What are “Bounce Rates” and How to Interpret Them

Written By : Clifford Blodgett

When measuring the effectiveness of your online marketing campaign, it’s imperative to use an analytics program to track certain statistics. This may be the best way to get feedback on your web traffic and the tendencies of your web visitors.

Yet, sometimes we see alarm over a statistic called “bounce rate” and its misinterpretation.

The first step is to understand what constitutes a “bounce”. When a visitor goes to your website and views only one page before leaving, Google counts this as a bounce. It doesn’t mean the visitor immediately navigated away from your website; in fact, in many cases a visitor might spend several minutes or more on that page. But as long as they only view that single page, their visit is still counted as a bounce.

Depending on your marketing strategy, high bounce rates could be negative or they could be the norm with no cause for alarm. If the goal is simply to keep visitors on the website for as long as possible, then a high bounce rate could indicate a problem. This would be the case for entertainment-based websites or websites where a high percentage of revenue comes from paid advertisements embedded on the site. For instance, if you own a website and you sell ad space to other businesses, then high bounce rates would be a major deterrent for your advertisers.

With email or social media marketing for financial advisors, the opposite is usually true and bounce rates are not actually a good way to measure success. Your goal is to provide pertinent information your intended target audience. You accomplish this through your blog, and you have provided links to that blog through social media sites or your email list. It makes perfect sense that you would see a high number of visitors who visit only one page on your website.

In fact, it’s even common to see a high bounce rate associated with a very successful marketing campaign. This is because your blog, to which you have directed your intended audience, has effectively answered their questions. They have found the needed information, and have moved on to other business. You’re accomplishing exactly what you set out to do. You’ve become a trusted informational resource which leads to future referrals and business.

It’s far more important to consider statistics such as:

• Page views – Which pages are garnering interest?
• Overall traffic – How many people are reading your content?
• Source of traffic – Is your audience coming from LinkedIn? Your email list? Somewhere else?
• Average time visitors spend on your website – Are readers staying long enough to read your content?

These statistics can paint a much clearer picture of your online marketing success.

Refer to other articles on topics such as email marketing, blogging, and social media for more information!

FOR INSURANCE PROFESSIONAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR USE WITH THE GENERAL PUBLIC 14215 – 2015/3/5

Filed under: Financial Advisor Marketing