What is 'Bounce Rate' in Google Analytics

Bounce rate is a term you see a lot in Google Analytics reports. It's attached to visitors, sources, landing pages as well as the overall site summaries.

Bounce rate is one of the metrics that does cause confusion. What exactly does it mean? Is having a high bounce rate bad, and a low bounce rate good? What should my bounce rate be?

Bounce rate is a measure of a visit that only looked at a single page on the site.

All the bounce rate can tell you is that they only loaded a single page. It is used as a measure of engagement - how interested the visitors was in the page - but has major limitations due to the way it is calculated.

So is a high bounce rate bad?

The answer is...usually. We know that a bounce rate is someone leaving the site, but on it's own it says nothing of the users intent.  Here's two examples that would show as a 'bounce'.

Visitor one searches for 'blue widgets', and lands on the blue widgets product page, and then leaves. This is a negative bounce - assuming this is an e-commerce site, you want them to add a product to the basket and complete a purchase. A high bounce rate is bad.

Visitor two searches for 'the widget company phone number' and lands on the 'Contact Us' page, and then leaves. In this case, we assume they probably made a call. The visitor found exactly what they were looking for, so there was no need to search around the site - a high bounce rate is good!

E-commerce sites are generally simpler. For visitors looking for products, bounce rates should be low, and for visitors searching for help or customer services, it should be high.  Lead generation sites, on the other hand, may have a harder time determining what is a good bounce rate, so will have to segment their visitors further.

What can I do to get accurate bounce rates?

There are some changes you can make to ensure bounce rates are as accurate as possible.

• Create thank-you pages for online submission forms, web chat or similar functions. As another page is loaded after they have completed them, it will not show as a bounce.
• Consider using phone tracking software that simulates a page load when they call, such as Splice Insight, as visitors who make a phone call instead of taking another action will not show as a bounce.
• You can add a dummy page load in Analytics after a user clicks on a mailto: email link
• Consider using events and goals to track users who stay on a page for more than a certain time as an alternative to bounce rate for measuring engagement.

What if I use a single page web site?

Your bounce rate is going to be 100%, unless you have a 'thank you' after completing a web form. Instead of bounce rate, you will have to look at other ways of measuring engagement. Google Analytics will not give accurate measures of time on page, but some other Analytics packages do.

What should my bounce rate be?

This is really open to interpretation, but from my experience a 'good' bounce rate would be:

• Below 30% for an e-commerce site
• 30 to 40% for a lead generation site, but lower if you are tracking phone calls
• Up to 50% for a blog site, but this will vary depending on the nature of the blog. Blogs with tightly focused topics will tend to get lower bounce rate, those with very disparate themes will be higher.

Above these numbers, the page is generally not providing the visitor with what they want. Have a look at the page content, and how it compares to what you know of the visitor. Are the terms most visitors search for strongly highlighted on the page using headings, bold text or bullet points? Is the next step the visitors has to take clear enough? Does the page generate trust by looking professional, especially for an e-commerce site? Are you using split testing or other methods to test different page looks and content to identify the most effective versions?

Any comments on this? What is your bounce rate - and what steps have you taken to improve it?

How Do I Install Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is pretty easy to install. You will need to have some way to edit either the entire code for the page or to edit your main site template files.

If you have FTP access to the site files, you can achieve this with a simple text editor. If you are using a template driven site builder, you will need to find the main page templates, and switch to HTML view to edit them.

Once you have access, you can begin. Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/. You will need to sign in with an existing Google account, or create one.If you choose to create a new account, it can be for your existing email address or you can even create a new Gmail address as well.

Once you have the account created, you have to add the first Analytics account. The process is fairly straight forward. If you are not already in the New Account screen, click the new account button now.

Top Tip: Always create a new website as a new Account, NOT a new Property inside another account! If you wish to give another person access to your full Analytics account in the future, they will have access to all Properties inside the account. By splitting them up you can make life easier in the future.

You will need to give it the Account name. I usually use the URL, but it's for your display only, so ffel free to shorten it. You will also need to give the URL (full website address), the time zone and the country. At the moment. you selects whether the site uses http://, https:// or something else in the first box, and the rest of the URL in the second. If you site uses www. make sure you include it.

Next you will be presented with a page with the tracking code. Leave the selection at Standard and Single Domain. These will be fine unless you have more complex needs outside the scope of this blog.  Copy the tracking code - select all of the text in the box and do right-click>Copy or CTRL-C on your keyboard.

Next, on your website editor, you need to locate the tag that says </head>. It is usually near the top, and there should only be one in the page or document. You can often use Find (CTRL-F) to locate it. Go to the line above this, enter a new line and paste the code in.

Save the web page or template, and upload it by FTP if you need to.

If you have multiple pages, or more than one template, repeat the process on every page or template. It must be on all the pages on your website for it to work properly.

Top Tip: Adding the tracking code can be easily missed on some pages. Check especially for 'Thank You' pages that load after a form is submitted, 'Static' or 'Fixed' pages for blogs that often use a different template from the main blog posts and the home page, which again can sometimes use a different template.

Some website and blog creation systems have Google Analytics built in, and all they need is the reference number. On you Analytics account, have a look at the top of the page. It should say:

Tracking ID: UA-30109067-1

That code, starting with UA is the tracking code. Paste it into the correct space and save - you generally don't need to do anything else.

Testing Your Google Analytics Tacking Code

Now it is installed, you need to test it. The fastest way is the new Real Time Tracking. It is currently in Beta (testing). Click the Home button on your Analytics account, then select 'Real Time' on the far left menu and select 'Overview' once the menu opens.In a separate browser window, go visit your new site, and you should see one visitor appear under Right Now in the main page section. Success!

Problems? If you do not see your visit after a few seconds, check that the newly added tracking code is appearing on the page. View the page source in your browser (generally right-click on a blank bit and then 'view source'). Look just before the </head> tag. If it is not there, try refreshing the page, and if it is still not there go back to your editor and make sure you saved it.

Lastly, it's a good idea to check all the pages have the tracking code added. Use either the Real Time viewer or the 'view source' method to check all the major pages or page types. This can be list views, individual item views, forms/contact pages, the home page. If the code is missing from one page it can create some very odd numbers later in Analytics, so it is a good idea to check now.

That's it - well done. Give yourself a pat on the back.  Come back in a few days to see how the site is performing. Now all you have to do is get people on it.

Top Tip: The main Analytics reports are NOT real time, and can take several hours before data from site visits is available. For safety, generally only look at data up to the day before when reviewing your site.

That's all for this one. If you have any specific questions about installing Analytics, please ask in the comments below.

What is Google Analytics and Why do I Need It?

Google Analytics is a system for measuring activity on your web site, blog or page. It records information about people who view the site, giving indications on what they liked and how they got there.

While Google's product is only one of a number of web analytics packages, it has one huge advantage: it's free. There are plans to start charging the very largest sites, but for the vast majority it remains completely free to use all the functions.

So what is it good for?

1. Basic tracking of visitors, so you can tell how well many people see your site. This is vital for most sites - both commercial and non-commercial need to know they are being read, but for very different reasons.
2. To determine where visitors are coming from. Most sites get visitors from a variety of sources - search engines, social media, other web sites - and it's really useful to see which is providing the most traffic. This is especially important if you are paying for links to your site, as you can then establish roughly how much each visitor costs.
3. To find problems with your site or pages. Analytics tracks a huge number of variables, and these can be useful for tracking down site problems. One report I use regularly is the summary by browser type. If I see that visitors using a particular browser always leave after one page, it's a warning that something is wrong and needs tested. It could be the page layout is broken, or my menu is not working. This is especially important for mobile browsers such as iPads and iPhones which have some limitations as to the types of content they can display.
   The latest version on Analytics also allows you to check page load speeds. A fast-loading page gives a better experience for your visitors, and you can often improve the experience by taking simple steps like reducing the size of images or adding videos in a different way.
4. To perform calculations on your return on investment. Even if your site is not commercial, its useful to know what your efforts achieve. Analytics can track views of specific pages, completed webforms and even (with some outside help) phone calls. This allows you to determine which visitor sources, topic or pages provide the most return for your time marketing funds.

There are loads of other uses for the data that Google Analytics can provide. Our next post will be on how to get Analytics added to your website.