What the heck is bounce rate?

Bounce Rate is a web analytics term that defines how many people visit a page, and then leave that page without going anywhere else on your site. If someone lands on one of your pages and subsequently exits, that's considered a bounce. If they hit another page on your site, it isn't. The lower your Bounce Rate, the better. It could mean more people are exploring your site. Simple enough?

From Wikipedia:

A bounce occurs when a web site visitor leaves a page or a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs. There is no industry-standard minimum or maximum time by which a visitor must leave in order for a bounce to occur. Rather, this is determined by the session timeout of the analytics tracking software.

I've been asked this question a lot lately because Google Analytics has been featuring Bounce Rate a little more prominently in their statistics. And naturally the question following is "is mine good or bad?" or "how can I improve it?

What is a good Bounce Rate? This is a difficult question to answer without generalization. My answer is usually roughly between 20 and 30 percent is a good target range. There are many factors to consider, a big one is of course they type of page you're measuring. If you are measuring the Bounce Rate off an entry page, and your rate is 25 of the people who land on it (through ads, SEO or however) are continuing on through your site. If it is a "click here to purchase" page you'll be the luckiest salesperson alive if 75-30, but they aren't common.

Keep in mind some sites like news sites will naturally have a higher Bounce Rate, because people tend to scan headlines, or read an article, and head off to the next site. A site like this one (JeremyMorgan.com) is more of a niche oriented type of article, and I tend to run in the 30-35 Bounce Rate somewhere. Once you have increased your conversion ratios, bookmarks, and things like that you can start tuning your Bounce Rate. If you run an e commerce site you should pay attention more closely than you would a news site.

How can I lower my Bounce Rate? The best way to lower your Bounce Rate is to make your content good, and relevant. Write good headlines, and provide people the content they were searching for. Don't try to gather extra clicks or search results with irrelevant terms. There are a lot of articles you can find on the internet about improving your bounce rate. Good luck!