Friday, May 30, 2008

Bounce Rate, Leakage Rate, Abandon Rate

I was in a meeting with the Google Analytics team yesterday and heard a lot of these metrics. I had heard about the abandon rate and also leakage rate but Bounce Rate was something new to me. I had seen this in Google Analytics and had always interpreted it in a different way.

The Google gurus explained me that "Bounce Rate" has been termed as the "SEXIST" metric of website analytics. Bounce rate means indicates the % of visitors to your site who exit the site by viewing only one page i.e. they did not get to any other page of the site and left the site.

From a business application point of view, one would want to think that if a lot of consumers are exiting your site from a particular page, then probably there is something that needs to be fixed on that page. And if this page was the homepage or the landing page to which the online media is driving traffic then there is definitely a problem.

Some other applications:

For a retailer if this is the start shopping page and then people are leaving the site – big problem!

For a financial services or an insurance company – consumers leaving the homepage or the account login page – big problem!

For a branding website – consumers leaving the landing page to which media is driving to – your branding is not working!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

bounce rate as a % is a bit flat. A person viewing your page for 2 seconds and leaving is not the same as viewing your page for 1min and leaving. The first might need clearer action items and the second needs clearer/more appealing copy. Take a look at pagealizer they show page specific metrics and try to help you find your page weak points.