Google Analytics is a valuable tool for every website owner. By monitoring your Analytics reports, you may determine which pages and content types are the most valuable.
Learning just a few key reports to monitor will help you improve the value of your content to your site visitor. This is a simple tutorial in pictures that makes it very clear.
Bounce Rate vs. Percentage Exit
If you’ve been in business any time within the last five years, you know that your website analytics mean just as much as your budget report. In fact the results of your analytics dictate how your business sales improve and grow. It’s important to monitor bounce rate, especially when your goal is to decrease bounce and provide interesting content–which some people call creating stickiness. Google Analytics can seem intimidating. Read on to learn what it means when your bounce rate is too high or your exit rate is fairly low.
In this post, we’ll explore the meaning of these two terms and a few others within the scope of Google Analytics Behavior Reports.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is simply a measure of visit quality for single-page views. Boiled down to the basics, this just means how often people leave your site after originally visiting a single page on your site. When potential clients or followers depart your website without really looking at anything your company has to offer, they’re obviously still shopping around. This means that if you aren’t hooking them from the get-go, this is probably not the way to attract new business.
Google Analytics uses an equation to calculate bounce rate for you, so it’s not necessarily important that you understand the way it’s derived. However, if you know the basic formula, it’s easier to see the way it all works.
Basically, it varies across industries how high the bounce rate is on average. The bottom line is, no matter what your bounce rate actually is, you can always improve it.
- Provide relevant content: If your readers get the answers they need, they’ll visit your page more often.
- Define all ambiguous terms: No one wants to read a post on something they don’t understand.
- Get rid of pop-up ads: Ads make people angry. Angry people don’t come back to your site and don’t look further than the first page.
- Make sure the layout is user-friendly: Not everyone is tech savvy, so a site that’s difficult to navigate without some insight as to how it might work. Clean it up, and that population of viewers is less likely to bounce from your site.
Percentage Exit
Percentage Exit rate refers to the percentage of viewers who leave the site from a specific page or set of pages. This is normally reviewed considering time spent on each page as well as the progress made on each page per view.
Google Analytics compiles this for you with its own algorithms. You’ll find this statistic in your Behavior Overview Report. After that, it’s up to you to take the information and use it to the site’s advantage.
Review the Exit Pages Report [Behavior > Site Content > Exit Pages] to determine which pages are most commonly points of departure from your site. Analyze time on page and notice if there is any congruence you can determine between the page preceding the exit page. Pages with lower exit percentages indicate more valued content.
Repairing a high exit percentage boils down to the same advice provided for a high bounce rate – create more compelling content your target market finds useful or interesting. As you make modifications and tweaks, review that page’s exit percentage to see if your changes made a difference.
These tips, as well as diligence with Google Analytics Reports, should improve your site’s visibility and interaction from potential clients. After all, this is what makes all the difference in the reports, behavioral or budgetary.
