As a website owner you must be afraid of bounce rate. It has been considered as the key performance indicator in web Analytics and people are always keeping an eye on the bounce rate of their website. Bounce rate is the time taken by the visitor to leave your site. On an average, a visitor stays on a site for 10-15 seconds and if he doesn’t like what’s being offered to him he leaves early. This increase the bounce rate of the website which eventually affects the ranking of that website negatively. This is what we’ve been told right? But, what if I tell you some of the things that has been said to you about bounce rate aren’t true and are just a myth, then it would definitely surprise you. In this article I am going to debunk five common myths about bounce rate.
Related article: Common web designs myths you need to get rid of
Let’s dive right in
5 Myths about bounce rate you need to get rid of
Let’s see five common myths about bounce rate because you need to get rid of them
Myth 1. Bounce rate means your website is terrible
Websites that have higher bounce rate sometimes thinks that it is because their site is just terrible which isn’t completely true. Sometimes the user leave your site immediately not because he thinks that your site is not good but maybe because he got the information he was looking for quickly and left the site without taking any action. But Google Analytics will consider that as bounce and it will then reflect in your bounce rate.
So this is just a myth.
Myth 2. Bounce happens when a visitor enter a site and leaves it immediately
This is one of the most common myth among people. They think if the metrics showing high bounce rate then it is because visitors exit their site immediately which is not entirely correct. A bounce does not happen when a visitor leaves your site immediately but when he doesn’t view any other page than your home page no matter how much time he spent on the single page.
So if you are seeing a high bounce rate lately that’s not because the visitor is leaving your site immediately but because he is not clicking on the other pages of your site.
Myth 3. You think the bounce rate is only better if it is lower
Low bounce rate sounds great and can be great for a website too. But low bounce rate doesn’t always means that your site’s performance is good. It is maybe because visitors are unable to find what they are looking for on your website quickly and they have to go through multiple pages which might lower down the bounce rate but doesn’t provide a seamless user experience and better web services.
If you have witnessed a sudden drop in the bounce rate of your site then it might not always be because users are spending a lot of time browsing your site but it can happen due to conflicting Analytics code on your website. It can also be because something in your Google Analytics configuration is not working properly. In that case, you need to check your CMS plugins. So, don’t get too happy if the bounce rate dropped significantly overnight.
Myth 4. A visitor bounced means conversion didn’t occur
Yes, it is possible that the visitor has converted but the session still bounced. As I already mentioned above that a visitor can spend a lot of time on a single page on your site that still can be counted as bounce.
For instance, a visitor lands on your site looking for a particular service that you provide he goes through all the details and decides to give you a call to schedule an appointment, now even if he exits the site after making the call it will still count as a bounce. So, here you might be gaining conversions but still the bounce rate can increase.
Related article: 8 Effective methods to enhance conversion rate of your website
Myth 5. High bounce rate affects your SEO negatively
This is the most prevalent myth that people have about bounce rate. But there is infact no proof that can prove that Google Analytics bounce rate has any impact on SEO rankings. Some people even say that Google doesn’t even use Bounce rate data as a tool to rank the searches.
Because all the websites are not same. They all have different bounce rates, so there is no fixed parameter for Google to decide which bounce rate is good and which is not so in that case it will not consider it as an essential factor to determine the ranking of the websites. While some people still believe this myth.
To wrap up
To end this article, I would say that these myths are not myths for everyone, they are believed by so many people. But it is important to have a wide view about anything. And it is equally important to use tools and techniques to fact check if these myths are actually a fact.
