The Bounce Rate Crystal Ball

The official Google Analytics blog makes a great point about the importance of bounce rates to your marketing efforts. They are a simple enough metric that can be applied to nearly any kind of website.

It is a metric tailored especially for landing pages...where a high bounce rate can tell you almost as much as a defined conversion funnel.

If you need a resource for understanding which metrics provide the most insight, check out the new book Web Analytics an Hour a Day.

clipped from analytics.blogspot.com If your site conversion rates are low, Bounce Rate can help you understand why. If your Bounce Rates are also low, your troubles are likely due to site design and usability issu es. In this case, you might focus your efforts on streamlining your conversion funnel or making your site easier to navigate. But if your Bounce Rates are high, you can focus your efforts on redesigning entrance (landing pages), improving the quality of traffic to your site, and doing a better job of pairing landing pages with ads.