Have You Checked the Bounce Rate of Your Website?

Articles, Concept, Guide, Tips | on Sep. 23, 2011 | by 0 Comments

If you have created a well-designed website and your client seems thrilled with the result, this is already good news for you. But have you considered how the website will react on the Internet as far as bounce rates are concerned?

It is essential you check the bounce rate of a website, if you are a professional web designer that has spent hours of work to produce a great product, and are offering maintenance to your client. Testing a website for usability is no doubt what you have already done; however, was this data you collected relevant to how the users are now reacting to the web pages?

The first step to take is to find out if people arrive at the website and leave immediately, without clicking on other links. If that is what is happening, and your bounce rate is high, then there is something wrong.

The bounce rate of a website give you the measure of the number of visitors arrive at your website and leave without having bothered to browse through the other pages. Which, translated in basic terms, means that users are not satisfied of what you are providing them with.

To track down the bounce rate of your website, you can use free tracking tools like Google analytics, which indicate the various bounce rates for every page of your website. It will also provide you with a detailed description as to how visitors landed on your website and the way the bounce rate varies over a certain time period.

It is important to note that to be able to assess how well your website is working you should have an average bounce rate of 50 percent. If you bounce rate is more than 60, then you should be fixing something in your web pages. If you have more than 80 percent, then there is something really wrong.

In order to reduce you bounce rate you should also consider the browser that was used during the development of your website. Sometimes, if web developers work exclusively with one type of browser to check how well the website performs, you may not have a website that load properly on the different browsers available. By using analytical tools you can find out if in fact this is the problem.

Loading times may be the problem. Consider how many images, videos or flash elements you have on your website, and ask yourself if these are really necessary. Not everyone has high speed Internet connection and the website may take a long time to load, resulting in another bounce rate. You can check the loading time of your web pages by using the analytics tools again, as this will show you how long the pages take to load, and if they break down and are not viewed properly.

It is fundamental you have a good flow of usability within your web pages. Some websites look really attractive, but are not offering good user experience. If users have to upload plug-ins or other programs to view your website, in most cases they will not bother and simply leave.

 

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