What Are Website Bounce Rates

In layman's terms, Bounce refers to when a visitor logs on to a website & lands on a webpage of the site, but rather than choosing to browse through the rest of the pages, decides to exit. Here bounce rate refers to the total percentage of visitors who bounce. For a website having a high bounce rate could mean serious trouble, as it basically points towards the inability of the website (design or content) to hold the interest of the online visitors.

High Bounce Rate - What Does It Mean?

According to experts, a 50% bounce rate is normal for a website, while a 60% bounce rate is an indication that there may a problem in some aspect of the website; it may be that the content & design is not compelling enough to hold the attention of the visitor, or the information provided is not useful to visitors, or any other related reason. A Bounce Rate above 60% points to severe problems with the website which needs to be analyzed & fixed immediately. A high bounce rate may be indicative of the fact that there are some problems with functioning of the website, which is making the visitors leave the site halfway through.

Different Types Of Traffic & Bounce Rate Direct Traffic

The visitors who log on to the internet with the intention of visiting a particular website are referred to as Direct Traffic. According to industry experts, a high bounce rate in case of Direct Traffic is acceptable as these visitors visit the website with the intention of accessing some particular information like - latest offers or deals, or contact info, etc. As they are already aware of the company & its offering, it does not matter if they visit all the pages or not.

Search Traffic

The bounce rate from Search Traffic is usually as high as 30-40%. It is important to analyze the statistics for the bounce rates of paid search traffic & organic search traffic respectively. There may some problems with the advertisements if the bounce rate of paid search traffic is high. If there is a high bounce rate with organic search traffic, then it would be a smart move to analyze which keywords are causing the visitors to bounce off.

Referral Traffic

These are most relevant kind of traffic for any website & having a high bounce rate in this section means a major re-hauling of the website is required. This would include identifying the reason for the high bounce rate & taking remedial measures.
Website Bounce Rates are quite an effective indicator of the efficacy of the website in holding the attention of the visitors.