Imaginary Landscape
RSS FeedWe are creatures of meaning. Everyone wants to know the meaning of things, but not everything has meaning or can be interpreted the same way. As Freud famously said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Nowhere is this more apropos than in the meaning of website statistics, and especially in the often-misunderstood analytics metric: Bounce Rate.
This from Google:
Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.
This is its exact definition. But, Google goes on to provide an interpretation:
Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.
Although I agree that this is one interpretation of Google Analytics bounce rate, I disagree that it is the only interpretation. I disagree because there is a plausible interpretation that is diametrically opposed.
High Analytics Bounce Rate: the positive
A high bounce rate can also indicate that visitors land on a page and find exactly what they are looking for and then leave.
As with most things in life, it depends on the context. A one-page website will have 100% bounce rate. With the prolific use of AJAX, it is easy to design a landing page where a visitor can submit a form and have the form submission acknowledged without ever leaving that landing page. This will result in a high bounce rate and a high conversion rate.
Without a healthy dose of context, there is danger in the blanket interpretation of bounce rate or any other metric. It is important to understand the nuance of your specific site before subscribing to another’s interpretation of a statistic.
It was Mark Twain that popularized the phrase, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Hard to disagree with that.
For more information on Google Analytics, visit the Imaginary Landscape page on Measuring Your Success.
Updated 01/06/11 @ 03:17PM CST by brian
Categories: Technology User Interface
