Lately, we have had a few clients tell us that other web development companies in Sydney have promised them bounce rates as low as <5%. Hearing this made us somewhat alarmed. If you aren’t a web development expert (which we don’t expect you to be – that’s why you have us), it’s natural to assume that a low number is a good number. However, a rate of <5% actually indicates that there is something wrong with your website or tracking, and you may need a new website. No one gets a bounce rate of <5%.
To clear up the confusion, we want to take a deep dive at what a “healthy” bounce rate looks like and what rates indicate that something may be seriously wrong.
Bounce rates explained
For anyone not entirely sure, a bounce rate is the percentage of single interaction visits to a website. A single interaction is an indication that a visitor has come to your page and then decided to “bounce” without going any further. This is not abnormal behaviour; hence why <5% raises alarms about whether your website or tracking is broken. But crazy high bounces rates are also not ideal. Every business wants to keep customers on their website longer in order to move them to action, like making a sale.
Quick look at healthy and abnormal bounce rate ranges:
Excellent – 27% to 45%
Above Average – 45% to 55%
Average – 55% to 85%
Something is broken – 0% to 27%, and 85% to 100%
As you can see, anything below 27% and above 85% is usually an indication that something is broken, rather than you have awesome or really really bad bounce rates.
A healthy bounce rate range is anything between 27% and 85% — quite a significant margin.
Bounce rates impact factors
It’s important to realise that there are many factors which will impact your bounce rate. What are these factors, you ask? Let’s take a look.
Industry
Every industry is different, and this is going to impact what is considered a good bounce rate. Service sites, for examples, have super low average bounce rates at around 10% to 30% because people are searching for information. Blogs, on the other hand, have incredibly high bounce rates of about 70% to 98% because people tend to find one blog and then close the page.
Paid or social traffic
If a high percentage of your traffic is coming from social media or paid ads, it is more common that your number of visitors will spike but so too will your one time visitors.
High numbers on mobile traffic
Mobile visitors bounce more, so if your site is something more likely to be consumed on mobile, it’s important to understand that your bounce rate is going to be higher.
What we’ve learned
What we would like to stress is that it is hard to give a concrete “good” or “bad” range. It is essential for you to look at your site, industry and offering in isolation, rather than in comparison to all the sites out there.
If you’re wondering what a healthy body weight is; this depends on a variety of factors, right? It’s not healthy to compare to those whose body type is nothing like yours.
While it is tempting to compare to other sites you like; if they aren’t like yours, the comparison is not doing you any favours.
If you’re unsure what a healthy bounce rate looks like for your industry and offering, and if your site is performing at the right level, get in touch with the team here at AdVisible; your specialist web design company in Sydney.
We are offering readers a “Free Website Audit” which includes an assessment of bounce rates.
