Is your website operating to maximum efficiency? Do people who come to your site stay or do they jump off after the home page? 

Do you know what your “bounce rate” is?

If someone visits only one page on your site and then leaves, that’s a “bounce”. They haven’t found what they are looking for, or for some reason decided to abandon the site without doing any further investigating.

Bounces are bad for business.

So how do you know what the bounce rate is for your site? Most websites have reporting tools already built in, but in case yours doesn’t, here’s a freebie: Google Analytics. 

Google Analytics will provide you with insights into your website traffic that will help you improve your marketing effectiveness – for free! It’s a simple sign-up process, they furnish you with a bit of code to tag your pages with, and then your free monitoring and reporting system is in place.

What you learn from being bounced.

If you have a high bounce rate – 60% or more – then something is probably wrong with your home page or landing page. People are leaving because their needs are not being met…but how do you know what changes to make?

It depends on where your traffic is coming from. 

If you have a high bounce rate from your PPC or paid search campaign, there is obviously a disconnect between the ad or the keywords you used and your landing page. 

Maybe the keywords you’ve chosen to use are not really working for you and your content is therefore not relevant to site visitors. The Google Analytics tool provides you with data on your site’s keyword bounce and conversion rates.

If you suspect your keywords could use some improvement, use the Content Experiments tool in Google Analytics to help you determine whether or not you have the right keywords. You can also use this tool to learn what changes to your site can drive the most conversions. And that means sales.