Ticket to bounce

Bored by bounce rate? Don’t be. Sure, it’s not some new fancy metric, but it still deserves top- of dashboard real estate. Here’s why.

Bounce rate means fewer effective visits - obvious? Sure. Important. Still.

A bounce is the worst outcome (at least for first time visitors). You worked and spent hard to get the shopper, all for a one-and-done. That’s not much consumption, and more than likely, they didn’t get your best side.

Bounce rate describes your traffic: Predictably, high intent channels are going to bounce less, and exploratory and inspirational and often impulsive channels are going to bounce higher. Bounce rate gives a sense of quality of traffic, or, better, trends in channel-specific bounce rate shares a view of how you are connecting (or not) with your shopper.

Zero bounce is unrealistic. Bounces are inevitable. 1 page might be enough for some. Others inadvertently clicked or tapped. And, maybe some were just peeping you for once or for later.

But… shifting a few percentage points to deeper sessions can make a massive difference. Two ways to attack bounce rate:

1. Test… of course the answer is test, right? Bounce may be one of the best metrics to use as a success metric. Big numbers - about half of all traffic - makes for a big addressable audience. Where would I start?

Test destination page by source (and campaign, too).. I avoid the amorphous ‘landing’ page designation because it carries plenty of baggage. The page where you land traffic, by source and campaign is meaningful, and requires ongoing testing.

2. Get faster - IF you are slow. LCPs loading in >4s? You are likely losing shoppers because of speed. Bounce rates are 3.9% higher (1.8 percentage points) for Poor performing LCP sites, compared with those earning Good status (under 2.5s)

So, don’t let bounce… bounce off your radar (and dashboard). And think about making room for a channel-specific view, too. And then… attack it.