared to site average, very cool view. Sadly most traffic for this time period is performing worse than site average (so literally you could be sending money down the, well you know what).

Action: First, stop bidding on those keywords, then do a deeper analysis of how good your landing pages are, and your other campaign attributes (maybe your campaign for refrigerators is being targeted to people only in the great state of Alaska!).

#5: Measure bounce rate of your top trafficked pages.

It is entirely possible that your efforts are stellar (as they usually are!) but it is your website that is letting you down. There is what to do to make your case…..

What pages are bouncing traffic like a perfectly formed elastic material and which are great at welcoming traffic with open arms into your website? Pull up the above report in your web analytics tool and find out.

In addition to top trafficked pages on your site please also look at top entry pages report and measure their bounce rate (you'll quickly have a list of pages that need your immediate attention).

Action: Check to see if the right calls to action are on the page? Is the content optimally organized? If the above pages are your campaign (direct marketing or paid search campaigns) landing pages then are they delivering on the promise of the email piece you had sent out or the search keyword? Answer these questions and consider multivariate testing to improve page performance.

An Exception :

There is one obvious case where bounce rate might not cough up as many insights. I am thinking of blogs.

They are a unique beast amongst online experiences: people come mostly only to read your latest post, they'll read it and then they'll leave. Your bounce rates will be high because of how that metric is computed, and in this scenario that is ok.

You don't want the bounce rate to be 98%, new visitors to your blog will still come and look around and read different posts etc.

So… if you have a blog segment your bounce rate by New and Returning Visitors. You can ignore the returning bucket, because of above. Focus on the New Visitors. You still want a low bounce rate (say 40% or 50%) for your New Visitors because you want them to take some action and engage with your brand (in my case click on a link to my book or to my company Market Motive or to my RSS feed – all ways in which I get economic value from this blog).

In summary:

• Bounce rate is a metric you'll easily find in all web analytics tools.• It is easy to understand, hard to misunderstand (something you can't say for all, or even most, web analytics

metrics).• It is awesome at identifying low hanging fruit (you stress about so much, start here and you'll easily find so much to

action), try the above five tips first.• Please don't confuse bounce rate with exit rate, they are radically different metrics. Also: Everyone who comes to

your site has to exit, almost no one who comes to your site needs to bounce! [Relevant blog post: Standard Metrics Revisited: #2: Top Exit Pages]

Would you agree this is a awesome metric? It won't have all the answers for you, but it will help you focus very quickly on what's important, show where you are wasting money and what content on your site needs revisiting.

As a benchmark from my own personal experience over the years it is hard to get a bounce rate under 20%. Anything over 35% is a cause for concern and anything above 50% is worrying.

What do you all think? Please share your tips, tricks, war stories, critique, brickbats via comments.

[Like this post? For more posts like this please click here, if it might be of interest please check out my book:Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.]

Like this post? Share it:1 StumbleUpon2 Submit

•

• Like

• 10

• Send

•

•

•

• 11

•

• in

Share5

Or you could Print or PDF it!August 6, 2007 Filed Under: Advanced Analytics, Analytics, Marketing Tips, Search Engine Marketing, Web Analytics, Web Insights, Web Metrics

Comments

1. 1Adam says:August 6, 2007 at 02:17

Really great post. I recently wrote about bounce rates in our company newsletter but this is so much more in depth.It must be one of the most easy to understand and useful metrics. I especially like your tips on how to use the metric.Thanks

REPLY2. 2

Roel says:August 6, 2007 at 02:25

Well written, clear AND actionable. I'll be looking at my bounce rates this weekend!

REPLY3. 3

Stefan Seiz says:August 6, 2007 at 03:59

Avinash,cocerning bounce rate reports in Analytics, there is somethig about the numbers i can't understand. Maybe you can shed some light on it.I have an AdWord Keyword with a Bounce Rate of 100% but 54 Pages/Visit. How can that ever be? If a Keyword generates 54/pages per visit, how can the bounce rate be 100%?This is something which i believe is impossible and can't understand.See here for a screenshot of what i mean:http://www.stefanseiz.com/images/analytics-bounces.gifThanksStefan

REPLY◦ 4

Anita Jenbergsen says:March 4, 2013 at 12:12

Dear AvinashI am struggling with a bounce rate which I dont understand.If I had the possibility to add picture I would, I will try to explain.I have a mobileversion of a website. It shows:Page view 6700Unique page view 6100Avg time on page; 6 min 13 secBounce rate: 93 %How is it possible to have a bounce rate = 93 % and in the same time avg time on page 6 min ?I will be very greatful if someone have time to explain this for me.RegardsAnita

REPLY■ 5

Avinash Kaushik says:March 4, 2013 at 19:47

Anita: Time on page and bounce rate are two completely different metric.Bounce rate measures the number of visits on your site with only one page view. It measures nothing else.Time on page measures the number of minutes someone spent on a page, BUT only for those people who see more than one page. I.E. those who did not bounce.Why is time on page measured only for people who don't bounce? Please see this article for more details: Standard Metrics Revisited: #4 : Time on Page & Time on SiteSo in your case…. 93% of the people see the page and bounce. They don't see any other page. The time on page for them is N/A (not available, see above article). 7% of the people do see more than one page, that 7% on average stays on your first page for six minutes and thirteen seconds.I hope this helps.Avinash.

REPLY■ 6

Anita Jenbergsen says:March 5, 2013 at 00:52

Thank you very much for your quick and helpful answer, Avinash. It was clarifying. When I read your answer I know I knew it but somehow these numbers looked "greek" for me.The thing is that the page I'm refering to is a mobile page and has only six links on the front page. In addition to a menu button and a button to a page for downloads. The menu button and the button to downloads has 93% clickrate. I am wondering if it is possible that visitors are clicking but GA can not track it some how and thats way it looks like visitors has used about 6 minutes to look at 6 links.Wel I have to digg further.Thanks again. I'm so greatful that you took your time to answer.RegardsAnita :)

REPLY4. 7

Wil Reynolds says:August 6, 2007 at 05:05

I have always been a big proponent of bounce rate analysis, but you helped me take it to an even bigger level. Thanks!The Google Analytics charts look easy too!–Wil

REPLY5. 8

Rahul Deshmukh says:August 6, 2007 at 05:55

Avinash,Bounce rates are great, but we also should look at something like "Stagnation rate"…ofcouse I am making up this name. What this will do is focus on is sessions, that stayed on the site for above say 20 min. This is especially critical for eCommerce sites. This will clearly show that customers who came in to buy something, are not able to easily complete their tasks. Creating a customized experience for these set of users can dramatically improve customer experience on the site.

REPLY6. 9

Paul Rouke says:August 6, 2007 at 07:46

Another excellent and insightful article Avinash. I have just posted an article on the business benefits of user testing, which alongside taking a broader view of user behaviour with web analytics provide an extremely powerful and conversion increasing exercise, as you will have experienced.In reference to Rahul's point on improving e-commerce customer experiences, again alongside a customized user experience user testing can lead to exceptional case studies to push through user experience enhancements and redesigns.You may note towards the end of my post I have provided a few links into relevant articles on web analytics from yourself, so thanks for the great articles once again which support the business advice I am providing..Paul

REPLY7. 10

Rita says:August 6, 2007 at 13:03

How does Google Analytics define "bounce rate"? Is it 5 seconds or less? Thanks!

REPLY8. 11

Dennis R. Mortensen says:August 6, 2007 at 15:06

Great post, No comments! :-)However; I would like to add a TIP if I may? – And that delivered with my new found mantra in mind: “For any analytical and detail oriented person starting out on a career in Web Analytics, try not thinking about magic tools and metrics or whatever – Think about Money. It’s honest!”So when you suggest, and correctly so, to measure bounce rate of your top trafficked pages – I tend to suggest either on top of that or as a replacement metric to:- Measure bounce rate of your top revenue participating pages and/or keywordsAs this list is ALWAYS different than that of your “top trafficked pages” list. This also enables you to (as our good friend Jason Burby keeps talking about) create an almost instant monetization model – as the money is out in the open and almost calculable on the spot.CheersDennis R. Mortensen, COO at IndexToolsMy Web Analytics Blog

REPLY9. 12

Steve says:August 6, 2007 at 20:00

To add a practical example, on request of Big A himself. ;-)The problem:* Have a simple page as part of a larger site. Rest of the site is by and large irrelevant to this page.* This page offers a product (Source code. aka tarball) for download.* Want to better "sell" that product, and hence increase downloads. [1]Using no segmenting or anything special beyond a simple report, I noted that ~42% were bouncing off that home page. Or phrased positively, 58% were doing something else with the site. Possibly downloading the tarball – doesn't matter per-se.So what am I doing *wrong* to cause people to leave? What can I change to help more *want* to use the product, or at least download it???So what did I do?Split that single page up into moderately obvious separate pages, and re-evaluate.The idea of doing the split was to get a greater understanding of what people are looking for and want out of the product. At least in terms of getting increased downloads of the tarball. :-)Well it worked. Sorta. Bounce is now down to ~39% (~3% improvement). Ifs, Buts and Maybes around this too: didn't have an official release that month, so numbers were lower than normal. ie. not exactly a fair comparison.But the point is that I now have an appreciation of what they're looking for. Without doing any referral analysis to cross check, the top urls portion of the new report shows that the "Demonstrations" page is the next most popular. Fair bet that's what the visitors are looking for. The "Features" page is further down.So what next?I'm aiming to do the following tasks:1. Somehow pretty up and better "sell" the demo page.2. Note that the demo page doesn't actually make it easy to download the tarballs. That needs to be fixed *pronto*. aka: "Call to action". *All* the pages need a simple "click here for the tarball" action item.3. Most importantly: the current product home page, if you'll excuse the pun for those in the know ;-) , is awful. Really needs to do a better job of actually *selling* the product. Reduce the bounce at the source!So we draw two major views out of Bounce Rate:A. That people are not being sold on the landing page. aka Product Home Page.B. That those who aren't bouncing are going to pages that could also do a much better job of selling.And that's just using a *reporting* tool [2]. Imagine what you can do with Segmented Analysis. ;-)Cheers!- Steve[1] Do be aware that raw downloads alone is not a KPI here. Soft indicator more than anything else. The full details of all the issues involved would overly complicate this example to no real value.[2] The irony being that the tarball in question is that self-same reporting tool. ;-) Eat ones own dog-food?

REPLY10.13

Avinash Kaushik says:August 6, 2007 at 22:47

Stefan : I am afraid there isn't enough in the image to help identify the issue, could you please email me the "grid view". The other metrics in that view I think will help identify the problem.Rita : GA uses the "single page view in a session" definition. You can simply click next to the question mark next to any GA metric to get the definition…

12. Dennis : As always you make an excellent observation but I suspect that would lead to soft of a catch-22 situation. It could also sometimes (not aways) lead to ignoring low hanging fruit. Let me explain.The pages you expect to be "revenue participating pages" could, pardon my french, suck becuase either they themselves have huge bounce rates (hence not producing "top revenue" :)) or could be suffering becuase web pages that are supposed to lead to them could be bouncing hugely.In either of these two scenarios it will take you much longer to find the problem that needs fixing.Here is the order I usually recommend (once you reach best practice #5 in above blog post):Step One: Look at the Top Entry Pages report and bounce rate for each. You will find the low hanging fruit – pages that are your core entry points and bouncing traffic rather than absorbing. These could be landing page, product pages, revenue generating page, tech support pages. Fix 'em.

Step Two: Look at the Top Visited Pages report and bounce rates. These again should be absorbing people not bouncing them (don't look at Exits). Since they get seen the most any fix here has high roi (by increasing "absorption").Based on your excellent feedback going forward I'll always add step three (for e-commerce websites)…Step Three: Traffic is being absorbed nicely on your site, identify your core "revenue participating pages" and look at bounce rate. These pages (usually with product details and add to cart buttons) might be getting less traffic but now that people can actually find them you'll get huge roi for your investment.Does this make any sense?I concur with you (and Jason) that focus on revenue and monetization is important, but sometimes we focus on it too early missing low hanging fruit with high roi as well as potentially ignoring large chunks of visitors who are not on your site to buy.Steve : Bravo!! Six hours has got to be the fastest someone has taken a post I have written and turned it into action! :)Thanks so much to everyone for all the wonderful comments!-Avinash.

REPLY13.14

Florian says:August 7, 2007 at 02:58

Avinash, I am intrigued by your definition of bounce rate as "users who left the site in less than 5 seconds". This type of measure would give us an indication if the users were not interested in he site at all, or took some time to read the content. However, I see no way to measure this this time. Time on site is usually measured as the time between to clicks on your site, and visitor who are not doing a second step on your site are not included. So I assume it is not possible to calculate the time on site for the users who bounced. Any thoughts?

REPLY14.15

Brian Carter says:August 7, 2007 at 09:49

I wanted to add something that seems obvious but I don't see it mentioned:If someone is bouncing (leaving within 5-10 seconds), they haven't read much of your page yet.I think Avinash's article mentions it a bit…Your visitor must believe that the landing page answers the question or solves the problem they had when they clicked to your site.Your page must clearly communicate what it's about- if it's confusing or overwhelming or the headline sucks, they bounce.I don't think a "bouncer" is getting much more into their brain about your page than the biggest headlines or bold words, an image, the layout, an overall impression.So I don't think it makes sense to talk about details of the copy etc. (things that lead to conversion after you pass the no-bounce test).Hope that helps,Brian

REPLY15.16


Florian : Ahhh… good point. N/V (no value) to the rescue!Time on site is usually measured as the time between to clicks on your site, and visitor who are not doing a second step on your site are not included. So I assume it is not possible to calculate the time on site for the users who bounced. Any thoughts?

You are right, that time on site is essentially computed using "time between clicks". You see page one at 1200 hrs and page two at 1201 then time on page one is one minute.If you only see page one at 1200 hrs (for one minute) and then leave (bounce!:)) then all analytics tool by default have no value for you for time on site.If your web analytics tool allows you to segment by time on site (say ClickTracks) then to compute bounce you can say "segment all the sessions with time on site of five seconds or less".No Value (people who saw only one page) are in the less than five seconds bucket.They'll get included.You have a slightly richer understanding of bounce rate (as Brian Carter put it) becuase in such little time someone could have seen a bunch of pages in five seconds yet they got little out of those pages and were never really in the game for you to convince them about anything.So using time on site is a bit more aggressive way to computing bounce, but I have usually advocated to marketers that it is the definition they should use becuase it sets a higher bar for marketers and website owners.-Avinash.

REPLY16.17

Patrick says:August 7, 2007 at 17:48

Hi Avinash,great blog post. I'm helping somebody out with the SEO of his website and try to get him to do some web analytics, too – and an article about bounce rate is just what I needed, now!When you use the rule of thumb that it's hard to get a bounce rater lower than 20%, 35% is already kind of bad and 50+% is very bad, can these bounce rates be applied across most industries?Im a bit surprised, because usually everybody always goes "it makes no sense trying to pinpoint an average number as it varies way too wildly across industries", but for bounce rate it's kinda similar from industry to industry? (just curious, b/c knowing what a bounce rate that needs improvement is could help me a great deal with this project)If it does vary wildly what would be a normal bounce rate (no cause for concern) for a website that sells cars or used cars, etc. ?thanks!!

REPLY17.18

Florian says:August 8, 2007 at 21:49

Hi Avinash,Let me get this straight. Do you mean:a) I get a better understanding of bounce rate by segmenting the 20% (for example) of users that don't technically bounce.b) I can get more data (how long did they spent on the landing page b4 leaving) about the 80% of users that bounce.I would love b) but can only see a)

REPLY18.19

angie says:August 9, 2007 at 11:31

Hi Avinash. I think with your "hard to misunderstand" comment that you underestimate our ability to misunderstand things. :-)The WAA Standards Committee began to define bounce rate and its sister single page visit thinking they would be no-brainer definitions. We ended up discussing them over several weeks. The sticking point was this: some of us have run across sites where visitors will refresh a page, or perhaps the page will refresh on its own after a set time (sports sites with a scoreboard or sites with frequently updated news are two examples). It is unclear from many vendor definitions whether or not visits that include only one page viewed multiple times contribute to the bounce rate. Our conclusion is that they should not, since they don't represent a true bounce.That's a good argument for using a metric based on visit duration like you have described above. However, I'd be careful calling it a "bounce" since that's not what that term represents for most of the available tools.

REPLY19.20

Derek says:August 13, 2007 at 09:07

I for one am for the longer, more in-depth posts – but I am also probably in the minority.Do you feel that bounce rate objectives/expectations fluctuate by large percentages across industries? I would have to imagine that websites with larger dollar items, or products/services with longer buying cycles should expect higher bounce rates (with the exception of brand specific searches/relationships) in comparison to something like a retail e-commerce site.

REPLY20.21


Derek : Yes the bounce rates will fluctuate but I am having a harder time with the latter part of your hypothesis.Each site and industry vertical will have its own unique bounce rate profile, after all there is no such thing as a generalization (and before someone else says it: yes I realize that is a generalization in of itself!). Please take the above mention "bands" as guidelines and then overtime benchmark against your own performance (this is one metric that should go down over time, if you are getting better).I don't know if any kind of website should have a "higher" bounce rate. If there are long buying cycles or high dollar items then you probably want people to spend more time and not less on the site (and hence have a lower bounce rate) since the visitor is so much more valuable.Overall it is hard to acquire traffic. No matter who you are what you do. That traffic should stay on your site for more than one page or more than five seconds, else was it worth it to acquire them?Thanks so much for the comment.-Avinash.

REPLY21.22

Derek says:August 14, 2007 at 05:45

Sorry for the confusion and appreciate the reply. I've been working with a company (with a fairly complex offering) to move their bounce rate to lower than 50%, which is why the question arose. However – your comment on the amount of time a user would want to spend on the site – evaluating, learning etc – is a key point.I feel that to some extent, an assumption is (was) being made simply because of the complexities in the product buying cycle and I'll need to take this into consideration for additional/updated content development and internal navigation. Thanks again for the valuable response!

REPLY22.23

Peder says:August 22, 2007 at 06:34

AvinashI am engrossed in your book WA An hour a day – great read.You mention it is not possible to measure how long a visitor is on the last page since time is calculated from one log entry to the next and since the page away from our site is not known, the time on the last page is always stated as zero. So how can you measure bounce rate at 5 seconds? What am I missing??

REPLY23.24

Blake says:September 11, 2007 at 15:42

Thank you. My new deity. And yes, I bought the book (and another book on the same topic, and the other book is due for the recycling bin or immolation.)

REPLY24.25

Vicki says:September 26, 2007 at 12:00

Like Peder, I'm reading your book (and loving it by the way) but I'm confused by your support for the bounce rate as a meaningful metric after reading your discussion about the problems with interpreting single page visits (p 138-139). How do you reconcile these two seemingly different views?

REPLY25.26

Rishi says:October 24, 2007 at 14:19

Exceptional. and i don't even work in the field!

REPLY26.27

Dalia says:November 7, 2007 at 06:33

I'd like to know if there are an international standard that says if my bounce rate is within the normal range , or it is too bad and need improvment?

REPLY27.28

SamB says:January 14, 2008 at 01:52

If we're talking about bounce rates being defined as when someone views only one page – I think there are scenarios where a high value may not be bad.Consider a regular reader of a blog, who visits often, reads a new post, and then leaves. They only visit one page, becuase they have already read previous articles.Or – someone links to an article on you site from a forum, visitors come and read the relevant article and leave.In these situations, a high bounce rate is not neccessarily a bad thing.

REPLY28.29

David Owen says:February 6, 2008 at 02:56

It is a good blog and a lively discussion. I remember reading that GA counts a bounce as a visitor that views one page of your site and leaves. The definition of leaving the site also includes a session time out which is 30 minutes.Theoretically someone could spend up to 30mins on a landing page and leave. This is ample time to read a story or view a single page.So as Sam B says if someone direct links to one page on your site or gets an RSS feed to certain content or reminder of updated content (i.e. this very page) then it follows that Bounce Rate may not be a bad thing at all for content driven sites.While I agree that for commercialised sites bounce rate can be a real problem for other sites that are content based it appears that bounce rate 'may' not necessarily be an issue.

REPLY29.30

Avinash Kaushik says:February 6, 2008 at 08:28

David :You are right. If success for your website is one page view then obviously Bounce Rate will not help identify the wheat from the chaff.I had noted Blogs as an example of a exceptional case at the end of the post above.I would hesitate to say that bounce rate is not a good metric for "content" sites. Take CNN for example. I could read the latest news on one page and leave, but CNN probably wants me to read more so I can see more ads and perhaps click on 'em. So they would care about bounce rate.Just a example. Your comment highlights the need to ensure a clearer understanding of what you are solving for and to that I say Amen!-Avinash.PS: Here is a post that might be helpful in understand the time component and how that plays itself out:

Standard Metrics Revisited: #4 : Time on Page & Time on Site

REPLY30.31

David Owen says:February 7, 2008 at 01:57

Thanks Avinash.Of course any site with advertising will want as many pages viewed as possible if there are advertisers. I was just trying to point out that as you say any metric (incl Bounce Rate) must be viewed in context of the page and the intent of the page involved.I have come across marketing 'gurus' who will take the bounce rate and subtract it from the traffic stats to essentially discount the number of people visiting a site. I think that this is an erroneous method and one that I hope isn't adopted as standard across the industry.

REPLY31.32

DJ Francis says:February 21, 2008 at 04:37

Great post – thanks! This is so interesting and you explain it so well.I delve into the time vs. page topic in my post from today and encourage my reader to visit this post as their homework. You're writing to a higher-level audience, but the importance of bounce rates is still the same.Thanks for your work!

REPLY32.33

defrey says:March 10, 2008 at 02:50

This is great.I have watched a couple of videos from you. English is not my native language & find your explanations always smooth & very to understand.Thank you

REPLY33.34

V says:March 24, 2008 at 00:52

Note: bounces are percentage of entrances that left without visiting another page. I mean, even 100% bounce rate may be "safe" for some pages. For example, I have "products" page on my site, top-visited, with 80% bounce rate and 13% exits. It is intermediate, menu page with few links only. Intended to give site visitors quick navigation way. The important point is that only few visitors came directly to this page — in fact, no one should came directly to that page, but it happens. And when 10 visitors came to that page this month, and 8 leave, this is 80% bounce, although thousands other navigate tro9ugh that page and it is with the lowest exit rate of the site :-)

REPLY34.35

Jiri Brazda says:March 27, 2008 at 00:58

Hello, I'm grappling with an issue concerning Bounce Rate in Google Analytics. Take this example: I visit a page, refresh it and leave. That is 2 pageviews, 1 unique pageview, 1 visit but is it counted in bounce rate or not???Many thanks for your help!! Jiri

REPLY35.36


Jiri: That would not be counted as a bounce.The definition of bounce rate, as outlined in the post above, is those sessions that only have one page view.In your example the session has two page views, so no bounce.Though as you can imagine we are in slightly gray matter land from a marketing perspective. :)-Avinash.

REPLY36.37

Nikki says:May 30, 2008 at 06:41

Thank you for the information we have been looking for – especially the benchmarking % numbers.If we have a new (less than a month) nearly 100% Flash site , are not doing SEM, and SEO has not been attempted yet — should we be concerned about a 68% bounce rate at loading/home page (the only way to enter the site)? (We are.) GA shows us that access speeds are good, the version of Flash is fine, and that as intended – our tween (12-14 yrs old) target is coming to us by directly entering our URL or clicking on banner ads. I'm questioning if GA is good at reading Flash sites, and why I see a 100% bounce rate on an inner page that can only be accessed by coming in through our home page. Is the validity of the 68% BR at loading/home and 100% BR at inner page worth questioning?

REPLY37.38

Avinash Kaushik says:June 1, 2008 at 21:46

Nikki: For the last part of your comment, 100% bounce, it is important to remember what the metric measures: The number of people who enter the website on a page and then leave from that page.So your "inner page" could have 100 visits. 99 from the home page (or any other page) and 1 visit directly to it. If that 1 visitor saw the inner page and left that's 100% bounce rate.You might think that the page is not accessible from any where :) but never underestimate the ability of search engines to index your content, or your website developers or company folks bookmarking inner pages and then visiting them to check them out and leave from there.In a nutshell 100% bounce rate is ok. Check what % of total visits is that. In the above example, if 100 visits and 99 bounce then freak out, if not then chill. :)-Avinash.

REPLY38.39

Nikki says:June 2, 2008 at 05:03

Thank you. It is very difficult to enter at our inner page though – in fact I cannot figure out how to do so.What is your take on GA and how good it is at reading Flash sites?

REPLY39.40

Nikki says:June 4, 2008 at 09:13

One more question: Any idea why we have GA stating significantly lower referral site traffic source visits than what those (paid banner ad) sites are reporting to us as their click-through rates? Then I will leave you alone! :)Thanks!

REPLY40.41

gary b says:June 9, 2008 at 10:10

How do you use a 5 second timeout to determine bounce? Most users will land on a page and spend more than 5 seconds reading it. If we set a cookie timeout to 5 seconds the reports will show almost 100% single page visits. Obviously not helpful.

REPLY41.42

bart says:July 2, 2008 at 10:29

Great post!I think a definite consideration for campaign planning is to set goals ahead of time around desired or acceptable bounce rates and time on site (instead of traditional visitor count and conversion metrics)

REPLY42.43

Louis says:August 3, 2008 at 14:26

Great page! Lots of great information. Here is what I am finding on my own site. The pages where the bounce rates are highest is what we call category pages. These pages are pages that have links to all of the different subcategories, once a customer clicks on the subcategory he or she is interested in, then that link either takes them to the actual product, or to another subcategory page where they can select the products they are interested in.Not sure if having these subcategory pages are a good idea. Any input from all the pros here would be greatly appreciated. I am really trying to understand all of this, and yes it is a lot of data, but nonetheless it is good data and good things to know.

REPLY43.44

Breakline Marketing says:August 11, 2008 at 11:22

Avinash,Excellent post. You seem to be THE Google Analytics evangelist.Is there any way to see natural search keyword performance trended out by month? Or do I need to manually download the total BR by month for each keyword and map it out.I'm trying to zero in on the what were the main culprits driving up my bounce rate over the last 5 months.Thanks,Breakline

REPLY44.45


Breakline Marketing: If you want to just look at a few keyword you can just drill down to the keyword level and switch the main graph up top to Bounce Rate and that will give you exactly what you want.If you want it for a whole host of keywords (which is a very normal desire :) then I am afraid there is not a pain free way to do it.If you are looking for the biggest bang for the buck just go to the keyword report, look at the keyword with the highest visits and then choose bounce rate in the next column and without too much effort you have your priorities starting at you. :)-Avinash.

REPLY45.46

Vineet SEO says:October 18, 2008 at 02:07

What if the visitor leaves that page in the 6th seconds? What if a visitor click an external link on landing page that opens in a new window? The landing page will remain open may be for a session or even more but that depends upon the visitor’s returns and the further action to that page. In the above scenarios time is above 5 seconds. Your second definition is not fulfilled in both the case but your first one might get fulfilled if the visitor closes that page on his/her return.I think Bounce Rate should be taken in account along with other factors, like:1. Type of Traffic Source2. Relevance of KW to Landing Page3. Type of Audience4. Subject matter5. Top Landing Pages6. Top Exit Pages7. Time on Page8. Content Quality…Also can we take Exit% in consideration along with Bounce%?In that case:A page having low exit rate and bounce rate will be …? (in my opinion good)A page having high exit rate and bounce rate will be …? (in my opinion bad)A page having low exit rate and high bounce rate will be …?A page having high exit rate and low bounce rate will be …?Please, if you can, explain the relevance between exit and bounce rate for a particular page. My friend Manoj Salwani(http://seo-interview-questions-answers.blogspot.com/) is having the same problem.

REPLY46.47

Mohit Anand says:December 30, 2008 at 13:55

Thanks for the article. I get around 300 visits per day on my site, and over 54% as bounce rate. Have tried different layouts and contents, but it keeps hovering at 54% :-(

REPLY47.48

Rupesh Patel says:January 3, 2009 at 06:10

Awesome post. So Many Things About Bounce Rate Has Been Cleared Now.Thanks.

REPLY48.49

seo company says:January 6, 2009 at 03:51

The complexitites of the bounce rate statistic and its uses are, as you mention, often over looked. I must say that you explain it all very clearly and this page will help everyone who is lucky enough to find it!

REPLY49.50

realistic martial arts says:January 8, 2009 at 10:46

Great Stuff. I was just surfing to web to see what people thought was a normal bouncerate for their site, I am glad I came across this site.

REPLY50.51

Will says:January 11, 2009 at 19:01

Sorry no time to read all comments but my 2cents:Only problem with bounce rate is that it assumes that viewing multiple pages is "good" and a single page is "bad." Although many times this is the case, sometimes the opposite is true: for example if you sell an offline product (like apartments) and direct ad clicks straight to a page with everything they need to know (to maximize the chances of a physical visit) then bounce rates will be low however the number of actual purchases might go up since.So really you just need to know the definition and strategy behind each metric well. Bounce rate is a good metric, but so are Visits and Campaign drilldowns. All depends on your strategy.

REPLY51.52

Dangerous Dolly says:January 14, 2009 at 09:09

I am on board with the bounce rate! However, some people in my organizations is fully satisfied with 95% BR (at least we get 5 % to click trough) – however I would say, let's get down to 90, or 80 or 75 % and imagine what could happen then.Have you Avinash, or anyone else had experience with this when the Hippo is "content" with the numbers? What to do to "force" them to realize that 95 % BR is 95% potential users lost?!I am the first "web analyst" in the organization, so it has to be "down to basics" "no brainers" :)Great post, as usual!!

REPLY52.53

Gilles says:February 6, 2009 at 09:04

If I understand, GA considers bounce rate as the percentage of website visitors who see just one page on your site.But I prefer the second definition of bounce rate (time notion), which is quite different : how is it possible to measure this with GA or Webtrends?

REPLY53.54


Gilles: In Google Analytics you can simply use Advanced Segmentation to segment out people with more than x seconds / minutes and bam (!) you have what you want.Here is how you would do it:

As you can see in this case there were, deeply sadly (!), only 12k Visits out of 61k that were more than 10 seconds.Now with a press of a button you can apply this segment to any report you want to (Paid Search, Referring URL's, Direct Traffic, Value of Landing Pages etc etc).I am not exactly sure how to do it in WebTrends, but I know that you should be easily be able to do it. Please check with their tech support folks.Before you do it in either tool please check out this post first and understand how time is computed in any web analytics tool:Standard Metrics Revisited: #4 : Time on Page & Time on SiteGood luck!-Avinash.

REPLY54.55

Nastik says:February 11, 2009 at 12:09

Thank you for this article! Very interesting..I have average bounce rate ~50% at my blog.. I have a look on the graph of bounce rate through the time range from the "start of my blog" till this day and see how it smoothly decreasing from 60% to 50%.. IMHO it is terrible result.. :(I would agree that "anything over 35% is a cause for concern and anything above 50% is worrying." but I can't understand why it is unreachable to get 20% and less..Even at google adwords by testing for a lot of ad variants I have not received bounce rate less than 30% and I think it is bad enough.. :( 30% of the payed money is completely wasted.. (If we don't count the events, when user haven't a lot of time and bookmark page to come visit it in future)..It would be good for me to hear some advice from you regarding my blog (may be something I could do better there), but it is in Russian, so I would not disturb you with this!.One more time, thank you for the article! Now I understand bounce rate better! :))

REPLY55.56

shekhar says:February 14, 2009 at 03:29

thanks for the excellent post. I checked the entrance keywords for one of my landing pages. For some keywords the bounce rate is low for some its high. But there are several keywords for which the bounce rate is zero. Is there any explanation for zero bounce rate.

REPLY56.57

Avec Frites says:February 19, 2009 at 05:11

There are a lot of web sites where a high bounce rate is a good thing, not a bad one. Sites where someone immediately finds what he wants. For example:1) dictionaries2) almanacs (search "zip code for chicago", e.g.)3) phone number directories4) weather forecast sites…in short, lots of reference sites. I would hope that the search engines don't penalize sites for high bounce rates without allowing for lots of exceptions for "reference" sites like these.

REPLY57.58


Avec: First something very very important: Bounce Rate analysis is important for your website and creating a connection with your Visitors so they don't "puke" and leave your site in a second.There is nothing any where that indicates, as you mention in your comment, that "search engines penalize sites for high bounce rates". To the best of my knowledge this is completely false, for all three search engines.To rephrase, Bounce Rates have nothing to do with your search organic ranging.Second, I do take exception to the "blanket immunity" to the sites you list in your comment. I have a really hard time accepting that there is any "for profit" site in the world where success is a Visitor coming, seeing the content and exiting.I think of this as a Businessperson. If I have a dictionary I want people to see the definition but maybe also bookmark it for future use (boom, no bounce), or check other definitions (and see more ads and click no ads and give me revenue). You can see how that works for weather forecast sites as well.Most sites you mention in your comment make money with ads. Today their monetization probably is on Impressions. Ok. Would it not be better to figure out some kind of Outcomes and get people to engage with the site and start charging more based on CTR? Or even charge more for Impressions because of more page views per visitor?I am not asking them to be annoying and just create more pages but give the visitor something of value which allows the Visitor to engage, to come back again in the future, sign up for a email alert system (when weather in my zip code will be higher than 200 degrees :), etc etc. Not all visitors but if your bounce rate is 90% you can certainly engage 20% of that audience? No?There are certainly exceptions in life, you might have noted my "exception" in the post about using bounce rates for blogs.I still push back on anyone who says "one page view is enough", I push back to just make people think harder. :)-Avinash.

REPLY58.59

Chris says:February 26, 2009 at 05:00

Great article and tips! Is 40% very high? I was looking at my bounce rates last weekend and it seems that I've got lots of work to do.

REPLY59.60

Aslam Multani says:February 27, 2009 at 07:22

Hi Kaushik,That is very helpful tips on how to fight with bounce rates.I will surely have to work a lot for my site.Thank you,Aslam

REPLY60.61


Chris: The right number for you would depend on what kind of site you have.For a blog for example 40% might not be worrying. But for an eCommerce site 40% is getting there in terms of something that is worrying.One thing is for sure. Regardless of your number today it has to go down month over month. You are not going to get down to zero but 40% means there is some room for improvement (remember depending on the site).So look at the last 12 months, has it been going down?If yes keep doing what you are doing, forget the others.If no then you have a lot of work to do, regardless of the others.-Avinash.

REPLY61.62

Frank says:March 7, 2009 at 19:33

I have a home page that has a lot of my product on it and its fairly easy to click on the type of product you are looking for to drill it down and purchase what you want. So theoretically can't my bounce rate be linked to the fact that its easy to find what you are looking for on another page in the site? They come to my home page, then go somewhere else very quickly to make a purchase or it is based on people that leave the site completely?

REPLY62.63


Frank: It is important to know that Bounce Rate is when people don't take any action on your site.So in your case when I come to growingcooks and click on aprons on the home page and go to the aprons page that is not a bounce.It would be bounce if I do nothing and just leave your site.In another case if I go to a site, it is just like growingcooks but 100% of the links on the home page lead me to a different website (say foodtv.com) then that does not have to be a bounce either. You want me to go to foodtv.com (hence you have all those links on the home page), you do a simple configuration change in your web analytics tool and that would be counted as a bounce.In this case it would be bounce if I don't click on any link on your site and just leave.Hope this helps,Avinash.

REPLY63.64

Pushkar says:March 18, 2009 at 10:49

Excellent Blog!Thanks to the Google Blog which made me land up here.I installed Analytics for my Search Engine optimization blog and what I am finding is that a lot of puking is going on. I have added a few affiliate marketing ads on my blog and I am getting no conversions. However, the traffic is superfluous the bounce rate is too high.I suspect its the use of third party template which is slowing down the loading time of my blog and then ultimately accounting for the high bounce rate on my blog.What ever it is.. I am gonna bat it out very soon.Thanks for the excellent post Avinash. :)

REPLY64.65

Derek Bough says:March 29, 2009 at 18:23

I came across this post because I was wondering how relevant 'bounce rate' is for blogs. Essentially, depending on how your blog is laid out, people may spend 10 minutes on the home page but, if they never leave that page, they bounced.I just wonder if the best metric when it comes to blogs may just simply be 'time on site'.NOTE: At the end of the above post you'll find a An Exception section. Please see that for your answer. – Avinash.

REPLY65.66

Johnny Lee says:April 9, 2009 at 11:05

Hi Avinash,Thanks for running this great site and publishing your wonderful insight.Along the lines of Derek in #94, I wanted to know your thoughts about pages or sites that are not deep (link-wise, not content-wise). In my case, instead of a blog, I'm running PPC to my product pages, which makes them both the landing page and the exit page, unless there's a conversion. So by GA's definition, everything bounces unless there's a conversion. (I suppose other tools won't be much better since they can't measure the duration on a single page in this case) My dilemma is not having a good bounce rate metric for my product pages.I thought of a workaround, which is to give a summary or a preview of the product, and then have visitors click on a link for the full details. However, I suspect that may increase the real bounce rate, or decrease conversion rate. Do you have any insight on best practices for this scenario?Thanks!-Johnny

REPLY66.67

Avinash Kaushik says:April 9, 2009 at 21:40

Johnny: This is going to sound lame but… It is important to remember that at the end of the day you are not solving for lowering the bounce rate, you are solving for a business problem.In your case you don't want a 90% bounce rate on your product pages, that is a waste of your campaign dollars. You want people to do something. A small % will buy, but the rest should maybe read more about the product, check out other products, learn about your company, give you a lead, maybe sign up for a account, maybe apply for a job, maybe….There are so many things for people to do on your site. That should and must lower your bounce rates.Please also see comment #88 above where I replied for another such scenario.Finally I would recommend against doing "anti customer" things like having a summary and making them click on "more info", sure you'll lower bounce rate but it would be a terrible customer experience.-Avinash.

REPLY67.68

SS says:April 10, 2009 at 08:29

Avinash,3 completely off-topic questions, totally understand if you blow this off.1. Data warehouse versus Google Analytics: any thoughts? This for a click based web start up who is not going to have user specific data (and thus no non-click stream data to link to) for the foreseeable future.2. BI Tool ! We do have a datawarehouse going, but it is hard for SQL to do across-row queries like"Give me sessions that did X, followed by Y, followed by Z".I have experience with cube based tools, and while these provide lag/lead functions; I have not found one that was expressive enough.Any BI tool/solution that lets the user express these queries ??3. Analytics Professional: MBA or degree in Stats !? I am a DW (IT) professional in New England, who wants to migrate to Analytics. Part-time MBA would have been my prefered choice, but their lack of quant focus is troubling. (Alas, FT at MIT is not an option). any suggestions ?

REPLY68.69


S S: Quick answers to your three (off topic!) questions….1. Data warehouse versus Google Analytics: any thoughts? This for a click based web start up who is not going to have user specific data (and thus no non-click stream data to link to) for the foreseeable future.You have to be very careful about data warehousing clickstream data (from any tool, not just GA). It sounds attractive on the surface but the reality is you have to make deliberate choices about what data you bring over and warehouse and what the primary keys will be etc etc. There is more in my book if you have it.The road to warehousing clickstream data is littered with dead bodies. That is not to discourage you, it is to urge caution and thoughtfulness.2. BI Tool ! We do have a datawarehouse going, but it is hard for SQL to do across-row queries like "Give me sessions that did X, followed by Y, followed by Z". I have experience with cube based tools, and while these provide lag/lead functions; I have not found one that was expressive enough. Any BI tool/solution that lets the user express these queries ??This is partly why the road is littered with dead bodies.BI tools are good for business intelligence type analysis. They were not created to do clickstream (funnel / path analysis -what you are trying to do).When I build the massive data warehouse my stress to the company was: Use the web analytics tool for things it was built for, use the DW ONLY to answer the questions that the WA tool can't (note the nice implications of this on bringing data over to the DW).3. Analytics Professional: MBA or degree in Stats !? I am a DW (IT) professional in New England, who wants to migrate to Analytics. Part-time MBA would have been my prefered choice, but their lack of quant focus is troubling. (Alas, FT at MIT is not an option). any suggestions ?Here is a post about how to think about your analytics career:Analytics Career Advice:”I am an Analytics God, I want more $$. How?”-Avinash.

REPLY69.70

john says:May 30, 2009 at 16:57

I have found bounce rate is the most useful indicator to measre the quality of your websit to your target customer. The lower the bounce rate, the better change for you to win the acceptance from your customer.

REPLY70.71

Ryan says:June 26, 2009 at 12:48

So this means GA counts a download as a click?"GA uses the “single page view in a session” definition"Let's say you have a landing page and someone visits the page, clicks the Download link, and then leaves the page (so they only see one page of the site)…Just checking with you if GA will indeed show this as a bounce in their stats…

REPLY71.72

Hart says:July 9, 2009 at 16:55

Well, judging by the number of comments, I guess it is not that hard to mis-understand bounce rate :-) I sure learned a lot, from your post and the Q&A in the comments. Thanks!

REPLY72.73

Trond says:July 11, 2009 at 09:46

From a SEO point of view a high Bounce Rate can also indicate that the user got the information he or she was looking for immediately without further browsing. That is a success factor! The importance and the value of SEO is to lead the user from Google SERP directly to the right sub-page and not to the front page. SEO brings the potential customers directly to the bullseye. By only viewing on bounce rate and page views people may be fooling themselves. A low bounce rate and a lot of pageviews may also, in some cases, be a sign of serious problems. In many SEO projects I have been working on the last years the pageviews per visit on company websites has decreased dramatically and the bounce rate has increased. The conversions has though been improved, the ROI has increased and everyone is happy. When combining a good keyword strategy and a continuous SEO from a-z with Usability improvements and always improving the "selling points" a high bouncerate has been seen very often – but as mentioned – without me going around and being worried. I am sleeping very well each nights though my bounce rate is increasing :-) :-)

REPLY73.74

Avinash Kaushik says:July 11, 2009 at 21:56

Trond: I am glad you are sleeping well each night! : )But I am afraid I disagree with you. Not that your strategy won't work for some time.I believe that ignoring a high bounce rate, or a rising one, even if outcomes (conversions) increase means you are giving up on a big opportunity to more easily add to satisfying more customers and add to your outcomes.Here is an example.Visits: 100. Bounce Rate: 70. Conversions: 5.So you work hard on conversions and get to this:Visits: 100. Bounce Rate: 80. Conversions: 7.Clearly this is a improvement. But consider the missed opportunity (the number of people who leave right away increased). But that is ok, you work harder and this happens:Visits: 100. Bounce Rate: 85. Conversions: 10.Again better. This last step was harder because you keep working off a smaller and smaller pool.My hypothesis is is that it is much easier to figure out how to convert 10 more people from a pool of 85 than convert the remaining 5.For a concrete example of how how I could react in a situation where a single page view might be a success please see comment the observation from Frank in Comment #87 and my reply in Comment #88 in this post. Just scroll up. : )Thanks so much for adding to the conversation.-Avinash.

REPLY74.75

Munaz says:August 3, 2009 at 04:03

Great Post on Bounce Rate. I have one question – If Visitor A visits a website and immediately exits, its a bounce rate. But how Google Analytics calculates bounce rate if he visits the same website within the time session and views couple of pages? As per GA, visit is single because the user visits the page within the defined time session of 30 mts. The first visit is bounce rate.. what about his second visit who browses through a couple of web pages. Does Google still count it as bounce rate?I'd appreciate if you take time to clarify this, pls,Avinash ji

REPLY75.76

Jacob Martin says:August 4, 2009 at 11:07

Your post is great. Thanks for your expertise on analytics.We started using analytics about four months ago (since have started reading your book), using pageviews and time on site as an indicator if a page needed help. After this post, I checked our bounce rate and it appears we might be doing something right.I run an ecommerce site and was using 10 pageviews as the indicator that the page needed help. Is there a standard for e-commerce on pageviews?Also, started using some comparison shopping websites (three of the big ones)for marketing and they seem to have a higher bounce rate than PPC or Organic. Is that normal?Also, our chat software allows me to see where a visitor comes from and how long they are on site. It appears many of the visitors from the comparison site just sit there for hours? Is that normal?

REPLY76.77

Jay Angelucci says:August 11, 2009 at 14:13

Avenash,Thank you for a terrific blog; it is a great resource for us.My leadership asked me if it was possible to report Bounce Rate as the number of single-page visits with durations of less than 20 seconds, divided by total visits. So, I am wondering if it is possible to measure the visit duration of a single-page visit at all, since the time-on-page metric is determined by the time stamp from the second page in a visit. If there is not second page, there must be no time-on-page calculation.Is this correct? Is there a way to determine Bounce Rate using single-page visits of 20 second or less in duration?Thank you.

REPLY77.78


Jay: Sure you can do that.Just use the advanced segmentation feature in your web analytics tool. For example if you are using Google Analytics you can choose time_on_site and say greater_than and say 20 seconds. You give it that a name and you are doing.For more on how time is computed in any tool, not just GA, please see this post:http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/01/standard-metrics-revisited-time-on-page-and-time-on-site.html-Avinash.

REPLY78.79

Gary says:August 12, 2009 at 06:36

Follow up question to your post #116. Since time on site is computed by measuring the time between pages. How can you measure the time on site for a bounce? Only one page is visited right? What am I missing?

REPLY79.80

Tomm says:August 19, 2009 at 00:17

The post is very nice but, what can we do if the home page bounce rate is very high. I have checked my website stats which tell me that all my pages except home page, have low bounce rate under 10% but the home page bounce rate is very high, 60%.So how to make it down.

REPLY80.81

Yvonne says:September 17, 2009 at 22:48

Really great post you've got on Bounce Rate anaylysis! Love the way you present your insight on how important bounce rate is in analysing web-statistics and relating it to sales conversion rate. Good job! Looking forward to your next post!

REPLY81.82

Sally says:September 28, 2009 at 11:40

Avinash, there may be a "radical" 6th metric for bounce rate: Site Design. I say it's radical because it takes a lot of work, and it entails rolling the dice without knowing for sure whether it is the problem.Sometimes a site owner works so hard to have great content, that they forget to focus on the attractiveness of their overall design, and how it influences visitors on their journey.The longer I play with my websites, the more I am inclined to convert them to a more of a CMS layout (I just started the process with a couple of websites). Visitor attention spans tend to be strained. I have been finding that the more you can create "easy to see chunks", or areas of interest on your website, the more inclined people are to click.This was a great post. Thank you!

REPLY82.83

Paula says:October 2, 2009 at 09:21

Avinash,After watching a video clip of you on YouTube this morning, I started Googling around for benchmark bounce rates and came across an article (see link below) that I found very informative. The author quotes individual bounce rate ranges for different entries into a site (e.g., SEM versus branding display banner campaign versus direct marketing campaign.) However, this data was based on his experience working in China. Any thoughts on how best to guide my clients? (I work for digital ad agency here in the states).I do believe there should be some distinction as users behave differently whether entering a site directly/proactively, clicking thru from a banner or more qualified inquiry via paid search.I'd appreciate your insight.Thank you.********Here's the author's quote:"A rule of thumb based on my experience in China:For micro sites for branding campaigns with mainly banner traffic: 85% to 90%For landing pages of search marketing campaigns 25% to 40%For landing pages of targeted direct marketing campaigns (20% – 30%)"Here's a link to the article.http://longmarch.chinalytics.com/2009/08/my-bounce-rate-sucks-what-can-i-do-a-five-step-guide/#

REPLY83.84

Avinash Kaushik says:October 2, 2009 at 15:42

Paula: There are no standards because everyone is special. Very special. :)The first and most important thing to realize is that the only desirable bounce rate is one that goes down each month. But a lot or by a little. But one that goes down. If your website's bounce rate does not show that then no benchmarks are relevant.Ok with that said. . . .Tools like Google Analytics provide benchmarks in the application. If you click on Visitors (left nav) then Benchmarks. You'll see your website's metrics compared to those of "like sized" and "like minded" sites. You can also choose Open Category List and choose a different industry / vertical sector to compare yourself.Good luck!-Avinash.

REPLY84.85

Syndite says:December 15, 2009 at 04:50

Good stuff, and well done to get featured on google's blog, I imagine the bounce rate for this page will be even higher soon ;)

REPLY85.86

Charlie Ballard says:January 6, 2010 at 16:08

Years later and I'm still concerned about this post. Here's the rub: what if the few visitors that aren't bouncing are either extremely valuable, or just sufficiently valuable enough that they validate the spend on the channel driving them? A luxury car manufacturer may get a ton of traffic from people just checking out their homepage, but only very few looking to Build Their Own, yet if those very few all end up buying then isn't the site doing its job?I do appreciate the simplicity and easy-to-understand nature of Bounce Rate, but don't agree in your example #2 above that MySpace should be slapped around if it proves out that the MySpace visitors who don't bounce are particularly more qualified.I love that you make easy-to-use metrics, Avinash. But it worries me when your easy metrics get picked up by people who don't understand "harder" metrics — to the possible detriment of their business.

REPLY86.87

Avinash Kaushik says:January 6, 2010 at 16:29

Charlie: Two quick thoughts…..1. Bounce rate, like every other metric on the planet, is not a panacea. It is a good diagnostic metric and in context of the businesses goals helps find lower hanging fruit to fix.2. Say you are BMW. 100 Visitors come. 97% bounce rate. 3 visitors not only stay on the site, they go on to buy a BMW after making appointments on the site. Success? Absolutely. Opportunity? Yes. If only one could figure out how to get 3 more of the 97 to stay. Not stop at 3, maybe go for 10. That's my overall point.I am very appreciative of your feedback. You are right to point out that it is important to look at a metric in context of the website and overall business goals.Thank you.Avinash.

REPLY87.88

alex says:February 9, 2010 at 01:08

This article is awesome, maybe some day you wish to go a little into how to compose a great landing page to have a low bounce rate, I always think that your content, your constucture and your overall layout will affect your bounce rate?

REPLY88.89


Alex: Here is a blog post that covers exactly what you are looking for:Six Tips For Improving High Bounce / Low Conversion Web PagesIt covers how the pages on your website can be improved in terms of content, structure, calls to action and other things to ensure they not only reduce bounce rates but also help improve customer satisfaction and conversions.-Avinash.

REPLY89.90

Jackson says:February 13, 2010 at 00:09

DataMaxKenya has presenta a unique browsing experince. It is a navigation gateway: This means that once you land here you are supposed to be guided to another web resorce outside fo the site. So a bouce rate of 80% could be Ok

REPLY90.91

Kathy says:February 20, 2010 at 10:57

Thanks for the helpful explanation.We have a "personality" website we post to daily, mostly for fun and to keep our humor writing, cartooning, and photo skills in shape. Topics range across the spectrum of whatever we found interesting that day. Still, it's interesting to see what topics and medium were most compelling. And no surprise, looking at bounce rate shows that topics that are part of a thematic thread or are completely unique to our site have the lowest bounce rate.For instance, I crocheted a hat last week in honor of Alexandre Bilodeau's Olympic gold medal for Canada and blogged on it, titling it "In Honor of Gold, I'm Making A Bobbled Bilodeau." Three days later, we posted "Bobbled Bilodeau Update," and guess what? A bounce rate of zero.Thanks again for enlightening!Ciao, Kathy

REPLY91.92

Ignacio says:April 5, 2010 at 09:08

Hola,well my question is.. I have an art gallery and in my home page of the web I have planty of info regarding the actual exhibition,fotos + video…how do I count if people are really interested or not? meaning, may be they have enough info in the home page..and doent mean that the page is not well esturctred,I have a bouce rate of 39% is that any good?Thanks

REPLY92.93

Ashish says:June 7, 2010 at 09:52

Thanks for the helpful information.Is there a way to know how long did the visitor stayed on the page before bouncing? For each bounced visit, Google Analytics shows '00:00:00' as the Avg. Time on Page, which can be true on some cases but not in all.Thank you

REPLY93.94


Ashish: To understand how Time on Site and Time on Page metrics check out his blog post:Standard Metrics Revisited: #4 : Time on Page & Time on SiteIt covers how time on a page is computed, why you see 0:00:00 for single page view visits in any web analytics tool and also if you want to see the time on single page view session then how you can approach it.-Avinash.

REPLY94.95

John says:June 17, 2010 at 09:38

I am in the beginning stages of testing with some Google Ad campaigns, so I am really taking your section dedicated to it at heart.I will be focusing my main attention on my landing pages and my call to actions.Thanks for the valuable tips.

REPLY95.96

Vincent says:July 24, 2010 at 21:39

Bounce rate isn't always a main target,a good conversion rate is very important also but bad bounce means your target of price comparison alot so price is a very important factor.

REPLY96.97


Vincent: You are right in that having a good conversion rate is very important. As is a lower funnel abandonment rate and higher per visit goal value etc etc. They are quite important.All that Bounce Rate does is help you understand if you are meeting the very first test that you need to pass: Get the person who comes to your site to give you a single click.Conversion starts with that first click right?Consider this:Visits: 100 Bounce: 60% Conversions 2%40 people did not bounce and only 2 converted. So you are right, you can work hard to get more of the 40 to convert.The way to think of bounce is that 60% just left, did nothing. It is likely a series of small changes can get 20 of them or 30 of them to stay on your site, give you a click. At least some of them, say 2, will convert (not hard right to get 2 of 30 to convert :)). If that happens you doubled your conversion.Visits: 100 Bounce: 30% Conversions 4%So they, conversion & bounce, play together.It depends on which lever you can pull more easily, for people who have never thought about bounce rates it is much much easier to lower bounce rates (at least for the first x months).If you have optimized your strategy (relevant landing pages, right targeting of ads and campaigns, clear calls to action etc) then you'll get higher roi out of obsessing about conversion.Good luck.Avinash.PS: Even for hard core ecommerce site my humble experience does not suggest that everyone who bounces is a price comparison shopper or price conscious. See this post on how to figure out why people bounce:* Six Tips For Improving High Bounce / Low Conversion Web Pages

REPLY97.98

Ashish says:July 25, 2010 at 09:30

Avinash, besides your awesome advices, I have also become a fan for the simple reason that you pay attention to your audience.I just noticed how quickly (and effectively) you elaborated on the query posted by Vincent. Wow! That's what differentiates one (business or an individual) from another.

REPLY98.99

Serge Roukine says:July 26, 2010 at 02:57

In fact a little digging shows that bounce rate and conversion rate are closely related. Here is a chart of conversion rate (TC) as compared "1 minus bounce rate" (TE). The X-axis is keyword (hidden for confidentiality).Basically it's very similar. You can try it for yourself on different sites / metrics, it works pretty well as long as you have sufficient data.http://i.imgur.com/ixjDf.png

REPLY99.100

Kevin says:July 26, 2010 at 04:27

Avinash:I would agree with your thoughts on Bounce rate. My challenge is this:On our key PPC landing pages, we have an 800# prominently displayed. (We're doing B2B lead gen). Since Google Analytics doesn't calculate Time on Page for bounces, it's difficult to determine which folks hung around for a few minutes to pick the phone and call us.And no, we haven't implemented dynamic phone numbers to find source (I think that all requires VOIP, which isn't going to happen here for a while).I know 40% of my leads still come from the phone. Any thoughts on how we might measure some of our effectiveness there, aside from simply adding 40% to our conversion rates? (a sloppy solution).I talk a little bit about how we deflect some of that here:http://levelanalytics.com/2009/12/08/tracking-the-marketing-source-of-phone-customers/

REPLY100.101


Serge: Excellent graph! Thanks so much for sharing this idea and an actual picture.Kevin: There are number of solutions that make it really easy to track the phone calls, and you don't have to set up VoIP or anything like that.Here are some: ClickPath (Who's Calling), KeyMetric, Mongoose Metrics, AvidTrak, IfByPhoneRead.Using these solutions make it easier to figure out if the hypothesis that all those people who bounce called your phone number. :)Hope this helps.Avinash.

REPLY101.102

DJ Mckinnon says:July 26, 2010 at 22:46

I want to touch on a point there,If you go into google analytics,Select Length of Visit from the [Visits] [Visitor Loyalty] drop down.Then select The advanced segment, Non – bounced visitors.Its pretty easy to see that most people under 10seconds are also the bounced visitors.That gives me time on site for my visitors, and by working backwards time on site for bounced visitors.In my example its clear that the bouncing visitors are happening within that first 10 seconds,Which from a behaviour point of view, (including pageload time) makes total sense.How much can you really do in 0-10seconds if the site is completely new and novel and what about expectations?Pageload – few seconds.eye scan everything 1-2secondsRead H1, 1-2secondsLook at the main picture(s) 1-2secondsHit the Back button?Total – 10secIll add a screen cap of my report if you want it.You guys are all fiends.. lol

REPLY102.103

James Fletcher says:August 19, 2010 at 08:30

Hi Avinash,Great post, I actually found you via a google video on Bounce Rate, love your saying "I came, I puked, I left" :)Anyway – is it normal to see a relatively young site (5 months old) have a higher bounce rate?Also any tips on reducing bounce rate other than qualify out dodgy links?

REPLY103.104


James: It is not completely unusual for a new site to have a high bounce rate. Your audience does not know who you are and what they should expect and it is quite likely you (not you specifically :)) have no idea who your real audience is and what they expect.I call this the Purpose – Intent gap.More detail on that gap is in this post, which also includes six specific tips you can use to reduce the bounce rate of your website:~ Six Tips For Improving High Bounce / Low Conversion Web PagesGood luck.Avinash.PS: In your case, MSP, you also want to auto encode all your exit links (like on the Tigerpaw Software page) with Event Tracking. Two benefits:1. If people come directly to that base and click on that link to go to Tigerpaw then that is not really a bounce and that will be captured by Google Analytics and marked as not a bounced Visit.2. You'll know your real bounce rate and be able to focus on the right thing.There are several ways to do this at scale like using the Analytics Pros APE. If you are using other web analytics tools you can also do something similar easily, just contact Omniture / WebTrends / CoreMetrics / IBM / whomever you are using!

REPLY104.105

Patrick says:August 26, 2010 at 11:10

Avinash,I have a one page site. All the links go to a corporate site separate from mine with the exception of the contact us portion. My bounce rate is 82% but my direct visits is more like 50%. Are people who visit, read my modest offering and leave without clicking anything else considered bounces by Google analytics?Thank you

REPLY105.106


Patrick: If someone comes to your site. Does not click on anything and leaves that is a bounce. This applies to every tool.In your case, single page website, there is one important nuance to be aware of.People who click on links on your site that go to other websites will also be counted as a bounce because that click, and it is just the way the web works and not any tool, "goes" to the other website (it shows up in their reports as a referrer).So your click on my book links on this page (which go to amazon) go to amazon but default.There is a simple solution: Track those outbound clicks.If you are using Google Analytics (or any other tool in the world) this is quite easy. You can use the "fake page view upon click" method or "event tracking" method.Now when someone clicks on a link to your corporate site to leave your single page website you will capture that click and that visit will not be considered as a bounce. The bounce rate you see in your reports will be your "real" bounce rate.I recommend using the cleaner event tracking method: http://awe.sm/59k2TAvinash.

REPLY106.107

Matthieu says:December 6, 2010 at 14:15

Hi Avinash,I was reading your post "3 Awesome, Downloadable, Custom Web Analytics Reports" and came back here to look at the "bounce rate" comments.Here is my small contribution:The website I run is for a classical music label. Pages include the whole tracks available on streaming as well as links to various stores selling our music. It was therefore quite hard to know if the bounce rate of our album pages was due to lack of relevance or if it was high because people came, listened to the album and clicked a link to buy it on an other store.Three things helped:- a 4Q survey which told me that half my visitors were coming to discover albums, 20% to find info on an album before going to a physical store- time spent on the page: I thought that a bounce occurring after one minute was less significant.- setting some objectives and some events regarding the use of external links towards other stores and the usage of the streaming option (the listen button near each track).Reading your blog and book, as well as some analysis shown that bounce rate could not be understood right away and needed a context.

REPLY107.108

Julia Reardon says:December 9, 2010 at 15:21

Dear Avinash,Appreciated your visit on anunslife.org for the Digital Ministry special today. We learned a lot and enjoyed your sense of humor.Hope you come back soon.Thanks, Julia

REPLY108.109

Richard Price says:December 15, 2010 at 12:22

I'm using google analytics event tracking to try and highlight that users are engaging with a page but are using the flash/javascript components rather than navigating around (which I think is a reason behind my site's higher than average bounce rates on some pages). This seems like a fair statement?I'm currently exploring all the techniques for using event tracking with Google Analytics. Which brought me here :)

REPLY109.110

Avinash Kaushik says:December 15, 2010 at 21:06

Richard: Flash / Ajax / Javascript components are optimally tracked using Event Tracking in Google Analytics (though the brave amongst us also use Custom Variables).If you use either tracking method then Visitors on your site viewing only one page, but using the flash/ajax/javascript components will not be counted as a bounce.Bounce = session with only one "hit" (hit = Page view or an event or any other piece of data passed back to the web analytics tool)-Avinash.

REPLY110.111

Erik Emanuelli says:December 16, 2010 at 05:23

Thanks for explaining well what is bounce rate.

REPLY111.112

C. Roscoe Harper says:January 21, 2011 at 08:49

I have a question along the lines of industry standard for bounce rate….I work for a credit union and our homepage has the login for our online banking portal. Our bounce rate is very high on the homepage, but I have to think that is due to our members logging into online banking, which takes them to an external site.Am I thinking correctly here?

REPLY112.113

Avinash Kaushik says:January 21, 2011 at 09:45

Roscoe: Industry standards are over-rated. (But if you were looking for general guidance there are specific numbers provided in this post, check 'em out.)In your case it is important to know that you can measure the correct bounce rate on your website accurately, hence prove or disprove your hypothesis.Today: Land on site, click on link to go to member site, leave site. This will be a bounce.All you have to do is ensure that the link / login to your banking portal is being captured when someone clicks on it. One simple way, if you are using Google Analytics, is to capture that using outbound link tracking (using the Event Tracking functionality).Here's an article with the code: How do I manually track clicks on outbound links?If you are using Omniture or CoreMetrics or IBM or whatever other tool, they all have such functionality, please ask your account rep for instructions.Now when people do the behavior above they won't be counted as bounce AND you'll be able to accurately know how many people actually bounce. Hurray!!-Avinash.

REPLY113.114

Steve says:February 19, 2011 at 11:46

Thanks for this, it really explained a lot for me on bounce rates.

REPLY114.115

Tony says:March 13, 2011 at 23:29

With recent changes to google search platform the definition of bounce rate has def. Change, still good info above though but conversation rate is the most important.

REPLY115.116

Мне на кризис наплевать, вылез в топе гоу бухать says:April 29, 2011 at 00:05

Great article and tips! Is 40% very high?I was looking at my bounce rates last weekend and it seems that I've got lots of work to do.

REPLY116.117


Hi. Depending on the site you are running 40% might not be "very high". Especially if you are running a content only site like a blog. Please see advice in the post about looking at bounce rates for blogs by segmenting New Visitors only.If 40% is the bounce rate for my advertising campaigns then I would freak out. If 4 out of 10 people I pay to bring to my site leave right away then that is quite pathetic. I would look to fix things right away so as to lose less money for my company.Avinash.

REPLY117.118

Wendy says:June 14, 2011 at 10:00

Do outgoing links affect bounce rate?I am concerned because I have pages on a site I am monitoring which has several outgoing links to either different social networks and to the 3rd party ecommrce-site.If yes, does setting up either event tagging or virtual pageviews for these links improve or affect the bounce rate of a page?

REPLY118.119


Wendy: Bounce rate, as outlined in the article, is influenced by the number of "hits" stored in a visitor's session. If you come to the site, do nothing except just see the landing page then that is one hit. You leave. That is a bounced session.If you come to the site and click on anything, an outbound link, a link into the site, hit play on a video, etc, then that is not a bounced session since one more hit was sent to the web analytics tool.The only requirement is that tracking is implemented (using events, page views, anything) correctly.Avinash.

REPLY119.120

Rashmi says:July 27, 2011 at 11:26

Question on the definition of Bounce RateThe percentage of website visitors who stay on the site for a small amount of time (usually five seconds or less).I understand this as the percentage of people who visited pages on your site in 5 seconds and then left your site. If this is so and we are looking at people exiting the site after 5 seconds, how do we know they spent only five seconds since we can't easily get the time spent on the last page due to the use of time stamps to calculate time spent.

REPLY◦ 121


Rashmi: The standard computation for bounce rate in pretty much all web analytics tool is to identify visits where only one "hit" was recorded. That hit could be a page view, an even, anything. But just one.You can compute bounce rate using time as a function, you can do this manually. But in that case you are only measuring those people who saw more than one page – because as you correctly mention if someone sees only one page view the time for that session is N/A.Avinash.

REPLY120.122

B-Double-U says:July 28, 2011 at 08:59

Hi Avinash,We are having a debate over in the Google forum. maybe you can offer an opinion.We are wondering if Google uses bounce rate to determine rank, SERP standings or anything of the sort as a quality factor when measuring a website.There are 2 sides.One side is regurgitating that Google has posted (on several occasions) that:(Bounce rate) "Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors"The second side, and where I fall is that a high Bounce rate can mean that the visitor found exactly what they needed, so there was no reason to go deeper into the site.The thought is that if you own "Time.gov" or a provide stock rates or pieces of information that are easily absorbed, you will have a high bounce rate, but that is not a bad thing. People visit the site, get the time, and then leave, it's that simple. Or in the case of merchants, they wanted to see if it was in stock, they printed the page, they looked at the price, wanted to see available colors, etc ad infinitum.Since there is no way to measure the intent of the visitor, how can it even be considered a viable metric to gauge quality? Or what about cases where the search requires information from multiple locations, like a compiled report, the first people checked will all have bounces, while the last person in the list will not. That doesn't mean that the last person checked had the best information, just that my compilation of information is complete or that I got tired of searching.As a quick test, I looked at bounce rate from all search engines on one of my sites, and Google had the highest by over a 10% delta. To me, this says that Google is doing the best job of delivering the correct person to the correct page on our site. They got the information, they left (or bounced).If Bounce rate was a factor, We would see a flood of tactics being deployed to combat this such as:- Overlay to access the website, many Q&A sites do this (to see the SOLVED answer to your query, sign up)- Removal of a persons ability to us the back button. This would be the new default.- Launching new pages or redirecting people without consent. Porn, phishing, spam, and ad sites love this tactic now.- Mystery navigation that made you "hunt" for the info you originally came for.- Long pages with seemingly relevant links more readily available than the original info you searched for, just designed to get the clickthrough.This list could also go on forever as well as the number of deployable tactics that no user would want, but would definitely and greatly affect the bounce rate.Can you add your perspective or can you definitively say whether or not the metric of "Bounce Rate" is a factor in ranking?

REPLY◦ 123


Google does not use Bounce Rate from Google Analytics as a factor to compute anything SEO.-Avinash.

REPLY121.124

Larry says:September 16, 2011 at 22:43

Measure the bounce rate of your incoming traffic source… that truly is a great tip! others should really take notes as that is so huge in showing a great indicator for valuable or forget about it traffic sources!Great article!

REPLY122.125

Lindsay says:February 20, 2012 at 13:19

Hello.I've recently read several blogs that say to look at Average Time Spent on Page when analyzing page bounce rates. These blogs have stated that if you have a high bounce rate but the time on page is also high than, you know people are finding what they are looking for or were at least interested in the content.I would like to argue that this is untrue due to the fact that visits that bounce are not calculated in the average time spent on page in Google Analytics and therefore those users who bounced immediately were not the same users who spent time on the page.Would this be correct?

REPLY◦ 126


Lindsay: You are absolutely right about Time on Page. As this post outlines…~ Standard Metrics Revisited: #4 : Time on Page & Time on Site…if someone visits your site and only sees one page then the web analytics tool does not know how long they spent on that page. See the first example in the post above.In an effort to provide the people you are talking about ("blogger" :) a better proxy to use for "engagement" with the page (the only page that was seen during the session), I'd offered a solution that could capture the fact that someone scrolled on the page. The thought would be that if you scrolled we could possibly think of that as a proxy for the fact that you were reading it. It is not perfect, certainly a little bit on thin ice, but if you want to learn more about that solution you'll find it on my Google+ page:~ More Accurate Measurement of Bounce Rates for Content Sites-Avinash.

REPLY123.127

Erica Curtis says:June 19, 2012 at 08:18

I'm finding that my bounce rate from Stumbleupon traffic is fairly low – in the 50% range – but my page views per visit metric from Stumbleupon is also low – in the 1.0 – 1.1 range. I don't really understand how bounce rate and page views per visit can both be low. I would expect that if bounce rate is low, pages viewed per visit would be higher. Any ideas? Does this have to do with the way Stumbleupon works?Thanks!-Erica

REPLY◦ 128


Erica: It could be any number of things, it would be hard to isolate it without knowing about your website, seeing some of the stumbleupon link etc. :)But here are some ideas….When I see numbers like these I check what the distribution looks like. Lots of people could see only one page, but a few might see a lot and you know what happens when that averages out.Stumbleupon also uses frames and that sometimes might cause issues.Your implementation could also be something to check. Standard implementation should be fine, but if you've customized it to capture events or custom variables etc that could be something to look into.If you need any help please reach out to a GACP who can check and assist you:http://bit.ly/gaac.-Avinash.

REPLY124.129

Tera Buckley says:June 21, 2012 at 13:23

Mr. Kaushik, in your Web Analytics 2.0 book, so you said bounce rate is the sexiest web metric ever. I agree. What I Iike best about bounce rate is that it identifies the low-hanging fruit that need to be fixed now. If people are turned off by the page, fix it.My student blog on Online Accountability offers some advice on addressing Bounce Rate. Check it out at terabuckley.blogspot.com/2012/05/boing-boing-boing.html

REPLY125.130

Adrian says:June 26, 2012 at 05:08

Hi Avinash,Just wondering if you could provide some insight on how a check-out page (accessed by the search results page) could have a bounce rate of 100%? Especially as the navigation summary shows that about 97% of visits to the page are from previous pages, and the average time on page is over 3 minutes.How is that possible, when bounce rate refers to single-page visits? Any idea what I'm missing that could explain it?Your thoughts would be very appreciated!

REPLY◦ 131

Adrian says:June 26, 2012 at 05:11

I think I just answered my own question, as it only refers to single-page visits, and the bounce rate doesn't take into account all those visits that were not single-page visits (ie 97% of them)!

REPLY126.132

Öppettider says:July 13, 2012 at 06:37

Couldn't get an easier explanation for the bounce-ratio. Thank you.Please keep the good work up.

REPLY127.133

Sheheryar Khan says:July 18, 2012 at 03:05

Avinash,This is Sheheryar Khan & I want to ask how rare is 3% bounce rate because my website (FinanceTrainingCourse.com) is under 5% bounce rate since we redesign it 3 months ago & the bounce rate for July is under 3% I just need to know your opinion on it & how rare this case is. Also any suggestions if you have some time to see the site.I await your kind response.Regards,Sheheryar Khan.

REPLY◦ 134


Sheheryar: A bounce rate that low I'm afraid typically means that there might be an issue with implementation. Either the code is implemented twice, or some events are being fired automatically on every page load, or something like that.It might be optimal to hire a GACP to go through your implementation and help you identify what the issue might be. You'll find a list here: http://www.bit.ly/gaacI wish it were possible to have a 3% bounce rate, sadly it is not.Avinash.

REPLY■ 135

Sheheryar Khan says:July 18, 2012 at 21:40

Thanks a lot Avinash for replying.

REPLY128.136

Camille Marie says:August 15, 2012 at 06:42

Avinash- What about digital display ads? What is a healthy bounce rate? We've seen as low as 55% and as high as 85%. Is there a benchmark that advertisers can use?

REPLY◦ 137


Camille: There are not benchmarks for bounce rates, and even the ones that purport to be benchmarks are highly suspect.Sorry.In the post you'll see that I go on a limb and outline broad ranges that I've personally developed as guide rails (when not to worry, when to worry a bit, when to freak out). That might give you some guidance. In general if I'm spending money (paid advertising money) then I prefer to have a very low bounce rate.But in general the only good bounce rate is one that goes down over time. It is ok if it is 85. Set a goal to get to 70 next month. Then 55. Then.. You get the point.If you want a benchmark, look at your best performing campaigns (say paid search or a particular keyword or a particular landing page) and use that as a aspirational goal for everyone else.Avinash.

REPLY■ 138

Rob McLaughlin says:August 17, 2012 at 09:08

The issue with a benchmark for a metric like bounce rate is that is is a bit arbitrary – people hit pages for many reasons, sometimes the wrong ones!Segmentation is usually the best route to starting to understand a bounce rate issue – look at the different traffic sources and monitor their individual bounce rate over time and as you change things. Some sources, like direct and natural search, you have a limited ability to 'stop' people visiting your site.I guess you just have to remember that bounce rate is just a ratio and merely an indicator, not an outcome.

REPLY129.139

Mauparna Chowdhury says:August 19, 2012 at 11:40

I wish to know whether it is possible to bring down the bounce rate from 90% to zero percent. Is it good for the site if it happens in a real short time?

REPLY◦ 140


Mauparna: I'm afraid that almost always means that you've implemented the web analytics code twice on the page, or that you are firing off a custom variable or event or a "hit" when the first page loads.That will make your bounce rate zero percent, or close to that. It does not reflect any improvement in customer experience.Avinash.

REPLY130.141

Mauparna Chowdhury says:August 22, 2012 at 01:20

Avinash,Thanks for your reply. However, I would require some more explanation to your first sentence as I am new at this."Mauparna: I'm afraid that almost always means that you've implemented the web analytics code twice on the page, or that you are firing off a custom variable or event or a "hit" when the first page loads……"Also, if possible, could you suggest some forums or study materials, which I can follow for updating myself more on SEO.Will be of great help.Regards,Mauparna

REPLY131.142

David B says:August 31, 2012 at 10:43

Thanks for the insight.I've been experiencing fluctuating bounce rates on my site and it occurred to me today that it's due in large part to the fact I'm running a blog. As you say in your article, people tend to read what they came for and then leave immediately.It's up to me to provide more opportunity for them to spend a while and remain engaged in my content.

REPLY132.143

Vikram says:November 6, 2012 at 23:57

Hi Avinash , and the experts here ,I have implemented lazy loading of images on a section of my website.Is like an image gallery and the consumer can keep scrolling down and down.So does this page have 100 % bounce and the consumer may keep browsing or do i track the scrolling as a virtual page view and thereby report a reduced bounce.RegardsVikram

REPLY◦ 144

Avinash Kaushik says:November 8, 2012 at 22:59

Vikram: It does not have to be 100% bounce.If you use Event Tracking to collect data for every time people scroll (or every time a page break in your scrolling appears – please see how Google Images does this), then you will 1. be able to know how much people scroll and 2. ensure that the action of a person scrolling on the page will not make that session a bounce.If you need help in how to implement this, please work with a GACP. You'll find a list here:http://www.bit.ly/gaac-Avinash.

REPLY133.145

Andy Kuiper says:December 29, 2012 at 14:19

You can use multiple tracking accounts (I'm pretty sure) 'if' you use the right code. In part, something like this needs to be included:_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-1'],['_trackPageview'],['b._setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-2'],['b._trackPageview']);

REPLY134.146

Mitchell says:January 10, 2013 at 16:05

I wanted to thank you for this wonderful read!! I absolutely enjoyed every bit of it.I have got you book-marked to check out new things you post…

REPLY

Trackbacks

1. Kirksey Solutions » Blog Archive » Bounce Rate an Important Metric for Success says:August 6, 2007 at 07:56

[...] Avinash Kaushik wrote a great piece today about the usefulness of the bounce rate metric. As someone who analyzes web traffic for hours each day, I can honestly say that bounce rate is probably my favorite metric, and has been for some time. I've often been curious why more marketers and analysts didn't utilize it, as I find it to be a great indiciation of the quality of traffic a website is receiving. So I'm encouraged that bounce rate is getting more positive press now! [...]

2. In the news - 12/08/07 by Adam Taylor - Conversion Matters says:August 12, 2007 at 07:00

[...] As I said before, I’m off to Italy but these few posts caught my eye before I left.Interesting posts and articles you may have missed last weekThere was a really great post by Avinash Kaushik about bounce rates. It's one of the most thorough blog posts I've seen on the topic and well worth a read. [...]

3. Turn Up The Silence - iPerceptions Blog says:August 17, 2007 at 07:57

The Service Edge…I am convinced that the service edge will be the next big fault line in web analytics–the one that will ultimately separate the leading lights in our field from the also-rans. Client servicing done well will be the biggest competitive advantage a company can leverage–greater than metrics, applications, and marketing combined. Whether yours is a purely behavioral approach with data-heads crunching bounce rates and tracking conversion events, or you're a survey-based vendor more adept at probing the intricacies of open-ended feedback, no factor will be more crucial to your continued success and growth than your ability to make yourself not just relevant but indispensable…REPLY

4. <!– Variable Markup –> » Blog Archive says:August 30, 2007 at 08:03

[...] Other than the standard goals of conversion rate or cart abandonment rate, what are the most important goals to focus on in the early phases of analysis?Getting the highest quality of traffic to your website. Period. Garbage in, garbage out. I always recommend that the first thing you want to do is measure quality of traffic (say for example by using that wonderful metric called bounce rate ) and immediately stop spending money on campaigns, affiliates, keywords where you are getting low quality traffic, say with a bounce rate of greater than 30%. Also look at the top entry points on your website. You’ll be shocked at what you find and you’ll quickly get over the obsession of spending all your energy on creating a golden website home page.[...]

5. Web Analytics, Business Optimization, Conversion Rate & Segmentation - Praveen Kodur says:September 6, 2007 at 21:21

[...] Avinash Kaushik’s blog, which contains wealth of Web analytics information, is a must read for every one in this field.1) Identify the objective of analysis. Define the problem.A) To Improve Campaign Performancei) How to increase conversion ratesii) Which pages have higher pageviews, lower bounce rates and why?iii) Which geolocation, keywords bring most loyal visitors?iv) Can you retarget your new users?v) Which referral sites gives low cost per acquisition? why? [...]

6. TeamREES » Improving your Site - Bounce Rate says:September 7, 2007 at 16:26

[...] If you haven't used an analytics package before, Google's analytics is a great place to start, is packed full of information and will give you just about every statistic you could want. For a great overview on how to use an analytics package to analyze your site's bounce rate, read Avinash Kaushik's bounce rate article. [...]

7. The Best Practice - Testing and Measurement | MarketingGiblets.com | Marketing Nonsense & Advicesays:October 30, 2007 at 21:25

[...] So decide how to measure your new feature. It could be as simple as an increase in conversion or a decrease in bounce rate. When you code up your newfangled thing, make sure that you can A/B test it against the previous version – and really test it. Make sure you are getting significant results, and look at all your metrics to make sure there are not unexpected surprises. Then roll it out full board. [...]

8. Why don’t we just ask? « says:December 17, 2007 at 21:06

[...] While I am a huge promoter of keyword intelligence, it’s so much easier to just ask when faced with a dilemma. No matter what business you are in, I bet you arrive at that fork in the road every few months: Should we email the latest report, highlight the URL, or add an RSS feed? Does it make sense to redesign the product page, or simply add one more tab? How do we know visitors are finding what they are looking for, and is our “bounce rate” killing us? Do people prefer PayPal over credit cards? How could we know that? [...]

9. Web Analytics Demystified | Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik says:December 18, 2007 at 01:25

[...] bounce rate at 35% is very good in context of the number of visits and page views. It is hard to get so many [...]

10. Analisi del Bounce Rate di un Blog - Caso Pratico (parte 1) » WWW Passion weblog di Francesco Gorisays:February 7, 2008 at 07:52

[...]L’analisi del bounce rate è una delle possibili prime mosse da fare per iniziare a studiare il traffico di un sito. Questa percentuale indica gli utenti che hanno abbandonato il sito dopo aver visitato una sola pagina e (sulla base del contenuto analizzato) può rivelarsi utile a comprendere il traffico del sito in termini qualitativi.Come annunciato ieri, vi mostrerò che cosa sto rilevando per questo blog motivando i miei ragionamenti. Per l’analisi ho deciso di utilizzare la piattaforma Google Analytics – facendo riferimento ad un intervallo di tempo di cinque mesi – poichè a mio parere la migliore tra le piattaforme free (sulle piattaforme di web analytics professionali mi sono già espresso).[...]

11. Monthly Metric: Bounce Rate « OnlineMarketer blog says:February 21, 2008 at 04:32

[...] For more detailed directions, check out Avinash Kaushik’s wonderful post at Occam’s Razor. He skims over the time vs. page argument that I wrote about, but he delves into some great suggestions for finding out more about your traffic and improving bounce rates. I especially recommend #2 (Measure the bounce rate for your traffic sources) and #4 (Measure the bounce rate of your AdWords, AdCenter, YSM (PPC) campaigns). Many companies, especially small business owners, think they don’t have the time to properly measure metrics. The truth is that they can’t afford not to. [...]

12. Understanding your invisible visitors | Tracking Tourism: The Tourism Research Blog says:July 2, 2008 at 05:41

[...] Bounce rate can be used to identify which content stinks – or put more politely is failing to retain the visitors that arrive at it, highlighting priorities for optimisation. (Though keep in mind that some pages may deliver their purpose without the visitor needing to look at a second page – maps and driving directions are examples of this). Read more about using the bounce rate as part of your web analytics activity at Occam’s Razor. [...]

13. How to Analyze and Improve the ‘Bounce Rate’ for Your Website says:July 3, 2008 at 11:25

[...]However, comparing the historical bounce rates across different visitor sources will show the value of the traffic you’re receiving. Assuming that low bounce rates result in purchases, subscriptions or return visits, you can find the best performing traffic source. The important thing is to ultimately plot the bounce rates for each source against your overall site goal.Apart from the referrer source, several other issues influence variations in bounce rates. For example, the purpose of your website, its current design and the goal of the specific entry page. It’s difficult to determine a standard bounce rate to use as a yardstick, although analytics expert Avinash Kaushik does offer some suggestions in an excellent article:[...]

14. Confluence: Strategy and Customer Insights says:July 10, 2008 at 03:20

Terminology and Definitions…Omniture Terminology Note: These terms and definitions are all specific to Omniture data and reporting. The same definitions may not apply to other tools and systems…….REPLY

15. Bounce Rate: Cara Analisa dan Memperbaikinya | FundKitchen says:July 26, 2008 at 09:35

[...]Meski demikian, membandingkan history bounce rate terhadap sumber pengunjung yang berbeda akan menunjukkan value dari traffic yang anda terima. Dengan berasumsi bahwa bounce rate yang rendah akan menghasilkan pembelian, subscription atau kunjungan berulang, anda dapat menemukan sumber yang memberikan traffic terbaik. Anda harus mem-plot bounce rate untuk tiap sumber dengan overall site goals.Selain referrer source, ada beberapa hal lain yang mempengaruhi variasi bounce rate. Misalnya tujuan situs anda, desain yang digunakan, dan tujuan masing-masing entry page. Cukup sulit menentukan standar bounce rate yang dapat diterima. Avinash Kausik memberikan sejumlah patokan dalam artikelnya.[...]

16. garesi.com » How to Analyze and Improve the ‘Bounce Rate’ for Your Website says:July 31, 2008 at 04:43

[...] However, comparing the historical bounce rates across different visitor sources will show the value of the traffic you’re receiving. Assuming that low bounce rates result in purchases, subscriptions or return visits, you can find the best performing traffic source. The important thing is to ultimately plot the bounce rates for each source against your overall site goal. Apart from the referrer source, several other issues influence variations in bounce rates. For example, the purpose of your website, its current design and the goal of the specific entry page. It’s difficult to determine a standard bounce rate to use as a yardstick, although analytics expert Avinash Kaushik does offer some suggestions in an excellent article: [...]

17. Rosenthal Weissman » Blog Archive » How to Analyze and Improve the ‘Bounce Rate’ for Your Websitesays:August 8, 2008 at 11:09

[...] a standard bounce rate to use as a yardstick, although analytics expert Avinash Kaushik does offer some suggestions in an excellent article: Bounce rate is a metric you’ll easily find in all web analytics tools… It won’t have all [...]

18. Making Money Online - Tip #4: Time Posts Accordingly | Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Making Money Online | MONFX.com says:August 12, 2008 at 19:36

[...] This one is simple: if you regularly post in the morning, keep it that way. Your readers become accustomed to your publishing habits and switching up your schedule will only confuse them and increase your bounce rate (a bad thing!). Your goal is to satisfy your readers and keep them returning, this means you must keep and maintain a consistent schedule using any means necessary. Make a deadline for yourself everyday and stick to it, consistency is key in producing loyal readers. [...]

19. 33 Website Success Metrics Instead of Rankings, Google PageRank and Traffic | SEOptimise says:August 22, 2008 at 06:33

[...] The bounce rate is one of the most important usability metrics and thanks to Google Analytics or Woopra easy to follow nowadays. 100k visitors from Digg with an bounce rate of 95% means that in fact only 5.000 actually visited your site. So a site with a much lower visitor number AND bounce rate can be much more successful than a “stupid traffic” site with huge traffic numbers. Targeted quality traffic is key for a successful site. [...]

20. Online Marketing Blog » Blog Archive » 33 Website Success Metrics Instead of Rankings, Google PageRank and Traffic says:August 30, 2008 at 05:41

[...] rate The bounce rate is one of the most important usability metrics and thanks to Google Analytics or Woopra easy [...]

21. 33 Website Success Metrics Instead of Rankings, Google PageRank and Traffic · SEO Guide - Tips, Tricks and Secrets says:September 3, 2008 at 13:00

[...]snap rateThe bounce rate is digit of the most important usability metrics and thanks to Google Analytics or Woopra easy to follow nowadays. 100k visitors from Digg with an snap evaluate of 95% means that in fact exclusive 5.000 actually visited your site. So a locate with a much lower visitor sort AND snap evaluate crapper be much more successful than a “stupid traffic” locate with huge traffic numbers. Targeted calibre traffic is key for a successful site.[...]

22. Cash Gain dot Com » Blog Archive » How to Analyze and Improve the ‘Bounce Rate’ for Your Websitesays:September 18, 2008 at 20:44

[...]However, comparing the historical bounce rates across different visitor sources will show the value of the traffic you’re receiving. Assuming that low bounce rates result in purchases, subscriptions or return visits, you can find the best performing traffic source. The important thing is to ultimately plot the bounce rates for each source against your overall site goal.Apart from the referrer source, several other issues influence variations in bounce rates. For example, the purpose of your website, its current design and the goal of the specific entry page. It’s difficult to determine a standard bounce rate to use as a yardstick, although analytics expert Avinash Kaushik does offer some suggestions in an excellent article:[...]

23. Wat is een acceptabele bouncerate? says:October 22, 2008 at 23:50

[...] Avinak Kaushik stelt: As a benchmark from my own personal experience over the years it is hard to get a bounce rate under 20%. Anything over 35% is a cause for concern and anything above 50% is worrying. [...]

24. SHOULD I CARE ABOUT MY BOUNCE RATE? - EngineWorks says:January 8, 2009 at 16:41

[...]What to do about Bounce RatesAvinash Kaushik offers some great suggestions on how to use Bounce Rate data, and two of them stand out as my favorites: improving rankings for well-performing keywords, and improving the quality of top landing pages. When determining our Search Engine Optimization strategy, we seek to align search behavior with relevant content from our clients. If there is a referring keyword that drives a lot of traffic, and has a “high” Bounce Rate, we want to figure out what these searches wanted, but didn’t find on the site. Maybe the content needs to be improved, or there is some other issue, but now we know where we can increase conversions.[...]

25. Under the Hood - Bouncing « Azureim’s Blog says:January 17, 2009 at 19:24

[...]If you want to get a graduate level explanation about bounce rates and a business / marketing perspective on it here it is:http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/…unce-rate.htmlWhat if a visitor lands on one of your web pages, and then visits another page within 5 seconds and then closes the browser. Is that considered a bounce?[...]

26. Analisi del Bounce Rate: lo Studio di un Blog - marketingori says:January 31, 2009 at 17:15

[...] L'analisi del bounce rate è una delle possibili prime mosse da fare per iniziare a studiare il traffico di un sito. Questa percentuale indica gli utenti che hanno abbandonato il sito dopo aver visitato una sola pagina e (sulla base del contenuto analizzato) può rivelarsi utile a comprendere il traffico del sito in termini qualitativi. [...]

27. Come interpretare il Bounce Rate (Frequenza di Rimbalzo) | Realizzazione Siti Web says:February 16, 2009 at 01:20

[...] Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik – Standard Metrics Revisited: #3: Bounce Rate [...]

28. Indici standard rivisitati: il tasso di rimbalzo - parte 1 - ideawebitalia says:March 1, 2009 at 21:25

[...] Standard Metrics Revisited #3: Bounce Rate [...]

29. photomaniacal.com » Stop bouncing: tips for website success says:March 20, 2009 at 19:59

[...]In under an hour you can discover which sources are your BFFs and which pages on your site need some sprucing up. This will ensure lower bounce rates, higher engagement with your site, and perhaps even higher revenue. To learn about other ways in which you can use bounce rate effectively, check out this article on my web analytics blog, Occam’s Razor.[...]

30. 5 Metode de optimizare pentru Bounce Rate | Web Copywriter says:March 21, 2009 at 04:13

[...] Bounce rate variază însă în funcţie de tipul de site: la un site normal >35% devine motiv de îngrijorare, pe când la un blog 50% reprezintă o rată normală, iar >75% ridică deja semne mari de întrebare. Acest lucru se datorează faptului că blogurile beneficiază de un public loial şi informat în privinţa articolelor postate, deci mai puţin înclinat să dea click pe orice altceva decât ultimul text publicat, motiv pentru care revin periodic. [...]

31. Avinash Kaushik - Indici standard rivisitati: il tasso di rimbalzo - parte 2 - ideawebitalia says:March 21, 2009 at 06:22

[...]articolo orginale:Standard Metrics Revisited #3: Bounce RateSeconda parte dell’articolo “Indici standard rivisitati n. 3: Il tasso di rimbalzo“.Nella puntata precedente era stato descritto il significato dell’indice Bounce rate e di come si correla agli obiettivi di business. Inoltre era stato analizzato il primo degli mpieghi del Bounce rate: misurare il tasso di rimbalzo sull’intero sito.[...]

32. Goopilation : [Analytics] Halte aux rebonds ! says:March 25, 2009 at 01:38

[...]Sur la gauche, les principales pages de destination, et sur la droite, le taux de rebond correspondant à chacune. Souvenez-vous d’une chose, vous ne décidez pas de la page d’accueil de votre site. Lorsque les internautes recherchent, le moteur trouve la page la plus pertinente, et celle-ci devient par conséquent la page d’accueil pour ce visiteur. Si vous avez 50 000 pages sur votre site, alors vous avez 50 000 pages d’accueil. Le rapport ci-dessus montre le Top 10 des pages d’accueil. Vous pouvez ainsi identifier lesquelles vous laissent tomber lorsqu’il s’agit de retenir les visiteurs.En une heure, vous pourrez ainsi découvrir quels sites sont vos meilleurs amis, et quelles pages sur votre site ont besoin d’un stage intensif. Pour en apprendre davantage sur le taux de rebond, vous pouvez consulter cet article sur mon blog.[...]

33. Avinash Kaushik - Indici standard rivisitati n. 3: Il tasso di rimbalzo parte 3 - ideawebitalia says:April 1, 2009 at 03:14

[...] Standard Metrics Revisited #3: Bounce Rate [...]

34. When is your bounce rate too high? What’s it worth to you to fix it? says:April 20, 2009 at 08:54

[...]The amazing Avinash Kaushik frequently talks about how important bounce rate is as a metric. But what’s “too high” a bounce rate? More important, what’s it worth to you to lower that number? The answer varies by site, but here’s what you need to think through when looking at your “ideal” rate:[...]

35. What is bounce rate and when this metric can help you - 2wtx recommends says:May 2, 2009 at 16:28

[...]Web analytics specialist Avinash Kaushik says that from his personal experience “it is hard to get a bounce rate under 20%. Anything over 35% is a cause for concern and anything above 50% is worrying.”[...]

36. Semplify.org » Como interpretar el bounce rate says:May 7, 2009 at 10:39

[...] Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik – Standard Metrics Revisited: #3: Bounce Rate [...]

37. Google Analytics - Exploring metrics…Gotta love benchmarking! - 6S Marketing SEO Blog | 6S Marketing says:May 14, 2009 at 15:24

[...] Good reading: Avinash Kaushik (Google Evangelist) talks realistically about bounce rates in his blog Occam's Razor. http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/08/standard-metrics-revisited-3-bounce-rate.html [...]

38. Mesurer le succès de votre site sans le trafic, les classements et Google PageRank - 2ème Partie | Le Blog Kinoa says:June 8, 2009 at 09:55

[...]Le taux de rebond est l’un des plus importants paramètres d’utilisabilité. Grâce à Google Analytics ou Woopra par exemple, il est très facile à mesurer de nos jours.Si un site tel que Digg génère 100 000 visiteurs, mais que le taux de rebond est de 95%, cela signifie en réalité que seuls 5 000 personnes ont réellement visité votre site.Ainsi, un site avec un nombre de visiteurs et un taux de rebond beaucoup plus faibles, peut avoir beaucoup plus de succès qu’un site avec un trafic très important mais peu qualifié.[...]

39. Bounce Rate in Site Catalyst « New High Score says:July 14, 2009 at 19:57

[...]Bounce Rate is among the most used web analytics terms around, ever since Avinash Kaushik made it the metric to look at for page abandonment. I agree – it’s definitely an important metric, especially if you’re spending time and money on driving traffic to your website.There is some discussion on how Site Catalyst can be used to create a bounce rate metric. Here, and here. However, both explanations are too simplistic. If my campaign is a good one, I’ll often attract visitors who only need to look at a single page for what they want to know, and leave (assume that nothing is clicked upon). The concept of using Single Page Access / Entries will count such an instance as a ‘bounce’.[...]

40. Do Page Load Times Affect Your Search Rankings? | SEMClubHouse - Key Relevance Blog says:July 15, 2009 at 07:33

[...]Even if Site Load Time were not to become an official member of Google’s list of over 200 ranking factors, load time could still indirectly affect your rankings. Avanish Kaushik at Google has strongly encouraged webmasters to pay attention to Bounce Rate (a factor determined as a percentage of site visitors that only visit one page and/or who only land on a page for a few seconds before hitting the back button).[...]

41. 10 things you must check when you re-launch your website | SEOmoz says:August 3, 2009 at 03:59

[...]10) Monitor bounce ratesBounce rates are often a good metric to determine how the public have taken to your new site. Avinash has talked about bounce rates and as a general rule, when Avinash talks, you should listen. It is most interesting to look at pages where the bounce rate has changed dramatically.If it has reduced then there are probably lessons you can learn and apply to other pages on your site. If it has increased then there are lesson to be learnt, and these lessons should be learnt quickly!As with all metrics they are only an indication, just because you have seen a change in bounce rate doesn’t mean you should hurry through changes for the sake of changes.[...]

42. 30 Simple Ways of Improving Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate | SEOptimise says:August 27, 2009 at 11:55

[...]This post is divided into 5 sections each one of them covering a crucial aspect of improving bounce rate and conversion rate. I present you 30 simple ways of doing that as most of them are not rocket science once you take both rates into account:[...]

43. Analytics and Bounce Rate at SEO Mire: Advanced SEO & Internet Marketing Tactics says:September 27, 2009 at 17:12

[...]As Avinash Kaushik puts it, Bounce Rate “is awesome at identifying low hanging fruit,” if understood and used properly.Another important factor involved with bounce rate is the amount of data being analyzed, or in this case, the amount of traffic the site and or page(s) is receiving. If two people visit the site and you have a 50% Bounce Rate, this may be good or bad information.[...]

44. Vender y atraer clientes en la web (I): los visitantes — El Blog de Wezstudio says:November 13, 2009 at 01:33

[...] fieles de blogs que sólo quieren ver el último post… aunque no es lo habitual. Consulta Standard Metrics Revisited: Bounce Rate si quieres saber más sobre esta métrica. Tasa de rebote y tiempo en el [...]

45. Bounce Rtae | Online Sales Manager says:November 13, 2009 at 18:55

[...]Your goal should be to get your bounce rate down to 50% or better. Some experts would argue that you need to get your bounce rate down as low as 20% to 35%. However, this depends upon the type of site and type of traffic. Blogs, for instance generally have higher bounce rates than traditional websites.When you make a change to your website you should always check the impact on your bounce rate.Here is a great article on on bounce rate by Avinish Kaushik. If you want some further detail, I think you will find this article very useful.[...]

46. Hong Kong Web Analytics » Blog Archive » New way to look at "Bounce Rate" #1 says:November 25, 2009 at 23:37

[...]Well I more agree with Avinash Kaushik’s explanation a little bit more.* The percentage of website visitors who see just one page on your site.* The percentage of website visitors who stay on the site for a small amount of time (usually five seconds or less).So does that mean this can apply to any web site and answer all the questions? Well not really and again it depends what you want to achieve. By just using the above certainly can solve most questions but not all.[...]

47. More 30 Website Success Metrics Instead of Rankings, Traffic and Google PageRank | Ghosts-ITsays:November 26, 2009 at 05:38

[...]The bounce rate is one of the most important usability metrics and thanks to Google Analytics or Woopra easy to follow nowadays. 100k visitors from Digg with an bounce rate of 95% means that in fact only 5.000 actually visited your site. So a site with a much lower visitor number AND bounce rate can be much more successful than a “stupid traffic” site with huge traffic numbers. Targeted quality traffic is key for a successful site.[...]

48. Improve the ‘Bounce Rate’ for Your Website | Toronto Webdesign | Toronto Web Design Firm says:December 10, 2009 at 17:36

[...] Apart from the referrer source, several other issues influence variations in bounce rates. For example, the purpose of your website, its current design and the goal of the specific entry page. It’s difficult to determine a standard bounce rate to use as a yardstick, although analytics expert Avinash Kaushik does offer some suggestions in an excellent article: [...]

49. The top ten ways to get your business ready for the holidays | Official Google Blog says:December 17, 2009 at 07:28

[...]8. Map out the route:How long are people staying on your website? Use Google Analytics to understand your purchasing cycle. Which pages have the highest bounce rate? And which pages are people leaving the quickest?[...]

50. Web Analytics Bounce Rate says:January 4, 2010 at 07:51

[...]Avinash Kaushik and Jakob Nielson recommend measuring and analyzing your website’s bounce rate by segmentation.Avinash Kaushik reckons you should:[...]

51. Comment analyser et améliorer son taux de rebond? | Luc Pavot says:January 20, 2010 at 11:32

[...]Selon Avinash Kaushik, le taux de rebond est mesuré selon deux critères :- Le pourcentage des visiteurs du site ayant vu seulement une page de votre site- Le pourcentage des visiteurs du site qui sont restés sur le site un court instant (habituellement cinq secondes ou moins)Ce taux représente donc le pourcentage de vos visiteurs qui n’ont pas souhaité s’engager plus en profondeur dans votre site que la page sur laquelle ils sont arrivés (landing page).[...]

52. The Omni Man Blog - Omniture SiteCatalyst - Adam Greco » Blog Archive » Traffic Source Bounce Rates says:January 25, 2010 at 06:34

[...]If you need a refresher on Bounce Rates, you can look at my old Bounce Rate post, or better yet, check out Avinash’s post on Bounce Rates.Why Traffic Source Bounce Rate?Often times, marketers want to see how each of their disparate online marketing channels are doing when compared to each other. Most will rate them by how well they perform against the website KPI’s. However, due to its popularity, may want to see the Bounce Rate for these online traffic sources.[...]

53. La importancia de la calidad, y no sólo la cantidad | Expert Internet Web Analytics by Elena Enriquezsays:February 7, 2010 at 07:24

[...] Un indicador bastante utilizado para medir la calidad es el bounce rate o porcentaje de rebote (http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/08/standard-metrics-revisited-3-bounce-rate.html). Las visitas rebotadas no te van a dejar una opinión sobre tu site, pero si lo hicieran, te [...]

54. Midiendo la calidad de mis visitas « Web Analytics y más says:February 7, 2010 at 12:53

[...]Un indicador bastante utilizado para medir la calidad es el bounce rate o porcentaje de rebote. Las visitas rebotadas no te van a dejar una opinión sobre tu site, pero si lo hicieran, te dirían “no me interesa seguir navegando por tu página, no me llamas la atención”. Eso es igual a “no pienso comprarte”. Es decir, un usuario ha llegado al site, y no sólo no ha hecho nada y se ha ido, sino que nosotros hemos perdido la oportunidad de mostrarle quiénes somos, y, al menos, despertar su interés. Sería igual que un cliente potencial que ha entrado en nuestra tienda al ver el escaparate, y tal como ha venido, se ha ido. No se ha molestado en darse una vuelta por ella.[...]

55. The 7 Strategies… Strategy 3: Be Sticky – Think Around Corners says:February 17, 2010 at 09:46

[...] Standard Metrics Revisited: #3: Bounce Rate (this is one of my favorite authors, Avinash Kaushik) [...]

56. 16 Ways to Improve Your Blog's Bounce Rate | U Stand Out: Social Media says:April 1, 2010 at 03:47

[...]Bounce Rate is the percentage of readers that “bounce” away from your blog after just one page view. According to Google expert Avinash Kaushik, your bouncing site traffic won’t even give you five seconds of consideration; that’s not much chance to impress! You can find out your blog’s Bounce Rate right on the Dashboard of Google Analytics. The formula Google Analytics uses to calculate bounce rate is:Bounce Rate = Total Visits With Only One Page View / Total Visits[...]

57. Que es el porcentaje de rebotes? says:May 5, 2010 at 12:22

[...]La mejor definición que leí es la de Avinash Kaushik, Google Analytics evangelist. Según él, el porcentaje de rebote:* Es el porcentaje de vistantes que solo ven una página en tu sitio* Es el porcentaje de visitante que permanece en tu sitio durante un corto periodo de tiempo (usualmente 5 segundos)Te dejo un post al respecto (inglés)Read more: Standard Metrics Revisited: #3: Bounce Rate | Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik[...]

58. Segment or Die | Online Behavior says:June 7, 2010 at 10:00

[...]By SourceThis is perhaps the simplest places to start. Separate our people who come to your website from Google, email campaigns, banner ads, Twitter etc. Quite literally this is the matter of dragging a dimension (Source, Referring Site, Campaigns) on to segmentation profile and adding a condition like “contains google”. There you go. Done. Baby step taken!Here are the kinds of questions you’ll want to answer. Is there a difference between the bounce rate for these segments? Why? What content / products do people who come via display banner ads care about more than those that come via paid search? Is there a difference between Visitor Loyalty for those that come via Twitter compared to those that come via our email campaigns?[...]

59. AdPearance | Websites Have to Be Functional. Period. says:July 16, 2010 at 12:46

[...]Just as companies and individual build websites for a purpose, consumers visit those websites for the same reason. When they can’t find what they want quickly and easily, they bounce, which sounds just like what it means. In other words: your website didn’t suit their needs, so they’re gone, probably never to return. Since no website suits every single person who lands there, a certain bounce rate is normal, although what that is will vary from site to site. However, the goal is always to keep these numbers low; the more visitors that stay on a website, the more visitors you have that are genuinely interested in your site.[...]

60. High Bounce Rate | Aaron's Ramblings says:July 28, 2010 at 03:34

[...]Doing some reasearch and coming across this old but good article over at http://www.kaushik.net I found it isn’t too bad, Obviously having a lot more content would lower it especially if it was a niche Blog versus a Blog like mine which isn’t fixed on one subject. Most of the traffic here has come from other sites linking a specific article, it’s too new to really have much presence in search engines and it probably doesn’t help that some of my content came over in May from my old Google Blogger account and is duplicated when you do a search with Google.[...]

61. Reading List: 13th August 2010 says:August 13, 2010 at 02:06

[...] A comment by Avinash Kaushik on Conversion & Bounce Rates – "It depends on which lever you can pull more easily" – Avinash on identifying where you can get the most bang from your buck when optimising. Read the main post on bounce rates as well. [...]

62. Useful Tips to Improve Bounce Rate of your Website says:August 27, 2010 at 07:12

[...] Bounce rate analysis: Standard metrics revisited [...]

63. 8 Deadly Bounce Rate Murderers | Multi Channel Marketing says:November 17, 2010 at 15:53

[...]Tips for Lowering the Bounce RateDisplay clearly labeled internal links to other related pagesPublish short and engaging stories with plenty of relevant links to other web pages on your sitePlan good website architecture – the way a human would think…one thing leads to anotherDesign ways for a visitor to easily explore your website in greater detailMake every page a part of your sales funnel processRead this article from Avinash Kaushik[...]

64. Visualizing bounce rates using brownie charts - Digital Solid: Marketing Technology ROI says:November 18, 2010 at 02:07

[...]Charting Bounce Rates: “I came, I saw, I puked.”I agree with Avinash Kaushik that bounce rates are a helpful way to measure how well you’re connecting with site visitors. Actually, he’s a little more enthusiastic than I am, with blog post titles such as this model of understatement: Bounce Rate: The Sexiest Metric Ever? Three years ago, on his own blog, Avinash described bounce rates this way:[...]

65. To Grow Your Business, Cut Your Website’s Bounce Rate. | The Executive Whisper says:December 13, 2010 at 15:01

[...]Noted web analytics blogger and former Director of Research & Analytics at Intuit, Avinash Kaushik, suggests, “…it is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying.”If you’re using Google Analytics, there is a benchmarking section that allows you to compare your site’s bounce rate and metrics to other sites based on size and category.[...]

66. How Boring Is Your Blog? says:December 16, 2010 at 05:06

[...]Boring by numbersIf your blog is boring, your numbers will tell you. Google Analytics has a bounce rate, will teach you which posts keep readers around longer. What matters is not where your bounce rate is right now (it could even be in the 90% range), but that you work constantly to bring it down.Test different titles. Put videos or images at the beginning of the posts to see if people stick around more. Try anything, but assume nothing about your visitors! If your blog is boring, then obviously, you can’t trust yourself to know what works. Trust the numbers instead, experiment a lot, and see what brings them down.[...]

67. How Boring Is Your Blog? says:December 18, 2010 at 09:48

[...]If your blog is boring, your numbers will tell you. Google Analytics has a bounce rate, will teach you which posts keep readers around longer. What matters is not where your bounce rate is right now (it could even be in the 90% range), but that you work constantly to bring it down.Test different titles. Put videos or images at the beginning of the posts to see if people stick around more. Try anything, but assume nothing about your visitors! If your blog is boring, then obviously, you can’t trust yourself to know what works. Trust the numbers instead, experiment a lot, and see what brings them down.[...]

68. Two Powerful ways to reduce bounce rate | SEO Himanshu says:December 26, 2010 at 12:31

[...]If site entrance pages are not relevant to your visitors then you can’t expect any conversion, sales or leads. Your whole purpose of setting up a website has no commercial value. So what should be the ideal bounce rate then. According to world famous analytics guru Avinash Kaushik:As a benchmark from my own personal experience over the years it is hard to get a bounce rate under 20%. Anything over 35% is a cause for concern and anything above 50% is worrying – Avinash kaushik (world famous analytics guru)Source: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/08/standard-metrics-revisited-3-bounce-rate.html[...]

69. What is Bounce rate « Gustavo Szuchman | Information Architect | UX | UI says:January 12, 2011 at 11:04

[...]So to answer the question, what is a good bounce rate, generally speaking if you have a bounce rate that is in the 40-50% range that is not bad. If you manage to have an overall bounce rate that is in the 30-40% that is fantastic. As Avinash Kaushik states "a 35% bounce rate is very good…" We'll add that anything less is pretty spectacular. For the record, we've worked with clients and have helped them lower their bounce rates to less than 20% and in some cases to 7 or 8% which is quite exceptional.[...]

70. How important is SEO for blogging? - Quora says:January 21, 2011 at 08:05

[...]I pay attention to ONLY one metric. Bounce rate. It is a measure of the percentage of people who are actually engaging with your content versus deciding it is irrelevant and moving on.For certain categories of sites, it is the ONLY metric that matters.There's a couple of ways it is measured, but the intent is the same:http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2…The rates reported by various tools are not terribly accurate, but good enough.[...]

71. 3 Easy WordPress Tips to Reduce Bounce Rate says:February 23, 2011 at 02:02

[...]There’s more to it (of course!). A more complete definition of bounce rate is available on author Avinash Kaushik’s site. (It’s an old post, but the comments are very recent.) The idea around managing bounce rate is to engage readers and keep them on your site. If they’re not staying, it’s because they’re not finding anything relevant or valuable. Of course, it’s possible they’ve stumbled on your site and what you have is not relevant to what they’re doing. But if it is, you want them to stay.[...]

72. Google Analytics Basics: The Visitors Report | Conversion Rate Optimization & Marketing Blog | FutureNow says:March 28, 2011 at 05:28

[...]What it Tells You: If you have a high bounce rate, this could likely be an indication that the content on a landing page is not relevant for your visitors or that there is a loss of scent from the ad copy to the landing page. Analytics Evangelist and author Avinash Kaushik jokes that bounce rate means “I came, I puked, I left.”[...]

73. Współczynnik odrzuceń na blogu | Zarabianie w sieci, czyli jak wy(żyć) says:April 6, 2011 at 21:39

[...]Z całą pewnością, współczynnik odrzuceń jest jednym z najważniejszych wskaźników przydatności naszego bloga dla czytelników. Avinash Kaushnik twierdzi, że współczynnik odrzuceń poniżej 20% jest bardzo trudny do osiągnięcia, ten powyżej 35% powinien Cię lekko zaniepokoić, a taki powyżej 50% powinien Cię zmartwić.[...]

74. Time On Site & Bounce Rate: Get the real numbers in Google Analytics says:April 12, 2011 at 15:21

[...]But Time On Site has very little to do with pageviews and Bounce Rates—defined as “the percentage of people who come to your website and leave instantly” by Avinash Kaushik—has nothing to do with pageviews.[...]

75. Współczynnik odrzuceń na blogu | Polecany hosting says:April 21, 2011 at 06:22

[...]Z całą pewnością, współczynnik odrzuceń jest jednym z najważniejszych wskaźników przydatności naszego bloga dla czytelników.Avinash Kaushnik twierdzi, że współczynnik odrzuceń poniżej 20% jest bardzo trudny do osiągnięcia, ten powyżej 35% powinien Cię lekko zaniepokoić, a taki powyżej 50% powinien Cię zmartwić.[...]

76. Does StumbleUpon Increase Your Bounce Rate? - Quora says:June 27, 2011 at 09:29

[...] percentage of single-page visits, or visits in which a person left a site from the landing page (http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2…). As you know, StumbleUpon takes you from one page to another that's likely on a different [...]

77. Exit Rate vs. Bounce Rate: Which give you more insight? | Geonexus says:September 12, 2011 at 21:13

[...]Avinash Kaushik suggests five situations where the bounce rate will reveal something about buyer behavior and buyer intent. They are the Bounce Rate of your:[...]

78. Lowell Robinson, Director of Online Engagement, Exploratorium | musete.ch says:September 20, 2011 at 23:18

[...]Some ways to measure success include larger numbers (audience reach) and prolonged engagement. Monthly reporting at the museum includes web analytics metrics, social media figures, and anecdotal evidence. When pressed to pick just one truly meaningful metric, Lowell picked bounce rate, a measurement that analytics guru Avinash Kaushik touts on his blog, Occam’s Razor. Bounce rate can pinpoint areas of your site where users are encountering something on your site that differs from their needs or expectations. Follow-up insights require digging into questions like: Why are you leaving? What were you expecting to find instead? And, finally, how can we get you to stay? Search terms and social media conversations linking to your website can help give you a sense of the context in which people are characterizing and encountering your content.[...]

79. Your website’s bounce rate, and how to lower it | Digett says:November 21, 2011 at 23:01

[...]You can see your website’s bounce rate by logging into your website’s analytics profile (such as Google Analytics). Although what defines a “good” bounce rate differs from business to business, web analyst extraordinaire Avinash Kaushik has previously stated that anything over 35% is “cause for concern.”[...]

80. Better Landing Pages are the Key to More Customers | Cincinnati Web Marketing Consulting | WSI Cincinnati | WSI4Marketing says:January 5, 2012 at 15:01

[...] Avinash Kaushik on the Bounce Rate Metric [...]

81. What is a "bounce rate"? - Quora says:January 28, 2012 at 12:03

[...] actionable, Avinash Kaushik provides some great ideas and tips:http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/e…http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/s…This should help you not only know what the data means, but what to do about it and where to spend [...]

82. Bounce, baby. Die Absprungrate richtig messen. | LimeSoda Blog says:February 4, 2012 at 03:11

[...]Seiten mit hoher Absprungrate optimierenBouncerate Basics[...]

83. a2z Innovation Insider - Asking the right ‘Why’ analytical questions, and finding meaningful answerssays:May 4, 2012 at 03:04

[...]Bounce rates revisited[...]

84. » La Tasa de Rebote, un poco más allá de la definición. » Roberto Ballester says:May 21, 2012 at 00:02

[...] Standard Metrics Revisited: #3: Bounce Rate [...]

85. Reducing a Brand’s Bounce Rate | Brand Currency says:May 30, 2012 at 12:40

[...]For Internet marketers, the words “bounce rate” is one that brings up very negative vibes and unpleasant mental images. This term refers to the number of visitors a site gets that look at one page and then go away, clicking to another site. In short, if one out of every ten visitors is a sale and a part of the nine are potential customers, the “bounced” are the ones that will never become part of the company’s market.[...]

86. Why Do I Have No Sales? Google Analytics Answers (A Case Study) | Search Engine People | Torontosays:June 4, 2012 at 06:25

[...]Now let's see how these 956 people are interacting with his site. Go down a few numbers in the overview to the bounce rate. That's the number of one page visits – people who came to the site and left from the same page. They didn't bother to click through to any other page. In the words of Avinash Kaushik, "I came, I saw, Yuck – I am out of here."[...]

87. When you should ignore Bounce rate (and when you shouldn’t) « Tim Minor, user experience designersays:June 12, 2012 at 03:43

[...]Also consider the slightly separate example of blogs. As Avinash Kaushik points out at Occam's Razor: [Blogs] are a unique beast amongst online experiences: people come mostly only to read your latest[...]

88. Why Bounce Rate Matters - The Naked SEO Blog says:July 29, 2012 at 19:05

[...]For more in-depth tips and advice regarding bounce rate, you can read this blog from Google Digital Marketing Evangelist Avinash Kaushik. His blog is older (circa 2007) but still very relevant.[...]

89. Zeitbasierte Bounce-Rate für SEO nutzen - Suchmarketing says:September 2, 2012 at 13:27

[...]Für die modifizierte Absprungrate sollte die Seitenansichtsdauer berücksichtigt werden (nach manchen Definitionen der Bounce-Rate zählen ohnehin nur Besuche unter 10 Sekunden als Absprung). Wir empfehlen ab einer Seitenansichtsdauer von 30 Sekunden keine Absprünge mehr zu zählen. Nach dieser Zeitspanne sollte eine Rückkehr auf die Suchergebnisseiten kein negatives Signal mehr sein.[...]

90. Bounce Rate Reduction Techniques | Wordpress, SEO, Affiliate Marketing and Blogging Ideas from --> Jay Venka says:September 3, 2012 at 01:57

[...]Monitor your bounce rate, see if your actions show improvements (reduction in bounce rate). Industry average of bounce rate varies, but i think anything less than 65-70% is good. Less than that is great but it needs that extra work. Bounce rate more than 80% is definitely not good. But having said that don’t be too much obsessed with the numbers, just keep working on improving it. More detailed info on Bounce rates from Google Engineer Avinash Kaushik here[...]

91. Is Your Website Just A Website? What Makes Great Web Design? says:September 14, 2012 at 23:57

[...]Sometimes a website is nothing special, really – just a website, with nothing in particular that makes it stand out or capture your attention. Your website should be visually appealing, filled with valuable content and simple to navigate, with a well laid-out design. After all, if statistics show that 85% or 90% of your visitors are leaving within seconds, what’s the point?[...]

92. 9 Google Analytics metrics every marketer should know | Biznology says:September 18, 2012 at 13:49

[...]BOUNCE RATE: ” Bounce Rate” is the percentage of people who view only one page of your website. It is a measure of site’s relevance. Lower is always better For example, if your bounce rate is 35%, then 65% of people view more pages. A good bounce rate depends on your business objective and what your bounce rate is now. It is a primary metric because every business should have a site that as relevant to its viewesr as possible.[...]

93. 20 SEO tactics to get you more traffic and businessInbound Marketing Agency says:September 25, 2012 at 13:23

[...]Speed – check the speed of your website – Use Pingdom. It is one of the factors that Google uses to rank your website. Slow means that it will probably cause people to click away. If you want to understand Bounce rate see Avinash’s superb blog Occams Razor (link is to the Bounce rate post.)[...]

94. 5 Common Bounce Rate Myths Debunked | Tone Agency says:September 28, 2012 at 07:06

[...]A high bounce rate becomes a worrying sign when you want a visitor to take further action. If this is the case then the first thing you should be looking at is the pages that have a high bounce rate. Once you have identified these pages you then need to find out why this is, which is a little more tricky. Don’t worry, if you read this post on how to measure bounce rate and this infographic on why a visitor may leave your site, you will be well equipped in understanding why your site has a high bounce rate.[...]

95. Bounce Rate: Was Shopbetreiber über die Absprungrate wissen sollten. :: Shopzeilen says:September 29, 2012 at 05:39

[...]Die Bounce Rate beschreibt den Anteil an Besuchern, die ohne eine weitere Aktion Ihren Onlineshop wieder verlassen. Dabei gibt es eine weit und eine etwas eng gefasstere Definition (nach Kaushik). Anteil der Besucher mit nur einem Seitenaufruf Anteil der Besucher mit nur einem Seitenaufruf und einer bestimmten Besuchsdauer (z.B. 5 sec) Für welche Definition man sich entscheidet ist letzlich Geschmacksache. Die letzte Definition ist etwas agressiver und bietet sich m.E. für Onlineshops an, da sie eher eine Unterscheidung zwischen abgeschreckten und nicht überzeugten Besuchern zulässt. Aber dazu später mehr.[...]

96. Incitrio > BrandSpeak » Increase Website Conversion Rates & Lower Your Bounce Rate says:October 4, 2012 at 11:27

[...]To increase conversions, you need to first evaluate your website to what is and is not working. One of the best ways to evaluate your website is to look at its bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of people that come to your website and leave within 3 seconds without viewing additional pages.[...]

97. 7 Tips To Avoid High Bounce Rates On Landing Pages says:December 7, 2012 at 09:54

[...]Five years ago, Avinash Kaushik famously described the sequence of the typical unsatisfied website visitor: “I came, I puked, I left.” There is a little less puking these days, but after clicking on an ad, far too many visitors are still squinting, yawning, shrugging their shoulders, or having trouble connecting their needs and wants with the information and offers they’re seeing on landing pages. Below, I provide seven examples of how to tighten that connection. In today’s fickle world, average online experiences just aren’t good enough.[...]

98. » Adding Google Analytics to Your Blog: 5 Tips that Would Have Helped Me When I Started Using GAsays:December 21, 2012 at 13:21

[...]You should only have one tracking code snippet per page. If you’re using a template for your blog, ideally you should place the snippet just before the closing tag. A big issue for sites with two snippets is their data will show a very, very low bounce rate. So, if you notice that you’re rocking <2% bounce rate (especially if you’re pulling a lot of organic traffic) and it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Make sure you’ve only got one snippet per page.[...]

99. Buscando referencias para analizar los datos del web - Poliedric says:January 7, 2013 at 06:57

[...]Aunque hay bastantes de esas métricas para las que se desea una referencia, otro clásico es la tasa de rebote, que refleja las visitas que entran y salen por la misma página. En este sentido, un rebote del 70% indica que el 70% de las visitas a una URL abandonan el sitio sin mirar otra página del sitio pero, de nuevo, ¿eso es una señal negativa? Pues depende. ¿Y si el 30% restante comprase? Pues estaría bien. ¿Y si el rebote es muy bajo pero nadie pide información sobre ese servicio? etc. Además, en el caso del rebote es fundamental segmentar los datos para desagregarlos, bien por fuente, por página, por palabra clave, etc.[...]

100.Information Architecture - für Ihren Erfolg says:February 5, 2013 at 08:56

[...]Internet-Nutzer sind die digitalen Zugvögel. Sind sie nach der langen Reise auf Ihrer Homepage gelandet, sollte ihnen das Futter in Form von Informationen und Produkten möglichst schnell serviert werden. Explizit die Aufgabe der Information Architecture – ohne wenn und aber. Im Wesentlichen geht das darum, mit Hilfe der Navigationsstruktur die Absprungrate, die sogenannte Bounce Rate zu senken.[...]

101.Website Banner Blindness & Curing It - The Spectrum Group Online says:February 19, 2013 at 09:01

[...]High Bounce Rate – a general metric alerting you that a high percentage of visitors have this perspective: “I came, I saw, Yuck, I’m out of here.” Sadly, this means you’ve got serious work to do on your website.[...]

102.Reaching Mobile and Multi-Device Traffic | Howard Miller Associates says:April 2, 2013 at 05:59

[...]Did you know 40% of people will go to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience on your website? Or after waiting five seconds for a page to load, 74% of mobile users bounce? Yikes! So, how do you decrease the “I came, I puked, I left” metric as Avinash Kaushik so colorfully calls it, or your site’s bounce rate?[...]

Add your Perspective

Name *Email *Website

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail

Avinash Kaushik

Author, Digital Marketing Evangelist - Google, Co-founder - Market Motive.Read more »

Connect

Email: blog at kaushik dot net

Blog Subscription

via RSS Feedvia Email:

Enter your email address...My Startup

Internet Marketing Training & Certification.

My Books

Web Analytics 2.0*Audio Version*

Web Analytics: An Hour A Day

BlogrollFavorite Reads:

1 Seth Godin's Blog

2 Junk Charts (Kaiser)

3 Six Pixels (Mitch Joel)

4 Kaizen Analytics (M Notte)

5 Zoom Metrix (Kris Irizawa)

6 Iterative Path (R Srinivasan)

7 Online Behavior (D Waisberg)

8 You Are Not So Smart (D McRaney)

9 Donde esta Avinash cuando se le necesita? (G Vera)

Analytics Blogs

(refresh page for more)

1 Web Analytics Power (Turkish)

2 WebTrends Official Blog

3 Web Analytiker (J Kildebogaard)

4 LunaMetrics (Robbin Steif)

5 Official iPerceptions Blog

6 Paid Search Analytics (ClickEquations)

7 Web Analytics Nutzen

8 Web Analytics India

9 ROI Revolution (T Seward)

10 Immeria (Stéphane Hamel)

Recent Posts1 The Lean Analytics Cycle: Metrics > Hypothesis > Experiment > Act

2 Excellent Analytics Tip #23: Align Hits, Sessions, Metrics, Dimensions!

3 Excellent Analytics Tip #22: Calculate Return On Analytics Investment!

4 7 Incredible Web Design, Branding, Digital Marketing Experiences

5 Google Analytics Tips: 10 Data Analysis Strategies That Pay Off Big!

6 Is Your Brand Magnificent At Digital Marketing? A Diagnostic Framework.

Recent Comments1 Hitesh Kothari on Is Real-Time Analytics Really Relevant?

2 Avinash Kaushik on The Lean Analytics Cycle: Metrics > Hypothesis > Experiment > Act

3 S M on The Lean Analytics Cycle: Metrics > Hypothesis > Experiment > Act

4 Yehuda Raizner on The Lean Analytics Cycle: Metrics > Hypothesis > Experiment > Act

5 From Analytics to Action Part I: Building a Data-Driven Organization on Seven Steps to Creating a Data Driven Decision Making Culture.

Unmissable Articles:1 The Biggest Mistake Analysts Make… And How To Avoid It!

2 Multi-Channel Attribution: Definitions, Models and a Reality Check

3 7 Incredible Web Design, Branding, Digital Marketing Experiences

4 Facebook Advertising / Marketing: Best Metrics, ROI, Business Value

5 Segmentation: Do Or Die, There Is No Try!

6 Best Digital Analytics Tools: Quantitative, Qualitative, Life Saving!

7 Video: A Big Data Imperative: Driving Big Action

RETURN TO TOP OF PAGECOPYRIGHT © 2013 AVINASH KAUSHIK · PRIVACY POLICY

38Sunday 14 April 13hfp://www.crazyegg.com/# lets you analyze your visitor’s behaviour with heatmaps= no3on of conversion

Saved as crazyegg_heatmap_conversion

is online to keep increasing?WHY


landscapeTHE ONLINE


the life cycleCLASSIFIED


Classified


47Sunday 14 April 13http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites/

Craigslist Joe

48Sunday 14 April 13• hfp://mashable.com/2012/07/03/craigslist-‐joe/?WT.mc_id=en_social-‐good&utm_campaign=Social

%2BGood&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newslefer

•Film Follows Man Living Off Craigslist Ads

1.6kSHARES

Share Tweet +1 Ads by Google

Cursus Social Media? - Persoonlijke Aanpak & Kwaliteit. Bel Direct voor Advies op Maat.Plus-Opleidingen.nl/Social_Media

Samantha MurphyJul 03, 2012

What will having no money and no contact with anyone you know get you for a month? If you have access Craigslist, a lifetime supply of crazy stories.

A new documentary called "Craigslist Joe" — from executive producer Zach Galifianakis — follows 29-year-old Joe Garner as he travels nationwide, taking strangers he met on Craigslist up on offers for lodging and transportation.

"If you take a snap shot of America today, what would it look like?" Garner says in the film's new trailer. "Some say we lost the sense of community that used to carry us through tough times. Some say technology and social media fuel this isolation. Have we become so caught up in our own lives that we don't notice life outside our bubble?"

Garner, who travels only with a laptop, cellphone, a toothbrush and the clothes he's wearing, embarks on a 31-day social experiment in December 2009 to answer this question. He documents the adventure that depends on the generosity of people he previously never met.

SEE ALSO: Craigslist Founder Will Donate $1 if You Tweet About Squirrels"I'm going to live entirely off of Craigslist... to see if I can survive — eat, find shelter, find showers — and try to travel America and see if I can find a community out there," Garner says in the trailer.

The clip above shows Garner meeting new friends from California to New York, his struggles with trying to find food and doing his own good deeds by helping to clean an apartment for someone diagnosed with cancer.

The film hits theaters on Aug. 3, 2012.

Would you feel comfortable looking for help from strangers on Craigslist? What is the best story you've heard of finding help on the site? Let us know in the comments.

•

the life cycleDISPLAY


User visits webpage

Impression is counted & visit is recorded

Criteria are checked

Ad is selected

Ad is served

Ad impression is recorded

Page (re)loads with the

ad

ADSERVER

The technological side: ADSERVERS


The display market

• .• .

61Sunday 14 April 13AD NETWORKS VS AD EXCHANGESPublished by AdBalance Team in Ar,cles on 23 November 2010As the internet has developed over the last decade, adver,sing networks have emerged allowing publishers to just place HTML/Javascript tags on their site to display ads from a variety of adver,sers to fill their inventory, and to allow adver,sers to display their ads across a variety of websites in one process. In the last couple of years adver,sing exchanges have appeared alongside ad networks, offering an automated bidding process to let adver,sers buy cheaply and effec,vely any unsold ad space.

Most websites u,lise ad networks and exchanges in some way to mone,se their content, with larger sites selling their own ads directly before sending unsold inventory to them, and smaller websites sending them most if not all their inventory from the start. However, there is some misunderstandings and overlap between the two concepts, so a longer explana,on is necessary.

Ad Networks

An ad network maintains a network of websites and blogs that fulfil certain entry requirements such as content niches and traffic levels. They also build and maintain rela,onships with large numbers of adver,sers, to which they sell the adver,sing inventory provided by their network of sites at varying prices and on varying terms. The adver,sers’ ads are then displayed on either all or a selec,on of the sites within the ad network’s network of sites so as to best match the demographic that the adver,ser has paid to target, which can be based around the content niche of the sites, or behavioural targe,ng techniques, or other factors.

As the ads are being displayed, the ad network is constantly working to op,mise the campaign – removing it from sites where it is not conver,ng and weigh,ng it more heavily where the adver,ser is gegng a be@er ROI. Through these op,misa,on techniques, the ad network is able to charge higher prices for ads across its network, which then means higher eCPMs and payouts for its publishers.

Some example of ad networks are Casale Media, ValueClick Media, Tribal Fusion, and Google AdSense.

Ad Exchanges

Similarly to an ad network, an ad exchange has a roster of websites which they represent. However, ad exchanges oaen have much lower entry requirements or even none at all, so there tends to be many more sites involved and of a more varied quality and from more varied content niches.

h@p://www.adbalance.com/ad-‐networks-‐vs-‐ad-‐exchanges/

Ad exchanges provide a level platorm where publishers, adver,sers, and ad networks can all buy and sell ad space using a real-‐,me bidding system. Each impression is bid on separately and automa,cally to get the adver,ser or ad network the lowest price available for the ad inventory they want to buy, and to get publishers the highest price available for the ad space they want to sell. Due to the large volume of ad inventory available on these exchanges, prices are oaen very a@rac,ve to adver,sers, whilst they s,ll offer publishers a way of mone,sing any inventory that they were not able to sell privately or through a more tradi,onal ad network.

-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐

h@p://www.economist.com/node/18651104

Innova,on in online adver,singMad Men are watching youHow real-‐,me bidding will affect media companiesMay 5th 2011 | from the print edi,on

YOU are browsing for lampshades on a department store’s website. You grow bored, and surf across to the website of your favourite daily newspaper. Mysteriously, the lampshades follow you: an adver,sement for the same brand appears next to the ar,cle you are reading. Welcome to the world of real-‐,me bidding, a cleverer and nosier way of selling adver,sing that is beginning to shake up the online media business.

A decade ago online display adver,sements, or “banners” as they were oaen known, were booming. Companies paid huge sums to appear on news websites. But, as the number of ads increased, people stopped no,cing them. Now, for every 1,000 display ads that pop up, less than two are clicked on. Prices have slumped. Some media firms, notably News Corpora,on, have concluded that online ads will never bring in enough money to support a newspaper. Meanwhile search adver,sing, which reaches people when they seem to be interested in something, has grown from 1% of American online ad spending in 2000 to almost half, turning Google into a $172 billion company.

Conven,onal display ads are simply wasteful, says Jakob Nielsen of GroupM, a large media buyer. Say a company wants to reach young men. It might buy ads on the sports sec,on of a large portal such as Yahoo!. But it will also be paying for the women who visit that page. If it also buys ads on the sports sec,on of another large portal, such as Microsoa’s MSN.com, it will pay twice for the people who frequent both web pages.

Real-‐,me bidding helps solve these problems by allowing marketers to buy known audiences. Click to open a web page and an automated auc,on begins. Firms bid to serve an adver,sement, taking into account where it will appear and what they know about the presumed viewer from digital traces he has inadvertently lea around the web. The winner serves the adver,sement, oaen customising it—so you may see more ads for conver,ble cars on a sunny day. The whole process generally takes some 150 milliseconds, or less than half the blink of an eye.

Many online ads—par,cularly the expensive ones that appear on home pages—are bought and sold much like old-‐media adver,sements. A seller agrees on a price with a buyer, and then pays for lunch. But many publishers sell only one-‐ to two-‐fiahs of their online ads directly, says Jay Stevens of the Rubicon Project, a California firm that works with many of them. The rest are offloaded to digital middlemen. It is in this high-‐volume, low-‐cost market that real-‐,me bidding is advancing. In the past year, says Mr Stevens, real-‐,me bidding has risen from almost nowhere to capture 30-‐40% of spending.

Real-‐,me bidding makes it easy to aim ads at suscep,ble eyeballs. Firms such as John Lewis (a Bri,sh department store), Zappos (an online shoe-‐seller) and Lenovo (a computer-‐maker) know that you have visited their websites because they dropped digital markers onto your computer. They then outbid others to reach you again. This is called “retarge,ng”.

BSkyB, Britain’s biggest pay-‐TV outit, has used the technology to reach wealthier viewers who might be more interested in a new channel devoted to well-‐craaed American dramas. It has also taken aim at people who show an interest in 3-‐D television. And it has cut down on waste from trying to sell subscrip,ons to people who already have them. Ma@hew Turner, Sky’s head of digital marke,ng, expects half the firm’s online budget to go on real-‐,me bidding within two or three years.

King Content v King Data

In the short term, what is good for adver,sers is also good for ad sellers. Reducing waste raises prices. Laurent Cordier of Google says that retarge,ng can raise click-‐through rates five-‐ or tenfold. Google now sells many ads on its Doubleclick ad exchange by means of real-‐,me bidding, and is introducing the technology to YouTube, its video website. In 2010 display adver,sing actually gained market share in America, according to the Interac,ve Adver,sing Bureau. Search fell slightly.

But the growth of real-‐,me bidding may prove highly disrup,ve. An auc,on system allows everyone to discover the real value of online ads. It also provides a wealth of data to adver,sers about the behaviour of their target audiences. These days some media firms can charge rela,vely high rates for online ads on the grounds that their websites are frequented by the young or the affluent. Increasingly, adver,sers are learning how to reach the same people on other websites, for less money.

As Mr Nielsen of GroupM puts it, the conversa,on between buyers and sellers of adver,sing is becoming unbalanced, with the former oaen armed with more data than the la@er. Some media firms have responded by selling fewer ads through middlemen, in real ,me or otherwise. But that may mean ads go unsold. Media firms can also ,lt the balance by discovering more about their customers than can be gleaned through auc,ons. The obvious way to do this is to force people to register for websites, or even to pay (which reveals their credit-‐card details and where they live). In short, content is no longer king online. Informa,on about users is what really ma@ers.

Regulators may yet stymie the growth of real-‐,me bidding. Targeted adver,sing is drawing anxious scru,ny from congressmen and journalists. A Wall Street Journal inves,ga,on into online tracking last year found that its own website dropped 60 digital markers onto a visi,ng computer. Before May 25th European governments must incorporate a privacy direc,ve that is expected to make it easier for users to opt out of targeted ads. A confusing patchwork of laws may result.

But few expect radical change. So quickly has targeted adver,sing advanced that a ban would severely disrupt the internet economy. Web users are more likely to see li@le icons iden,fying targeted ads. If the past is any guide, people will learn to ignore them, too.


• Nice video explaining this: h@p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C0n_9DOlwE&feature=player_detailpage

• saved in @video as “the evolu,on of online display adver,sing”

• Here about RTB: h@p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoGgLxky1FE&feature=player_detailpage also saved: also: h@p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l8VWgnJWGU

63Sunday 14 April 13http://www.businessinsider.com/future-of-digital-slides-2012-11#-55

display impression in

5 in France has shown on social networks

of display impression inFrance allow social interactions


Comscore, 2012, Tendances du marché des réseaux sociaux

http://www.iabuk.net/resources/handbooks/iab-future-of-display-trading-guide


the life cycleSEARCH


73Sunday 14 April 13http://www.businessinsider.com/future-of-digital-slides-2012-11#-31

http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory/


http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory/

ORGANIC RESULTSNATURAL RESULTS

-‐ > SEO

SPONSORED LINKS / CPC -‐> SEA

keywords


... %... %

76Sunday 14 April 13Search = essen3al1.Everything goes web -‐> referencing = necessary2.Search toolbars3.Universal search

4.Local/geolocal searchBUT: social search + real 3me search

77Sunday 14 April 13hfp://econsultancy.com/be/blog/10586-‐ppc-‐accounts-‐for-‐just-‐6-‐of-‐total-‐search-‐clicks-‐infographic

CPM – CPC -‐ CPASEA


the life cycleAFFILIATION


Lead Genera,on / Affilia,on

82Sunday 14 April 13= referrals – fees that adver3sers pay to adver3sing networds that refer qualified purchasers to the adver3ser. The are charged using a cost per lead model. Many online sweepstakes are designed as lead genera3on devices.

83Sunday 14 April 131 = affiliate / referral site3 = merchant site

86Sunday 14 April 13= referrals – fees that adver3sers pay to adver3sing networds that refer qualified purchasers to the adver3ser. The are charged using a cost per lead model. Many online sweepstakes are designed as lead genera3on devices.

the life cycleE MAIL


Email #190Sunday 14 April 13

SERPs are more and more tailered to the individual googler on the basis of about 50 criteria: IP (geoloc) – past history, browser lg, social network

Landing page


98Sunday 14 April 13hfp://www.becel.be/fr/?utm_campaign=Becel+BigBoldNews+Mei2012&utm_medium=eMail&utm_source=Becel+BigBoldNews+Mei2012+Selec3on&utm_content=TXT+BodyCopy&utm_term=BE_fr

Email #2100Sunday 14 April 13

SERPs are more and more tailered to the individual googler on the basis of about 50 criteria: IP (geoloc) – past history, browser lg, social network

Email on the third screen


•h4p://emailgarage.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/how-‐to-‐liven-‐up-‐your-‐emails-‐on-‐tablets/#readmoreHow to liven up your emails on tabletsToday it will be exactly 2 years since Apple rocked the mul2media hardware market by bringing out the iPad. This niXy device allowed surfers to explore the internet on a whole new level. Today, this fast-‐emerging market already offers a lot of choice, with Dell, Asus, LG, Samsung and others also focusing on these compact mobile devices. No surprise it was one the best-‐selling items last Christmas. It has already found its way into14% of households, and there are absolutely no signs of this growth stopping any 2me soon.

Many email marketers, HTML builders and designers are already used to building emails for PCs and smartphones, but how can we liven up our emails on tablets? Here are some 2ps to get you going:

1) Haven’t build a mobile version yet? Well, do this first. This has a bigger market share and it is fairly easy to adapt your mobile version to a tablet version.

2) Don’t build something boring. A tablet is a lean-‐back device that users use for browsing. Make sure you build an a4rac2ve design to get them to read and click on your newsle4ers.

3) A lot of tablets don’t support Flash. You definitely shouldn’t use flash in your emails and you should also make sure you don’t put it on your landing page because a lot mobile readers won’t be able to open it.

4) Make your email ergonomic. Your CTA’s need to be easily clickable so make them large enough. You definitely want to avoid pu_ng text links below one another because you don’t have the accuracy of a mouse to work with.

5) A lot of web-‐based email clients also offer their services through an app version. They will probably use the same rendering engine but you should check if there are differences in rendering.

6) Your subject line, from name and preheader are s2ll important. If, for instance, you hold your iPad horizontally, you can see your mailbox and preview your email. If you hold it ver2cally, you don’t have a preview version.

7) Adjust the width of your email to the ver2cal screen width. Nobody likes horizontal scrolling.

8) Put a link to your online version on your landing page. If you close your landing page on your PC, your previous frame (your inbox) pops up. On the iPad, for instance, you have to close your browser and reopen your inbox to get back again. So make it really easy for your reader to check out other ar2cles in your newsle4er.

9) Make sure that your message is trustworthy. Tablet readers (as well as smartphone readers) can’t hover over a link to see if it seems trustworthy.

10) If you offer discount codes, for a webshop, for instance, make sure you personalize your URL’s with them so they are prefilled on your landing page. Copying and selec2ng text is more difficult on a tablet.

11) 2-‐column designs are less interes2ng given that your tablet is controlled with either your leX or your right hand. You might cover up a column or CTA simply by controlling it.

Conclusion: The tablet PC market is growing strongly, so make sure your emails render properly and can be easily controlled with touch screens.

102Sunday 14 April 13SERPs are more and more tailered to the individual googler on the basis of about 50 criteria: IP (geoloc) – past history, browser lg, social network

103Sunday 14 April 13hfp://www.benchmarkemail.com/FreeEdi3on – cfr More Posts By Aidan Hijleh

the life cycleSOCIAL MEDIA


the life cycleRICH MEDIA


the life cycleMOBILE


To be con.nued…


Livertising 5 advertising goes online student version

Education

Transcript of Livertising 5 advertising goes online student version